Demanding Ransom (37 page)

“You
were a good girlfriend, you know?” Brian leans forward. “I’m sorry I was such
an ass to you, Maggie.”

“You
weren’t always an ass, Brian. That’s not who you were. You just did things
occasionally that made you seem like one.” I pull on his elbow to steer him
toward the door.

He
pauses before taking the handle in his grasp. “I really hope Mikey is okay.”
Swiveling on his heel to face me, he says meaningfully, “You deserve some good
in your life.” Before I can stop him, Brian pushes his lips to my forehead.
It’s not as revolting as I envisioned it would be, and strangely, it feels
appropriate. “Have a good summer, okay?”

I smile
and blink up at him. “I’ll try. You too, Brian.” And then he slips out the
door.

I turn
to face the empty hollow of the room, replaying what just happened again in my
mind.
Brian hurt me. Brian got hurt.
Brian apologized for hurting me. I forgave Brian.
When I break it down into
those four components, it seems logical, like it’s some equation on how to be
human. But when I think about it deep down—think about the betrayal, the
hate, and the pain that goes along with it—nothing about it feels natural.
It’s not natural to forgive. It’s a choice, one that has to be intentionally
made in order for it to be real. If I can forgive Brian for what he did, maybe
I can extend that same forgiveness to others in my life that require it. It
might not be as easy as this odd exchange, but it might be possible. The hope I
thought had completely vacated from my life blooms in the tiniest crevice of my
being.

Now that
the room is mine again, I slink back under the covers and yank the comforter up
to my chin, cocooning myself under the still-warm fabric.
3:30.
If I fall asleep now, I might not be a total zombie tomorrow.
More like a sleepwalker. I’ll settle for that.

Another
knock at the door.

“Brian,”
I say, raising my voice so he can hear me through the wooden barrier. “Go home
and go to bed!”

Two more
loud knocks.

Grudgingly,
I plant my feet on the ground, walk toward the door again, and tug it open. I
instantly gasp and heat rises in my body, flooding my senses. “Ran.” His name
falls from my lips.

“Hey
Maggie.” He has his black leather riding jacket on and ripped jeans slung low
on his hips. A white V-neck shirt peeks out from under his collar. Only Ran
could look this amazing in the dead of night and it frustrates me to no end.
“Can I come in?”

I tumble
backward and try to regain my footing so I don’t fall onto the floor in the
heap Brian was moments earlier. The room is hot, like someone has cranked up
the furnace, and I pull at my shirt to billow it, allowing air to float over my
skin. Ran’s eyes follow the movements of my hands and that’s when I see it. His
face can’t hide it; the way his brow lifts gives it all away. “That’s my shirt,
Maggie.”

My
stomach twists into a pretzel and I bind my arms across my chest, hoping to
conceal the
Ducati
logo that’s inked
across it, hoping to hide the shirt that I’d taken from him back at the cabin.

“We need
to talk.” He looks over at the bed and then back at me, scanning my stolen top
once more. “Is it okay if we talk?”

My head
is fuzzy with confusion and I lift it up and down like a twitch. Ran paces
across the room and sits down right in the middle of my bed. I decide to
position myself at the head of it, and I lean my back onto the cool cinderblock
wall, willing the temperature to bring down my full-body flush.

“Let me
just start by saying I don’t remember anything more than what I told you the
last time we talked. It seems only fair to lead off with that.” Something in me
nosedives. I don’t know what it is because I’m certain it’s not hope. I don’t
allow myself to hold onto hope when it comes to Ran. Maybe a glimmer of it is
making itself present in the other compartments of my life, but there’s no room
for it where Ran is concerned.

He keeps
talking. “I don’t remember anything more. But I do know that you owe me something.”

Nerves
shoot through my stomach. “I owe you something?” I’d never expected those words
to drop from Ran’s mouth because in all the times I told him I felt indebted to
him, he consistently reiterated the fact that I didn’t owe him a single thing.
But hearing him say this now pulls at my unsettled core. The doctors—and
my silly research—had been clear that Ran hadn’t lost himself, that he
was the same person. He was the same soul—just with a slice of his life
pulled from its place. But this statement doesn’t support that theory. Maybe
something in him
has
changed.

