Page 34 of Reaching Ryan

Chapter Sixteen

Grace

I can’t fuck you, no matter how much I want to.

That’s what he said.

I can’t fuck you, no matter how much I want to.

No clarification.

No explanation.

He just dropped that little truth bomb, along with this standard, stay the fuck away from me and walked away, leaving me in the middle of Sojourn’s atrium without a backward glance.

And now I can’t stop thinking about him.

Seriously? Like he isn’t all you’ve been thinking about since Sunday?

Sad but true.

Ryan O’Connell is pretty much all I’ve thought of for days now and seeing him again has made it impossible for me to keep pretending otherwise.

I can’t fuck you, no matter how much I want to.

No matter how much I want to.

I know it’s the wrong thing to focus—not

that he can’t but that he wants to—but it’s what keeps sticking. The part that echoes the loudest.

The part I can’t stop thinking about.

Because it means, despite whatever roadblocks that happen to be between us, Ryan wants me as much as I want him.

Jesus, Grace—desperate much? You’ve known this guy for less than a week and every time you see him he makes it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want anything to do with you.

Except that he does.

I know he does.

“Need some help?”

I look up from the mountain of bags I’ve got strategically stacked in the cargo area of the car, wondering how I’m going to carry all of it and a sleeping Molly upstairs, a refusal ready and halfway out of my mouth when I realize who it is who’s doing the offering.

Conner.

I recognize him instantly because he looks almost exactly like Patrick, even more so since he got his hair cut. If not for the tattoos that wind down his forearms and wrap around his neck, I’d swear that’s who I’m looking at. Same dark hair. Same clear green eyes. Same perfect face. Same set of dimples that, I don’t care who you are, make you a little weak in the knees when they’re aimed in your direction.

It seems ridiculously unfair that there are two of them running around the same planet, let alone the same city.

Swallowing my curt no thank you, I stare at him for a few seconds, trying to realign my thoughts and because he’s probably used to being stared at by slack-jawed women, he just stands there patiently and lets me. Finally I clear my throat and nod. “Help would be great,” I say, tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Thank you. Are you...”

“My shift starts in a couple of hours—Ladies Night.” Flashing me the dimples, Conner steps off the sidewalk to gently nudge me out of the way. “I’ll grab these, you grab Sleeping Beauty,” he says, taking charge because if it were up to me, we’d stand in the street until Kingdom Come.

“Right.” I bob my head again and skirt around him to get Molly from her car seat. As soon as I pull her free she lets out a little bleat of protest, her arms and legs wrapping around my neck and middle while she burrows her sticky face into neck. By the time I shut her car door and make my way across the sidewalk, Conner has the bulk of our packages wrangled and is waiting for me at the door. Before I can start to dig through my black hole of a purse for the key, Conner lifts a hand and frees a finger to punch in a code. The door buzzes and pops open.

Ushering me inside, he follows me up the stairs and continues to wait patiently while I struggle to get the interior door open. “Just drop them anywhere,” I stage whisper to him over my shoulder as I carry Molly past the kitchen and through the living room. The optimist in me is hoping that if I can get her in bed and settled in the next thirty seconds or so, she’ll keep sleeping. A Molly-nap is a rare and precious thing these days.

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