Page 46 of When Wrecked Meets Ruined
He sounded angry, and my usual quips died on my lips. “I was busy.”
“Busy,” he repeated, and I heard the bitterness in his tone. He took a step forward. I took a step back. We did this tango until my back hit the trunk of a tree.
Flattening his palm on the bark next to my head, he leaned in closer, his mouth only inches from mine. I pressed my back against the rough bark and dug my fingernails into it to keep myself from throwing my arms around his neck and crushing my lips against his.
Just one taste, I thought. What could it hurt?
His fingers trailed down my neck and traced my collarbone, softly, gently, just a brush of his fingers, but it made my breath quicken and my heart thrash. With his eyes on mine, he traced my cheek, my jaw, my lips. Everything around us went so still and silent that I could hear every breath he inhaled and exhaled.
He slid his hand around the back of my neck and tangled his hand in my hair while his other hand settled on my hip.
“Tell me something honest.” His thumb brushed over the skin just above the waistband of my bikini, and I rubbed my thighs together, feeling the ache building. “Something you’ve never told anyone.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because you owe me.”
Because you owe me. And just like that, the spell was broken. “Why do you want that? So you can use it against me?”
I saw the hurt expression on his face before he shut it down and pushed off from the tree. “Forget it. You don’t owe me a damn thing.”
With those words, he turned and strode away, giving up the chase. Giving up on me. For some reason, I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to give him a tiny piece of myself just like he’d given me.
Sucking in a deep breath, I spoke. “All I’ve ever wanted was to get away from here and have a better life.” He stopped walking, his back to me, waiting for me to continue. “Go to college, get a good job, get my own place. I used to dream about it all the time. Quinn used to give me her mom’s old magazines. You know, the ones with beautiful houses and interiors.” I laughed a little. It all seemed so stupid and trivial now, but I forged on.
“I made a collage with all the magazine clippings I saved. My dream house and the interior that I envisioned for myself. I used to be able to see it all so clearly. And it gave me hope that someday my life would be different. But when my baby sister was born, that changed everything. Because now I have a big reason to stay. And my biggest fear...” I stopped and took a deep breath, then let it out, my eyes dropping to the ground as I unpacked some of my baggage and laid it at his feet. “My biggest fear is that I’ll never get away, that I’ll never be able to give my sister a better life, and that I’ll always be stuck here. In this place that I hate so much.”
By place, I didn’t mean the town we lived in. I meant my life.
“And I just… I hate it that I feel so helpless and that it seems like an impossible dream that anything will change for the better….” I clamped my bottom lip between my teeth. I’d said too much.
Slowly, Ridge turned to face me.
I had seen Ridge with plenty of girls, but I don’t think he ever looked at any of them the way he was looking at me right now. With so much intensity I fought the urge to squirm under his penetrating gaze. It felt like he’d stripped me bare and could see straight into my soul.
I wanted to run and hide.
But I didn’t want to be a coward, so I stayed, my feet firmly planted on the ground.
He focused on something in the distance, not on my face, and I had the feeling that he was going to tell me something important, so I stayed silent and waited for him to speak.
“The abandoned houses that I used to party in? My mom and I were squatting in one of them. We got evicted and had nowhere else to go. And the crack den I found her in? It was the house we were living in. And I just left her there. Dead on a filthy mattress with the snow coming through the roof.” His eyes lowered to the ground. “And my biggest fear is that I’m going to fuck up all the good things in my life. Because I always do.”
He lifted his head, and we stared at each other in silence, the weight of our confessions hanging heavy in the space between us.
I didn’t know what to do with that information. I wasn’t surprised that Ridge’s life had been so fucked up. Damaged people recognize each other. I think I must have seen it from the first time I ever laid eyes on him.
Yet another reason to stay away from each other. Ridge and I were too much alike.
“You won’t,” I said long after he’d spoken the words. “You won’t fuck it all up.”
I couldn’t guarantee that. Nobody could. But I wanted to believe it, the same way I wanted to believe him when he said, “You’ll find a way to get out of here. Someday, you’ll get that dream house, Cherry.”
It wasn’t the house that mattered. It was the life. But I think Ridge knew that. I think he understood more than what I’d told him.
And I had this strange feeling, almost like a premonition, that Ridge and I wouldn’t quit—wouldn’t give up on whatever this was between us—until it had run its course.
We would either save each other. Or destroy each other.