“This.”
He slips his hand into his pocket and when he takes it back out, a crumpled
piece of paper is in it. He flicks it in front of my face between his index and
third fingers. Raising his eyebrows, he gestures for me to take it. “Do you
know what that is?”

I unfold
the sheet. “Our list.”

“Why
would we have a list, Maggie?” Ran’s eyes sliver and he shakes his head. “Why
would we have this sheet of all of these bucket list things we want to do
together if we were just friends?”

The room
spins. It doesn’t help that the entire dorm pulsates with the hypnotizing beat
of music down the hall. And it also doesn’t help that I’m going on three and a
half days without sleep. For all I know I could be dreaming all of this.
Betraying what little sense I have left, I stretch my hand across the bed and
touch Ran’s arm, just to be sure of him.

“You
know what you owe me?” Ran pulls his arm back, almost flinching. His voice is
firm—not angry or upset—but demanding. Demanding an answer from me
that I’m not sure I’m ready to give. “You owe me the truth.”

 
My chest caves. “Ran,” I sigh, “I told
you the truth back at the hospital, when I thanked you for rescuing me.” I hold
in a pocket of air on reserve because my lungs aren’t working the way they
should. Nothing is working the way it should. It never does.

“Right,
I get that you’re grateful I was at the scene of the accident—”

“That’s
not it,” I interrupt. “You rescued me, Ran.” I drop my gaze and pluck at the fabric
on my quilt. “In more ways than you’ll ever know.”

Desperation
crosses over Ran’s features and he rakes his hands through his hair, gripping
the strands between frustrated fingers. “Damn it, Maggie. Why won’t you just
tell me?” he growls. “Would you please stop being so cryptic and for once just
be straight with me?” The shake in his voice makes me jump out of my skin, and
when his pleading eyes land on mine, I feel their impact deep in my gut. Ran
clenches his jaw and sucks in air between gritted teeth. After a tense pause,
he says, “Because I’ve spent the past six months without you, and honestly,
that’s worse than the two months I supposedly lost.”

I don’t
want to cry. It seems impossible to fall apart when you aren’t whole to begin
with. And I’m definitely not whole. I haven’t been for years. I’m just scraps,
and those can’t fall apart. I’m shredded. That’s what all of this has done to
me, completely shredded me. Like those stupid machines that you place one sheet
of paper in on one side, and retrieve the sliced-up strips on the other. Shreds
that can’t be pieced back together, no matter how hard you try.

“Maggie?”
Ran’s frustration still seeps out of him. “Why won’t you let me in? What did I
do wrong?”

I hate
that he’s sitting here in front of me, pleading, and blaming himself for how
things are between us. I don’t know how much longer I can cling to my stubborn
resolve. I’m acting like a mule and I’m beginning to question my decision to
let him go in the first place.

 
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” I shake
my head violently and my heart sputters in my chest. “You did everything right.
Damn it, Ran. You were perfect.” I close my eyes tightly. “
We
were perfect.”

“What
the hell?” Ran throws his hands into the air. “Then why won’t you let me in? Why
do you keep denying we ever existed?”

“Because
I couldn’t take the chance of it being anything less than what we had before.”
I don’t look at him. I’m not brave enough and courage is not something that
fills me at the moment. Anger, frustration, and defeat are the only emotions I
have room for—and they’re all directed toward myself.

Ran
laughs and it’s so out of place in the heat of our conversation, but it
releases a portion of the tightness that pulls at my shoulders. “I know I’m a
pretty tough act to follow, Maggie,” he grins, that same coy smirk that has
always been my weakness. “But since I’m following myself, I just might have an
edge.”

“I
wasn’t worried about you not living up, Ran. I was worried about
me
—that somehow I wouldn’t be good
enough for you the second time around.” I clutch my hands in a ball just over
my chest. My heart jumps so brutally I can feel it ricocheting on my fingers.
“I was worried that you’d come to your senses and realize I’m more work than
I’m worth. That my baggage is too heavy. That my life is too complicated. That
I’m too much.” The whites of my knuckles show under my skin. “It felt safer to
reject the truth that we ever existed than to chance the possibility of being rejected
by you.”

