Ryan's Love (Sawyer Brothers #1) (10 page)

Chapter Twenty

Amber

I looked over my shoulder at Jackson. He had led me back to Olivia’s room so I could check up on her and Ryan. As we approached we heard them talking, and we didn’t want to intrude. But her words cut me deep.

She was a young girl that was still grieving the loss of her mother, and I was only causing her more pain by being with Ryan.

I slowly backed away from the room, and Jackson placed his hand on my elbow. “She’s upset, Amber. She’ll be okay.”

I shook my head and looked down at the floor, trying to control my emotions. I knew what I needed to do. For Olivia’s well-being and her relationship with her father, I needed to walk away.

“I’m gonna go. I don’t belong here,” I told him as I pulled my elbow from his grasp.

“Amber, just wait for a few moments. Talk to Ryan.”

I shook my head as I turned and walked away.

I found Bailey by the coffee machine. As she saw me approach, her smile fell from her lips. “What happened?”

Shaking my head again, I walked past her. “Nothing. I just need to leave. I never should have come. It was the wrong choice.”

She jogged after me as I walked out the big glass sliding doors, in search of my car. “Will you please stop and tell me what the hell happened in there?”

My hands were shaking as I rounded the front of my car and fumbled through my purse in search of my keys.

“Amber.” Ryan’s voice rang out through the parking lot, startling me. I dropped my keys to the pavement and quickly knelt to retrieve them.

“Amber, stop,” Ryan called out as he ran toward me, passing Bailey in his rush. The distress in his voice made me pause. I stood up as he skidded to a stop just a few inches from me.

“Where are you going?” He sounded winded.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here. I just wanted to know that she was okay.” I stepped back from him, and my back bumped against the car. “I’m just gonna go.”

“Baby, don’t leave. It means a lot that you cared enough to show up here for my little girl.” He placed his hands on my hips and stepped toward me. Immediately I lifted my hand and pressed it firmly against his chest.

“You need to get back inside,” I said as I looked up to see Bailey standing on the other side of the car. “Please, she needs you. We’ll talk later.”

But Ryan was stubborn as always and wouldn’t take no for an answer. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I just think you need to get back inside. Olivia needs you and this can wait.” I forced a smile because now was not the time to talk about us. His focus needed to be solely on Olivia. The last thing he deserved was for me to break things off after the scare he just had.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” I asked.

This time Ryan stepped back and dropped hands to his sides. “Don’t pretend that whatever’s on your mind can wait until later.”

“It isn’t the place or the time.”

He stared at me, his jaw ticking. He ran his hand up through his hair before lowering it to scratch at the stubble along his chin.

After a few moments of silence, his stare was making me uncomfortable. “I can’t be that person, Ryan. The one that comes between you and Olivia. I heard her,” I said as his eyes narrowed in question. “I was outside the room with Jackson. I’m sorry for crashing in on a very private moment, but now that I know how she feels, how much she’s hurting, it breaks my heart, and I know I can help. All I have to do is step back.”

“She’s just having a rough time,” he said with panic in his voice.

“I know she is,” I said. “Because of me.”

He bent at the knees, slouching just enough to look me in the eyes. “It is not because of you.”

I shook my head and tried to calm down. My heart was pounding, and I felt lightheaded. Tears formed in my eyes.

“It is, Ryan,” I said.

He started to speak again, but I placed my finger against his lips to quiet him. “The trouble between you and Olivia started when we began seeing one another. I can’t keep coming between the two of you. I could never look at myself in the mirror, knowing I’ve hurt her. She’s scared and she needs you. She’s having a hard time, and right now your full attention needs to be directed to her.”

“I know,” he whispered against my finger, his voice laced with longing and his eyes glistening with tears. “But I need you too.”

His confession made my knees almost buckle. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hold him close, but I knew couldn’t do that.

“I think it’s best if we stop seeing each other.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat, feeling close to breaking down. “I think she needs you, and I can’t keep causing her emotional pain. I won’t, Ryan. Your daughter needs you.”

I lightly pushed against his chest, forcing him to step back even farther. “Go,” I insisted.

He gripped the back of his neck and let his head sag toward the ground. “We could make this work, Amber. If you would just give me—”

“No.” Even I could hear the break in my voice as tears filled my eyes. But I couldn’t take much more of this before I would give in and allow this roller-coaster ride to continue. We could keep doing this, but it wouldn’t be fair to Olivia. She needed to heal from her grief, and she needed her father. The only way I could make sure she had his full attention was to walk away.

“We can’t make it work. I’m sorry, but it’s for the best right now. My presence is only making things harder on her.”

Ryan tucked his hands deep into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. His head was still hung, and I was unable to read his expression. He remained silent as he took a few steps back, still staring at the ground. I thought he may be trying to come up with another reason to stop me from making this choice. Instead he turned away from me and walked back toward the hospital.

As I watched him enter through the double doors without looking back, I suddenly felt sick. The last thing I wanted to do was push him away. I had to fight the urge to run after him and tell him I made a mistake. After our time together last night, I never thought I would be walking away from him today. But I had to do this, not only for him but for Olivia. They needed to heal together, and my presence was making that impossible.

An emptiness settled deep in my stomach.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ryan

It had been almost two weeks since Amber ended things between us, and I’d gone back to being the quiet, withdrawn guy I’d been for the last three years. Yeah, I smiled when I needed to, and I laughed when I felt I should, but at the end of the day, I felt hollow.

