Page 31 of Sever
Chapter Fifteen
Megan
“Oh my God.” My hand covers my mouth. I feel sick.
How could she . . .
How . . .
“How could they do that to me?”
Ryder moves close to me but I can’t even look at him.
“They watched me grieve for months and didn’t say a word.” Tears stream fast down my face and I let them. My hands are too heavy to lift them to wipe my cheeks dry.
“Hey.” Ryder lifts me onto his lap and cups my face. “What’s going on?”
“I was grounded the entire week before I graduated—before you were supposed to come get me. They confiscated my phone.” I look at him as what I'm saying sets in. “I didn't text you. I sat on my porch waiting for you for eight hours. My parents watched me cry myself to sleep for months. They never said a word.”
Ryder pulls me against his chest, tucking my head under his chin, his arms coming around me, protecting me, comforting me. “Shit, I should have come anyway. I wanted to. What the messages said . . . they were the things I always feared. It was easy to believe them.”
We sit for the longest time. I listen to the beating of his heart, breathing in time with it, syncing us. Every time I try to speak, a new wave hits me and he holds me tighter, whispering in my ear, telling me he’s here.
He’s here.
But seven years later.
How could they?
When I pull away and meet his eyes, Ryder is a completely different person to the one I’ve spent the last few years hating. All the resentment, the hurt I felt toward him has dissipated.
Vanished.
Gone.
He did love me back then. And the way he’s looking at me now, it makes me think he may love me still.
“All these years.” My forehead rests on his.
“You still in touch with them?” His voice is hard and I know it’s taking a lot for him to hold everything he’s feeling in. After all, they didn’t just steal this time from me.
They stole it from us.
I shook my head. “I guess they expected I would give up on all my plans and stay home. When I left for school in September, they told me I was no longer welcome in their home. They cut me off. I haven’t spoken to them since.”
He kisses me and I lean against him. “You’re better off without them.”
“I still can’t believe all of this.”
After a minute, he sighs. “All we can do now is move past it. We can finally be together and drop all the shit that we thought we knew. I want you, and no matter what I thought you did, I’ve never stopped loving you.”
Hearing him say those words throws me over the edge. I crash my lips to his. I need him now, and for the first time since he showed up, I'm not scared of what might happen.
His hands grip the bottom of my shirt as he rips it over my head. I do the same to him, taking a minute to appreciate the man in front of me. His sculpted chest is covered in different tattoos, the ink following each ridge and plane of his skin. Where once he was lithe and toned, he is now muscular and broad.
The boy I once knew has grown up.
He unclasps my bra, letting it fall to the floor. With our mouths latched together, our tongues entangled as if we need each other to breathe, he stands up, his fingers gripping my ass, holding me tightly against his body.
