Page 91 of When Wrecked Meets Ruined
Meanwhile, I was falling for Ridge, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Ridge made me happy. He made me laugh and smile.
I was so consumed with him that I thought about him all the time. Which pissed me off. Didn’t I have better things to think about? Apparently not.
Now, Quinn and I were poolside, talking about… you guessed it. Relationships.
Wren was asleep on the lounger next to me with her thumb in her mouth and a dreamy expression. We’d taken her swimming in Quinn’s pool, and Wren had loved it.
I adjusted the umbrella shading her from the afternoon sun, grabbed the sunscreen from the table, and took my seat next to Quinn, picking up the conversation where we’d left off.
“Like I said, Ridge and I are just a summer fling,” I insisted. “When the summer’s over, so are we.”
“You’re going to break his heart. You do know that, right?”
“He’s not in love with me, Quinn. Guys like Ridge love the thrill of the chase. Once he thinks he’s caught me, he won’t be interested anymore.”
She gave me a skeptical look but refrained from commenting.
Which was probably for the best. I didn’t even believe myself anymore.
I’d been clinging to my beliefs about Ridge for so long. But now I knew that I’d been all wrong about him. He wasn’t who I thought he was. He was so much more. And I knew it wasn’t about the chase anymore.
What we had went deeper than that. But that scared me even more than thinking this whole thing had been a game.
Because if it was real, where would that leave me when the summer ended?
There was no point worrying about the future, though. It wouldn’t change anything. Ridge was here now, things were good with us, and I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. Which should have scared me more than it did. But I was good at shoving unwanted emotions deep inside where I wouldn’t have to deal with them. So I pushed those thoughts out of my head and vowed to live in the moment.
Ridge was good to me in ways that nobody had ever been before. He defended me. Fought for me. And as he’d said that night at the bar in Austin, he’d never once said a bad word about me.
Later that night, after working the dinner shift, I went home and tucked Wren in. I made sure she was sound asleep before leaving her in my mother’s care (she was passed out on the sofa) and drove to Ridge’s place. He’d just gotten home from his bartending job and answered the door in nothing but a towel.
I’d seen him in less, in all his naked glory, but there was something about seeing him in just a towel that was so damn sexy. Ridge, with his narrow waist and washboard stomach, the V-cut abs, and the fine dusting of hair that trailed down below the towel slung around his hips.
“Eyes up here, Bellamy.”
My gaze snapped to his face. His beautiful face framed by longish hair, still damp from the shower with water dripping from the ends.
He gave me a slow, lazy grin. “Good to see you, too.”
“I know how much you like surprises.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me inside. The door closed behind me, and he braced his arms on either side of my head. “Only good surprises.” He kissed my lips.
I closed my eyes and breathed him in. He smelled like Christmas morning and moonlit nights. Like bonfires and sex on a bed of pine needles. Like everything that was good in my life.
“Andyouare definitely a good surprise,” he murmured as my arms wound around his neck, and we took our time kissing each other. Like this was the main event, not the prelude, and we had all the time in the world.
How had we gotten to this place? When did Ridge become someone important to me? Someone who I’d risk it all for if only it meant I could keep him.
I wanted to ask him if it was possible to miss someone before you’d even lost them. But it sounded stupid, so I didn’t ask.
I let my lips and hands do the talking.
We didn’t fuck. We made love. And it overwhelmed me, this gentleness. It was so all-consuming that all I could see was him. All I could feel was him.
He pressed our joined hands into the mattress on either side of my head, and his eyes never left my face as he slid inside me. We found our rhythm, and with each stroke, slowly, slowly, I came undone.
He kissed my jaw. The side of my neck. The corner of my mouth.