“Maggie,”
Ran says, quieter this time, but still with the insistent tone from before.
“Did you ever stop to think maybe that wasn’t your decision to make? I’ve spent
the last six months trying to figure out who you were in my life and how I
could get you back, and you’re telling me that you ignored me all this time
because you were afraid I’d reject you?”

“I
wasn’t ignoring you, Ran,” I assert. “It’s impossible to ignore something
that’s your first thought when you wake up in the morning and your last thought
before you go to bed. And then in the in-between—that stretch of night
when you’re supposed to be resting and preparing for the next day—when
that’s completely filled with unattainable hopes and dreams, it’s impossible to
ignore. You can’t ignore something that’s become a part of you.”

Ran
pushes himself closer to me on the bed, his upper body angling my direction.
“Maggie,” he says, low and gentle, the rasp in his voice melting me, “I don’t
need those two months back to confirm what we had was once in a lifetime.” He
slips one arm out of his leather jacket, then the other, and folds it over the
back of my desk chair next to us. “I’m just begging you to give me the
opportunity for it to happen twice.”

I shake
my head, not in disagreement, but because my whole body shakes right now and my
head wavering is just an extension of that. I don’t know what to do and I don’t
know how I’ve gotten here. How I’ve willingly thrown away the one thing in my
life I was sure about. If there was an award given to girls that sabotage and
destroy anything good that comes their way, I’d have an entire trophy case
full.

“Maggie.”
Ran slides closer, his knees pressed against mine. I stare at his face. His
full lips quiver and his jaw is tight. “I’m going to kiss you,” he says, and
dips his head a little to look up inquisitively from under his lashes. “I need
to kiss you right now. Badly. Is that okay?”

The
memory of his lips on mine in the hot tub rushes to mind and I want to tell him
no, irrationally fearing that it won’t be like that—that it won’t even
rank on the scale in comparison to that mind-blowing first kiss we shared. And
for some reason, I’m worried that this new memory will replace the old, just
like Ran always says they do. I don’t ever want anything to replace that
perfect moment between us. It feels safer not to jeopardize it at all and keep
my lips to myself.

I form
the words in my head, secure the perfect delivery, and when I open my mouth to
protest, all that spills out is a breathy, “Yes.”

Ran hovers
his body in front of me for a beat before he tilts his head to the right and
draws in closer, his eyes still locked on mine, though my eyelids flutter so
fast it’s hard to see him clearly through them. I feel his breath on my skin
and the heat from his body radiating between us. My stomach tightens and those
pheromones of his fill my senses, intoxicating me with his soapy, minty scent.
It all goes weak. Everything I should have control over—my muscles which
regulate my heart, my lungs that control my breathing, my brain that keeps my
nerves in check—it’s all completely haywire, malfunctioning, and on the
brink of shutting down completely.

His
flawless mouth is one inch from mine and I can’t look anywhere but at that
divot in the middle of his bottom lip. The shallow dent disappears as his mouth
pulls up into a smile, and he catches me off guard when he says, “You know you
want to, Maggie. You can lick them if you like. Trust me,” he grins, “I won’t
mind.”

I can’t
believe he says it, but the fact that he does washes a relief over me that I’ve
been craving for the past six months. The statement is so very Ran of him, and
there’s no doubt this person sitting in front of me is the same man I fell in
love with—the same man I’m
still
in love with—and the only person I can ever dream of spending my future
with.

I
swallow my nerves and lean toward him. With unlikely boldness, I slip my tongue
out and drag it slowly over the length of Ran’s bottom lip, licking all the way
across it, tracing and savoring every part of it. I pull back hesitantly,
almost embarrassed, but Ran grasps the back of my neck with both hands, draws
me to him, and pushes my lips to his, sweeping them softly over mine. His lips
are warm and brush gently in a rhythm that leaves me craving more—not
just my mouth, but every inch of my body. I curl my fingers into his shoulders,
yanking him to me, and am pretty sure he’ll have ten nail marks as new
additions on his skin.