Page 26 of My Best Friend Prince Charming

That meant that he’d wanted to kiss me. The thought sent a thrill through me that I couldn’t ignore. Even with the ability to choose any girl he wanted inside or outside of the school, he chose me. And he knew me better than anyone. He’d seen me when our families had gone backpacking on the Appalachian Trail, and I hadn’t bathed for a week. He knew every side of me that could be considered a major turnoff to a guy, and he still looked at me in a romantic light.

I had no idea how that could be possible. I suddenly felt incredibly exposed. How long had Ryker seen me this way?

He came around the car and stood in front of me. “I have to go to work. Can I come by and see you when I get home?”

I stared up into his blue eyes and swallowed before nodding. He was standing really close, and I could feel the pull to bury my hands in his already mussed hair and touch his incredibly soft curls. I almost reached up to touch his face, but I curled my fingers into a fist instead. I took a step back.

“I’ll see you tonight then.”

“Okay,” I whispered, my eyes still on his ocean-blue ones. I turned and went back into my house. Maddie was nowhere to be found. She must have gone over to a friend’s house. I took my backpack up to my room and slung it onto the foot of my bed. I grabbed a purple fuzzy throw pillow and hugged it to my chest. I twisted the ring around my finger. Grandma’s ring sure had gotten me in a lot of trouble today. I wondered if she was watching me from the other side. What was she thinking about all of this? All I knew was she would want me to be happy.

I took a deep breath to help clear my head. I fell back onto my bed and stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars I’d stuck to my ceiling when I was ten. Did kissing Ryker make me happy? A grin spread across my face. I couldn’t think of a time I’d felt giddier. If that was true, then why was I fighting it so hard?

I knew the answer right away. Because I was terrified of getting my heart broken. But Ryker wasn’t Dad, and he wasn’t Austin.

He was Ryker.

I had always trusted him to be my best friend. Who was to say I couldn’t trust him with my heart?

I sat for a minute and followed the logic I’d been feeding to myself all afternoon. I hadn’t been making any sense at all. I knew Ryker. He was the best guy I knew. Didn’t he deserve my trust? He never said we had to jump into anything too serious too fast. Maybe we could just take our relationship one day at a time. Maybe today we were best friends who tried kissing and discovered that it was really nice.

What was the harm in trying it out again? I twisted the ring around my finger and relived the kiss in my mind. I bit my bottom lip, remembering how Ryker had taken my lips between his. That hadn’t been so bad, had it? A grin stretched across my face. Um, actually, it had been amazing. I hadn’t even realized kissing could be that great. I usually got bored when Austin had kissed me. I couldn’t imagine ever getting bored when Ryker was kissing me. That would be impossible.

I spent the rest of the evening working on my homework, but I was having a terrible time focusing. My mind kept drifting off to remember Ryker’s kiss. And then I’d keep wondering when we were going to try kissing again. That’s when I felt the giddiness all over again. After two hours of struggling to focus on my homework, I’d only gotten through one page of my math problems, and I usually finished math and a couple of other subjects by this point. I’d never had this problem when I was with Austin. Ryker had turned me into a hot mess. And I wasn’t sure I minded.

I finally decided to try getting some dinner to get my mind back on something normal and routine. Not that it did much good. I still kept daydreaming as I heated up some leftover soup on the stove.

When I returned to my homework, my focus was a little better thanks to my full tummy of food. But I was still all over the place with my thoughts. Every now and then, fear would try to creep back in, but I kept pushing it down to the deep part of me that I didn’t want to acknowledge.

Around ten, Ryker knocked on my bedroom window. I hopped up from my desk and pushed up the glass. He’d been climbing in my window since we were kids, but this was the first time it had seemed rebellious. But my mom was so used to us being only friends she wouldn’t even care if she saw Ryker in my room late at night.

“Hey,” I said after he’d climbed inside. “Do you want to come sit down?”

“Sure.”

“How was work?” I asked after we’d gotten settled side by side on my bed.

“Honestly? It felt like the longest night ever. Time was dragging,” Ryker said.

That sounded familiar, but I didn’t share that information with Ryker. He didn’t need to know how badly I’d wanted to reunite with him. I still wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about our kiss.

“Why are you still working there when you have a bazillion dollars in your bank account?”

Ryker shrugged. “Familiarity. And I didn’t want to leave my aunt high and dry. She still needs me to train my replacement.”

“You’re a good guy, Ryker.”

“I’m just doing what anyone would.”

I took his hand in mine, and he looked over at me with surprise in his eyes. “I’m ready to talk about that kiss now.”

He rotated his body so he was facing me on the bed. “You are?”

I nodded. The words were beginning to get stuck in my throat again.

“What was up with you earlier?”

“Which time?”

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