Page 47 of Last Love

Did I have a point?!

“I’m stronger now. And the bullshit that I used to tolerate isn’t gonna fly this time. No more secrets. No more lies. No more ‘shielding me’ from the things you didn’t think I could handle. I wanna know it all. I deserve to know everything. I deserve better than just half of someone. And since we’re now on the subject, I won’t fucking share you again.”

His hand curls lovingly around the nape of my neck at the same time his eyes bore into mine. “I’m yours, baby. Only. Yours.”

Air is robbed from my lungs along with the ability to speak.

Thankfully, our order number is called to give me the grace I desperately need. Ry’s thumb gives the skin in his possession a lovingly stroke. “Can I go grab that or are you gonna start singing ‘Independent Women’ at me?”

There’s no stopping the corner of my lips kicking upwards in amusement.

“Should I sing it for you?” he playfully questions while slipping away from me. “Maybe get my Beyonce on and do the dance to?” Ry dramatically purses his lips and executes a sassy hand wave. “Am I doing this right?”

“Embarrassing yourself in the food truck lot?” I effortlessly tease back. “Oh yeah, babe. You’re killin’ it.”

Our shared laughter is followed by him kicking his chin towards the seating area. “Will you please pick us somewhere to sit, Charlie’s Angel?”

He’s shot another good-natured grin as I amble away to find an empty table.

It doesn’t take long for me to get settled nor for him to bring our dishes over to us. We take a moment to rearrange our dishes, separate the items accordingly, and to each get a bite in of the bacon wrapped hot dogs we ordered.

Moaning from the glorious flavors is mindlessly done, an action that seems to stop the new yet old man in my life from eating altogether. “Fuck me, is this what porn food is?”

I initially laugh prior to flying my hand over my mouth to cover it.

“Maybe it should be?” Ry jokingly suggests. “Maybe you should just send me random videos during my lunch break of you eating yours while moaning.” He prepares to have another bite, pleased with my increased laughter. “Would that be weird?”

“Pretty fucking weird.”

“Guess I’m a weird motherfucker then,” he chuckles between chews. “And this weird motherfucker,” his light tone suddenly shifts to a serious one, “wants you to know that shit is gonna be different this time.”

My lips wrap around the dish to prevent from interrupting.

“You’re right. You do deserve better than the piece of shit I turned into back then.” Eating is abandoned to continue speaking. “I’ve never truly forgiven myself for how I hurt you. The mental stress. The emotional hell. Phys-” his choking on the end of the word prompts my clean hand to reach across the table to comfortingly rest on his. “Physically mistreating. I wanna say that shit wasn’t me, but that would be a lie. It was me. It was who I had become. And it’s the very person I stayed until a few months ago when I entered rehab for the final time.”

His confession unhinges my jaw.

“I’ve spent the last ten years addicted to numbing the pain of my mistakes. Hurting you when I was fucked up. Letting you go. Not fighting for you. Living without you. Pretending my parents’ divorce and inability to fucking love me didn’t hurt. Convincing myself having a so-called family didn’t matter…”

My fingers unconsciously flex in another attempt to provide ease.

“For ten…fucking…years…drugs basically defined who I was. They decided where I went. Who I went with or to. They seemed to be the only way to tame the demon inside me, that being I was incapable of overcoming. Losing you back then was the first as much as it was the final fucking straw. Between the bullshit with my family, the bullshit of adolescence, and the bullshit fear there was nowhere to go but down, I began to drown in a world I never wanna see again.” His face flinches in objection. “That I’m never gonna see again.”

I like that.

And I like that he’s willingly showing me the ugliest and scariest part of him.

I like that he trusts me.

I like that this means I can trust him.

“Pres, I’ve made a shit ton of mistakes, but the biggest one has been and always will be hurting you. In rehab, there was this therapist or counselor or whatever the fuck you wanna call them that finally got to me. He called me on my shit. He tore me apart. He forced me to look at myself in ways I had been too much of a coward to.”

The idea he had his own Katherine poking around in his brain causes my grip to tighten.

How fucking insane is it that we were living parallel experiences?

“Doc broke me down until I faced the truth of what I had become. It was at that point he reminded me that in spite of all that bullshit, I’m still alive. That others aren’t so lucky. He encouraged me to acknowledge my past and decide who I wanted to become.”

“To be the one to define yourself.”

“Exactly.”

There’s another flex of understanding presented.

“I had to decide what and who I wanted in my future. I was being given a second chance to rebuild my whole fucking life, and luckily for me, Shelby being born pushed Noah to want me around. He came to see me when I was in rehab and has been helping me ever since I got out.” Ry’s hand rotates so that our fingers can fold together. “I’m not the same guy I was back then either, Pres. Truthfully, who I am now is still being built.” An attempt to smile is made. “One day at a time.”

“It’s hard,” I gingerly announce, frame folding forward, anxious to be closer to him knowing the pain of putting pieces of yourself back together.

“You damn sure make it easier.”

“Was contacting me with that letter you wrote an attempt to say goodbye before you…started out on this…new you journey?”

“Wait, what?” Shock swiftly travels across his face. “You got my fucking letter?”

“Um…yeah? Isn’t that why you mailed it to me? For me to…have it?”

Disbelief lingers in his gaze as he slowly shakes his head. “I didn’t mail that shit.”

“What?”

“I just wrote it and addressed it like it would get mailed, but Doc said the shit like it was just a part of the exercise for closure. Not like he was actually gonna fucking mail it.”

There’s a minor sting at the word. “You wanted closure from me?”

“Fuck no,” he quickly tries to correct. “It was supposed to be the last piece of closure to my past. To the old me. Apologizing to the one person I felt I desperately needed to in order to move forward. I would never close the door on you, Pres.” Blue eyes I’m so grateful to have back in my life soften sweetly. “Hell, there is no door. There are no walls. You are literally my whole world, and I am always willing and ready to be with you.”

Silence swirls between, but to my relief, it’s the strange comfortable type where you know it’s enough to just be in the presence of the other person.

It’s terrifying how easy it is to just slip back into patterns with him after so many years.

I wanna believe our declarations in regard to doing everything different this go around, but it seems questionable considering how quickly we’re already so wrapped up in one another.

However, everything about our unforeseen reconnecting feels like we are meant to try this again.

Like this is an actual new deck for us to play with and not just the old one colored new with a marker.

I have to try to make this work.

I have to see where it can go.

I floated by for so many years not really living.

Not really risking.

I owe it to myself to go after what I want.

And what I want is Ryder Collins.

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