Page 30 of Swift and Saddled

Emmy’s shoulders fell, but she nodded. “We should get coffee sometime,” she said. The second woman in the Ryder family to invite me to do so. For someone who wasn’t used to invitations, friendship or otherwise, it felt…good. “I know Teddy is dying to see you.” Teddy had texted me a few times since I’d arrived. Her dad wasn’t feeling well, and she was watching him closely, so she hadn’t been able to come see me yet. “Maybe this Friday we can do something?”

“Yeah,” I said noncommittally. “Let me see how this week goes.” Emmy looked at me like she knew what that meant: Probably not. I knew that face. My whole life, I’ve been described as icy, bitchy, and rude. I know I’m not super warm or overly kind, but the truth is, I’m just shy. I don’t think I’m a people person, certainly not in the way this entire family seems to be. They make being nice look so damn easy.Whereas I don’t seem to know how to talk to people in a way that makes them like me or keep coming back for more. I seem to always turn out to be a disappointment, so why bother?

Before Emmy could push more, I turned back to Amos. “Thank you so much for breakfast.” And then back to Emmy and Brooks. “It was really nice to meet you, Emmy. And, Brooks, it was mildly okay to see you.” Both Emmy and Amos laughed at that—thank god.

I pushed off my stool with my breakfast platter and headed back to my room. “I hope we’ll see each other again soon!” Emmy called after me.

I walked past the upstairs hall bathroom that Wes was using for his shower. The running water brought all sorts of images to my brain that I would really rather not dwell on.

I sat down at the desk in my room to eat and scroll through my phone. Some of my best ideas have come from mindlessly spinning through Pinterest on my days off. But when I reached for my sweatshirt pocket, it wasn’t there. Fuck. I must’ve left it on the kitchen counter.

Was going to get it worth it? I had all the confidence in the world in Emmy, Amos, and Weston’s ability to get me to stay and eat breakfast with them, which might not be so bad after all. I liked the Ryders—one of them a little too much. Weighing my options, I decided that it was better to try to get my phone now than wait until later—who knew how long breakfast lasted for a family that actuallylikedone another?

Just as I passed the hall bathroom, the door opened with a billow of steam. I didn’t have time to stop myself before I ran smack into Weston’s broad chest.

“Whoa there,” he said. Originally, I’d put my hands out as an involuntary reaction—my body’s way of protecting me from collision. But now my hands were limp on his chest, and I stared at them—what they looked like while they were touching him. “Going somewhere?”

My mouth couldn’t form words—I was too focused on what it was like to be touching him and for him to be touching me. Tiny lightning bolts shot up and down my arms from where his hands were on my elbows. “S-sorry,” I stammered.

I dragged my eyes up and down his form—taking him in the same way I had in the kitchen. I’d seen the way his shirts clung to his body, and I’d seen glimpses of his stomach at the job site, but now he was in front of me in nothing but a towel.

It didn’t take long for me to conclude that he actually shouldnotbe allowed to wear shirts. He should just always walk around like this—shirtless and glistening.

In that moment, I felt like a teenager with a crush. An intense and inescapable crush.

Except crushes aren’t quite as fun if they’re on your boss.

If anyone else had been standing in front of me, the fact that every logical thought basically ran out of my head wouldn’t have been a big deal.

I wouldn’t even have thought twice about wanting to touch him—everywhere.

“I’m not,” he said. One of his hands moved to my waist, pulling me out of my cloudy head and back into the moment. My breath caught in my throat. I needed to get out of his grip, but I couldn’t think straight when his hands were on me. All I could think wasmore.Almost involuntarily, Irubbed my hands up his chest to his shoulders, and his lips parted slightly. I still wasn’t breathing. “Do that again,” he whispered.

So I did, even though I knew I shouldn’t, but I didn’t stop there. I traced my palms back down the panes of his stomach and up again.

I finally let out a shaky breath. What was happening to me?

“Is this what you were thinking about? When you couldn’t take your eyes off me in the kitchen, were you thinking about touching me?”

I swallowed and nodded, unsure when I decided to admit that to him—or to myself.

“I see you, Ada. I always see you, even when you won’t look at me.”

Everything felt so…charged when I was around him, I didn’t know how to make it stop, but I didn’t even know if I wanted it to.

Especially right now.

“I’m looking at you now,” I said. It was like I was having an out-of-body experience, like my palms pressing against him had tilted the world on its axis. I moved closer to him, and the water that was dripping down his skin soaked through my hoodie.

“Why now?” he asked.Because you’re standing in front of me like some Wild West god in nothing but a towel,I thought.

This feeling, this pull, was unheard of for me. I hadn’t even known it existed until the night I met Weston in the bar. There was a part of me that wished I could go back to the version of me that didn’t know what this felt like, but amuch larger part of me felt like it could breathe for the first time.

Weston’s hand trailed up and down my back, leaving sparks in its wake. “Whynow,Ada?” he asked again, more forcefully this time.

“I—I don’t know” is what I settled on.

He pressed his forehead to mine, and I could feel his breath on my face. The hand that was stroking my back slipped under my hoodie, tugging me to him. I could feel him getting hard against my stomach.

---