Hard (20 page)

“I’m
telling you,” I say, “not to touch her.” My own
hands automatically ball into fists at my side, my legs spread
slightly, my weight leaned into the front of my feet—the muscle
memory of my fighting stance an instinct I can’t avoid in a
situation where someone’s being threatened. “Take your
hands off her. Or I’m going to take them off for you. And then
you’re going to wish you had just done it when I told you to.”

Sebastian
narrows his eyes at me. We’re standing nearly toe to toe, his
back against the railing of the stairs. He breathes evenly, calmly,
and I’ve been in the ring enough to know what the expression on
his face means: he’s running through the possible outcomes of
this encounter in his head. And he’s seeing that he’s not
coming out the winner of this round. He doesn’t remove his hand
from her arm, but his fingers loosen enough that she slips out of his
grasp.

“And
get off my property,” I say to him, leading Cassie up the
stairs, my hand at the small of her back.

“You
don’t own the sidewalk, mate,” he says.

“You
don’t know what I own.” I open the door and push Cassie
ahead of me, following her inside the bar.

As
soon as we walk into the packed fog of laughing, drinking, partying
people in Altitude, I drop my hand from Cassie’s lower back and
step ahead of her. I don’t need her leading me anywhere else
tonight.

“Ryder, wait,” she says. But I don’t. I keep
walking toward the kitchen or my office or the back parking lot. I
don’t even know. I just want to keep moving, because I’m
too angry to stand still.

“Ryder,”
she says, grabbing my elbow. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry
you had to get involved with that. With him.”

“With
you?” I say.

“No,”
she says. “I’m not sorry about that part.”

“Is he really your husband?”

“He’s…” she starts, closing her eyes. “It’s
complicated.” She reaches her hands toward my chest, and I dart
away before she can touch me.

“No, it’s not,” I say. “It’s a yes or
no question. Is he really your husband?”

She looks around, like she’s searching for the answer somewhere
in the air around us though we both know already it’s right on
the tip of her tongue. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, he
is. But you don’t understand.”

“No,” I say, “I understand. You’re married.
You kept it a secret. And you got caught. So
you
need to
understand that whatever was starting between us just ended.”

I turn, bumping into backs and shoulders and elbows as I walk off,
not because I’m in a hurry but because I’m so furious I
can’t see the crowd, can’t hear the music, can’t
feel the floor under my feet, like I’m floating on anger. I’m
mad at that guy and his smug fucking attitude, I’m mad at
Cassie for lying to me, but most of all, I’m mad at myself for
falling right into a honeytrap of betrayal again. Just like before,
with Caroline, I’ve been seeing only what I wanted to see all
along in Cassie. I’ve been letting myself believe she cares
about me because I care about her.

Or who I thought she was.

But the one thing I can see now is that her sweetness was really
deception, and I fell for it, like a feint with a left jab, only to
be knocked out by a right hook—something that never happened to
me in a fight, but that hurts much worse outside the ring anyway.

CASSIE

I
didn’t sleep at all last night. Seeing Sebastian at Altitude
was like discovering poison ivy growing in the flower garden you just
planted: surprising and distressing and toxic if it touches you. When
I left England, no explanation, no good-bye, I expected him to be
irritated. Maybe I even wanted him to be a little upset, to get a
taste of the way I’d felt for much of our whole marriage. But I
honestly didn’t think he’d come after me, that he’d
track me down and ambush me and have the nerve—or stupidity—to
think I’d go along with it, that I’d go back to him. And
I can’t help but worry about what it means that he did.

But I also couldn’t sleep for worrying about Ryder and what
I’ve done to him. To us. At dawn, I got out of bed and went to
the back patio swing, listening to the birds start their day and
thinking about how everything could have been different if I’d
just told Ryder the truth already. I thought if I just ignored
Sebastian, not only would he go away, the past would go away,
dissolve like ice in the sunshine of the present.

But
the only thing that went away was Ryder. I tried to follow him when
he walked away from me at Altitude last night, but it was like he was
swallowed up by the crowd. I shouldered my way to the bar, the
kitchen, the storage room, but he was nowhere, not even his office.
“Have y’all seen Ryder tonight?” I asked Shelby and
Avery and Ruby and Savannah, who were on the last drop of scotch.

