Page 75 of Tag

My exhale had a chilled puff forming in the air. “You always sneak up on me.”

“Just keeping you on your toes,” he joked, looking down at me. His eyes held more warmth than the sun ever managed.

“You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.” I rubbed my head again, more out of embarrassment than pain. I hated how jumpy I was.

He let go of me and stepped back, but his eyes never left my face, his grin fading. “What’s wrong?”

I should have known he’d key into something being off the second he saw me.

The image of the masked figure flashed through my mind, along with the note, the crow, and the text I had just deleted.Tell him, my voice of reason urged. The other part of me warned against dumping everything on him right before class. The problem was that I didn’t know how Ryder would react. If I told him now, within seconds, he’d have Xander, Rook, Cade, and Nick all looped in. Then it’d be a domino effect of upheaval.

Wait a minute… was he not Marked too? I didn’t know how to ask that without digging myself into a deeper hole. Ryder knew me too well. He was already watching me like he could see the secrets twisting up my tongue, too perceptive for my own good.

“I slept like crap the second night in a row,” I offered, which wasn’t a lie.

“You should’ve called me then.”

I shook my head. “It was late. You need sleep too, Rye.”

“All the more reason you should’ve called. We could’ve just slept together.”

“Yeah, that’s ideal,” I quipped dryly.

“We FaceTime all the time, Sass.”

“Oh… right.” I tried to play it off, realizing I had misunderstood. Of course, he caught it.

His grin was slow and amused. “Did you think I meant I wanted you in my bed?”

I shot him a mock glare. “Shut up. It could’ve been my bed.”

“Either works for me.”

“So, you did mean that?”

He leaned in so close I could smell the Listerine on his breath. “What if I did?”

My brain betrayed me, flashing images I had no business entertaining at eight-thirty in the morning. Us tangled in sheets, skin on skin, his mouth on mine, and then lower—I shoved him lightly, flustered. “It’s way too early for your face to be this close to mine.”

He laughed, deep and unrestrained. The sound hit me square in the chest. That’s all it ever took to unravel the defenses I kept working so hard to rebuild every day, because they kept crumbling down. I grabbed my bag and used my hip to shut my car door, hitting the lock button as we fell into step side by side, heading across the lot toward the main building.

“All jokes aside, you know you can tell me anything, Sass.”

I nodded, hitching my bag higher on my shoulder. “Yeah, I know, but you’re not some magician I expect to fix every problem I have, Rye.”

“Expectations let people down,” he replied, tone even. “So you can rest easy knowing I don’t think you see me that way. Doesn’t change what I’m willing to do.”

“Ryder.”

“Don’t start. You’re the most precious thing in my life. Your problems are mine. If I can solve them, I will. If I can’t…” He shrugged, “I still will.”

God.

He made it so hard to even fathom diving back into the dating pool. He was always going to be the standard in the back of my mind, the one every guy would quietly be measured against and fail to compare.

I smiled at him. “You’re so good to me.”

“Stop saying that like I’m doing anything more than the bare minimum. You deserve all of it.”

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