After Olivia came home from the hospital, I took a week off from work. I needed some time not only because I was feeling the loss of Amber and needed to take care of Olivia, I also realized I had to sort out my own heart. It was time I packed away all the things that still belonged to Claire—her sweater that was still draped across her reading chair in the corner of the living room, her clothes in the spare bedroom she had taken over because they wouldn’t all fit in our closet, all the things I knew we would never need again, and things others could use.

Olivia and I decided to donate her clothes and shoes. Well, at least those Liv decided she was able to part with. After we removed those remnants from our home, we decided it was time to say good-bye to Claire. Our love for her would always remain, but our longing to keep her close was only holding us back.

We chose to spend that week doing all the things Claire loved to do. We laid in the hammock on the back deck and watched the stars, trying to find the constellations, and we made s’mores with double the chocolate. But the main thing we did was pull out all the old albums and talk about our memories of her. It was a week of many tears, but in the end, I think Olivia needed to feel her mother’s presence. She also needed to see just how much of her mother still lived on in herself. Every day I was able to see Claire more and more in Olivia. I wanted her to realize it was okay to talk freely about Claire and to share our memories and love for her. But we had to learn to move forward for our sakes.

In the meantime, I missed Amber more than I had imagined I would. The impact she made on my heart in such a short time was something I could not easily forget. I found myself driving by the bakery just to feel close to her. I had refrained from going inside, though, even if it meant I had to drink the shit coffee from JJ’s. I just knew seeing her would be too hard. My heart ached from not being able to touch her.

We had shared one very amazing night just to have everything fall apart hours later.

Nights were the worst. Things were quiet then, and my mind wandered back to the feelings I had developed for her. They were too hard to ignore. At least during the day spending time with Olivia on the ranch kept my mind occupied and at ease.

I looked up from the television to see Liv shuffling down the hall toward me. “Do you wanna go riding today?” she asked as she sat down on the couch next to me and leaned into my side.

Her wrist was now encased in a bright pink cast her uncles had decorated up obnoxiously. I think Jackson and Noah were trying to outdo each other. Their names covered every inch of the cast in various colors and sizes. In the middle of all their madness I signed it too with the word
daddy
in black, bold letters followed by a heart.

“How do you plan on riding with that?” I tapped the cast lightly, and she tapped me back faster than I had expected.

“Uncle Jackson said Midnight is my best option. He’s tame and the most responsive to the reins. So I’ll be fine.” She smiled brightly because she had already thought everything out. The pure joy written all over her face from the possibility of a day riding the trails melted any possible chance of me being able to tell her no.

“Sure.” I nodded as I stood up and began walking down the hall toward my room. “Give me ten minutes to get ready.”

“Hey, Dad,” Olivia hollered after me.

I turned back around to face her. “Yeah?”

“I was just wondering.” She frowned. I waited patiently as she weighed it out in her mind. “I haven’t really heard you say anything about Amber in the last couple weeks. And you haven’t gone out with her either, so I was just wondering why?”

I tried to appear unaffected by her words. Amber’s name made me flinch, but I hoped Olivia was too far away to notice. “Things just didn’t work out.”

I started to turn around, but her voice stopped me once again. “What do ya mean, it didn’t work out?”

I rubbed at the stubble that had become more of a beard over the last couple weeks. I had no reason to keep it trimmed because I sure as hell wasn’t trying to attract any attention. “I’m where I need to be, with you. It was for the best.”

She looked like she was going to say something more, but I cut in again. “Now get ready. This train is leaving in five-point-two minutes, and if you aren’t aboard, you’ll have to hitch a ride.” I chuckled as she arched an eyebrow at me, and I left her to ponder just how long two tenths of a minute was while I ran off to get dressed for a day on horseback.

***

My brother and I settled on the porch of my parents’ home for a beer. “So, uh.” Noah cleared his throat and looked back over his shoulder. Once he saw we were, in fact, alone, he continued. “Have you heard from her at all?”

“Heard from who?” I knew exactly who he was talking about.

“Don’t give me that shit. You know damn well who I’m referring to.” He stared at me sternly.

“Yeah well, it should be obvious enough that I don’t feel much like having that conversation.”

My ass of a brother was a pusher; he didn’t back down easily, and he pushed until he got to the core of the problem, then took it upon himself to fix it.

“I can see you don’t,” he said, “but I don’t care much for what the hell you think you want right now. I do know it’s bothering you that Amber walked away, and in turn that shit bothers me.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It took you years to finally let go, Ry. Amber is something special, and I don’t like the idea of you two giving up without putting up a fight.”

“Well I hate to be the person to tell ya, but she’s the one that walked away,” I said. “She said she was coming between Liv and me. Even when I said we would work it all out, she insisted we couldn’t.”

I stood up and tossed the bottle of the beer I had just finished into the barrel at the edge of the porch. “So I’m doing what I need to do to move on. I can’t force her to be with me, Noah. I won’t.”

When I turned around my mother and Olivia were both standing at the edge of the stairs.

“Is that true, Dad?” Liv’s big, beautiful eyes were locked on me as she frowned in confusion. “Amber broke up with you because of me?”

I closed the distance between us and gripped her shoulders. “No, it was not because of you. She just knew that right now my focus belonged to you completely.”

She looked to her side, and my mother forced a smile. “You needed time to heal, sweetheart, and Amber saw that. It was a selfless act. She let go of your father so he could be by your side helping you heal.”

Liv still looked tormented, and I had to soothe her. “It’s you and me, baby girl, us against the world. Your smile is all I need at the end of the day. Nothing else matters.”

“But Dad…”

I only shook my head as I hooked my arm over her shoulders and led her off the porch toward the barn. “Now how about that ride? Midnight is saddled up and waiting.”