“Only in my fantasies,” Avery said. They all laughed, and
not an hour before, I would have laughed, too, blushing at the
thought of what my fantasies of Ryder usually involved. But at that
moment all I could fantasize about was getting to talk to him again.

I
came into work as planned this morning but he still isn’t here,
and no one seems to know where he is. Or at least no one’s
telling me. “Come on, Cash,” I say, leaning across the
bar as he wipes out the highball glasses. “You haven’t
heard from him at all today?”

Cash
shakes his head. “Have you tried calling him?”

“Yeah,”
I say. About a thousand times, but he’s not picking up. I even
tried calling from the office landline, thinking I’d sneak
around the caller ID, but either he’s not taking any calls from
any number or he knows me better than I think he does. I’m kind
of hoping it’s the latter, because maybe that would mean that
he knows what happened last night was a giant mistake. A fuckup of
grand proportions that I will never, ever let happen again. No secret
I have is worth the look on his face when he stormed off last night.

I
go home after work. Jamie’s left a note that he’s gone
out for the evening and there’s leftover pizza in the fridge,
but I’m not hungry, and even though I haven’t slept, I’m
not tired. I’m not really anything, and I can’t bring
myself to do much more than pace around the house, checking my phone,
clicking the volume button to make sure I haven’t accidentally
silenced it, turning it off and on so I know I’m getting all my
text messages.

I
am. Not one of them is from Ryder.

Before
I can change my mind, I grab my keys, jump in my car, and drive to
his condo. I know that if he won’t answer my calls, he may not
talk to me face to face either, but I have to try.

At
the building, I buzz the penthouse a few times from the outside
keypad, but there’s no answer. A young couple exit, their arms
around each other, and the guy holds the lobby door open for me to
enter just as I think of one more place to check for Ryder.

The basement lights are dim, making the space seem cavernous and
cold, and the door is soundless as I open it, though it could creak
like a hardwood floor being paced by an elephant and I don’t
think Ryder would be able to hear it over the pummeling he’s
giving the heavy hanging punching bag in the corner.

He’s bare-footed, wearing a black tank top undershirt and long
shorts, his muscular, tattooed arms glistening with sweat. His hands
are taped, no gloves, and I wonder if it hurts to hit a hard bag
without any kind of cushioning—and then I wonder if that’s
the point: to practice getting numb to pain.

I
take a breath. I’m here. He’s here. It’s the moment
I’ve been literally searching for since last night. Except I
don’t know how it’s supposed to begin.

So
as he often does, Ryder takes control.

“What do you want?” he says, without looking at me. His
tone is flat, but he punctuates the question with a hit to the bag.

“I
want to explain.”

“Think
your husband made everything pretty clear.” He throws a jab and
the bag swings slightly backwards.

I
walk toward him. “Ryder, please, just listen to me.”

“Take
off your shoes,” he says, glancing at my sandaled feet.

“What?”

“Take
off your fucking shoes, Cassie,” he says. “It clearly
says on the door you can’t wear street shoes in here.” He
smacks the bag. “You don’t just get to do whatever you
want all the time.”

I
bend down, slip off my sandals. “Oh. I didn’t see the
sign.”

He
smirks and shakes his head. “You and me both.”

I lay my hand on his arm. The feel of his bicep, flexed and hard, is
familiar and comforting and electrifying, and the thought of never
getting to touch him like this again terrifies me. “I’m
really sorry, Ryder,” I say, lingering on every word, hoping he
hears how much I mean it.

He jabs the bag. “So tell me what you’re sorry about.”
My own words from our conversation the other night on my lawn tossed
back at me. It feels different to be on the receiving end of them,
like trying to pull yourself out of a deep well by a rope that’s
beginning to unravel.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say, “about
Sebastian.”

“Sorry you didn’t tell me or sorry I found out?”

“I shouldn’t have hidden it from you. It was just hard to
find the words to explain what was happening.”

“Just keep it simple,” he says as he jabs the bag again.
“Like, ‘Hey, Ryder, you know how we’re fucking?
Well, there’s this other guy I fuck, too.’”

