Page 67 of Reaching Ryan

“Shouldn’t have what?” I ask even though I already know what he’s trying to do. He’s apologizing for kissing me. Telling me he regrets it. That it can’t happen again.

Pull me in.

Push me out.

And I keep letting him.

“Kissed you this morning. And last night.” His dark brown gaze pins me in place. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

I look up at him. The firm line of his jaw. The sharp cut of his cheekbones. The scar on his neck that snakes out of the collar of his shirt to disappear into the hairline at his nape. “I didn’t think you remembered,” I tell him while my heart knocks against my ribcage and my mouth suddenly feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.

The hand still hanging on to the door tightens around its frame, his knuckles flashing white before relaxing their grip. “I remember.”

“Is it true?” I say it quietly, my voice gone scratchy and thin. “Do you dream about it? Doing those things to me?”

I watch his Adam’s apple bob and scrape along the inside of his throat. “Every night.”

“Good.” I look away from him, squeezing my thighs together in an effort to back off some of the heat that’s suddenly blazing between my legs at the memory of what he said to me last night.

“Grace...” My name rumbles through his chest, the rough warning of it barely squeezing past the clench of his jaw.

“Don’t Grace me—” Suddenly angry, I turn in my seat again, hissing at him like a snake. “And don’t you dare apologize to me for—”

“I’m not apologizing,” he tells me. “I shouldn’t have done it but I’m not sorry I did.”

That shuts me up. Clamps my mouth closed so fast and tight the snap of it sounds like a bear trap. “Oh…” I finally manage to say, the word creating a lump in my throat that makes it hard to breathe “Then what are you trying to say?”

“What I’m trying to say…” He gives me that grin again. The one he gave me earlier. The one that makes my knees wobbly and glad I’m not relying on them for support. “Is that I’ve change my mind.”

“Changed your mind?” Great. I’m back to sounding like a mentally deranged parrot.

“That’s what I said.” His jaw flexes a bit around the clench of his teeth, and he looks away again. “I want to be with you, Grace. More than want—but when I told you I can’t, I meant it. I physically can’t—”

“I know.” When I say it, he looks down at me and I have to fight the urge to look away. “I know and it’s okay. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

“It will.” He looks almost sad when he says it. “Sooner or later it’s going to matter to you.” He sounds sure of it, like he’s trying to talk me out wanting him, but before I can launch into my laundry list of reason of why we both deserve this, he sighs. “But right now, it doesn’t matter to me either.”

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