“No, I don’t,” I say. I press my lips together and
cross my arms in front of my chest, like I’m guarding myself
from even the suggestion of sleeping with Sebastian. It’s not
something I’ve done in a while. Willingly, anyway. “I
haven’t even talked to Sebastian in a month before last night.
Much less done anything else with him.”

“Why would I believe that?” Ryder says.
“Because
it’s the truth.”

“Oh,” he says, nodding his head slowly. “Like the
truth you didn’t know where Jamie was?”

“This is different,” I say. “I didn’t lie to
you about Sebastian. I just didn’t tell you about him.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m just trying to put it in perspective for you.”

Ryder holds the bag, stopping its motion, and for the first time
since I came into the gym, he faces me. His mouth is a tight line,
his blue eyes narrowed, but there’s a softness to them as well,
a depth behind his gaze that seems more complex than just anger.

“What if you found out right now I had a wife?” he says.
“Or a girlfriend? And that maybe every time I’ve been
hanging out with you, I was actually thinking about her.” He
steps closer to me. “I was lying in bed with you, but she was
there, too. Invisible. But taking up space, and you didn’t even
know it.”

I blink back tears. “Ryder—”

But he cuts me off, moving closer. “I was kissing you, but it’s
her lips I imagined. It was her pussy I tasted when I was licking
yours. It was her hair I pulled. Your scent became her scent in my
mind. Your laugh, your voice, the way you look when you first wake
up, all those things that make it impossible not to like
you—actually, I was only half noticing. Because there’s
someone else. And you don’t even know she exists. How would
that make you feel?”

I look up at Ryder. He’s a full foot taller than me, but I
don’t think I’ve ever felt as small compared to him as I
do right now. “I would be devastated,” I say.

He turns, walks back to the punching bag. “There’s your
fucking perspective.”

“But, Ryder, please,” I say. I put my hands on his back
and lean my head on him, between his shoulder blades. I close my eyes
as I breathe in his smell. “Please listen to me. You have to
understand that you are the only one I want.”

I can feel every muscle in his body tense against my face. “Leave
me alone, Cassie.”

“Ryder.”

“Get out,” he says, his voice just above a whisper.

“I know I messed up,” I say. “I know I hurt you.
But I need to make things right.” Still behind him, I wrap my
arms around his waist.

But he peels my hands away from his torso. “No, you need to go
back to England and keep me out of whatever mind games you and your
husband are playing.” He punches the bag hard, the sound of his
knuckles on the leather as loud as a gun going off.

“I swear to you,” I say, “our marriage is over.”

“Sebastian Walsh doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Well, he and I disagree about a lot of things,” I say.
“That’s why I left.”

“Have you filed for divorce?”

I swallow. “No, not yet,” I say. “I was gonna give
him a month to get used to the fact that I was gone. So he wouldn’t
be mad.”

“So, you don’t want him to be mad or upset or confused,”
Ryder says, his punches growing louder, harder, “but how I feel
doesn’t matter, I guess.”

“The only thing that matters to me right now is how you feel,”
I say. But my words just echo, bouncing off the mostly empty walls of
the gym, landing nowhere, eliciting no response. Ryder hits the bag,
alternating hands now, not looking at me, not even looking as though
he knows I’m still there, an arm’s length from him but
feeling very, very far away.

He circles the bag as he punches it, out of my sight now. I slip my
sandals on and walk toward the exit.

But as I put my hand on the door, he says, “You know, I came
out there last night because I thought you needed help.” I turn
to see him walking toward me, his arms crossed, his taped hands
resting in the crooks of his elbows. “I thought you might be in
danger and I wanted to protect you.”

“I know.”

“I care about you, Cassie.” His voice is firm and strong
and sincere. Commanding without being demanding. “And I guess I
thought you cared about me.”

“I do,” I say, my voice less controlled. I can feel my
throat tightening, my mouth getting dry, my stomach clenching.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m
sorry about last night, okay? I should have handled things
differently, I should have reacted a different way but I’m not
used to anyone else helping me or checking on me. I’m used to
having to protect myself.”