RYDER (Slater Brothers 4) (20 page)

“She doesn’t hate you,” I murmured. “‘er hormones are all over the place, and she’s just upset because I’m upset. Don’t worry about it, she’ll be speakin’ to you by tomorrow.”

“Why do you do that?” Ryder asked, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

I was stumped.

“Do what?” I asked.

“You’re trying to make me feel better about Bronagh because I said she hates me. You’re trying to save me from being hurt when you’re furious with me.”

I gnawed on my inner cheek. “Bronagh says I do it to ‘er because I’m protectin’ ‘er. Maybe I’m doin’ the same for you, too.”

Ryder stepped towards me. “I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier.”

I straightened.

“You hurt me,” I said. “Accusin’ me of cheatin’ on you was somethin’ I never thought you would ever say to me.”

Another step.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I just pictured this Ash person touching you, and I got so angry that I lashed out at you.”

I shrugged. “I’m used to you lashin’ out at me.”

Ryder looked like I slapped him across the face.

“Please, don’t say that,” his voice low.

I licked my dry lips.

“I bruise you and you bruise me. That’s how things are between us now.”

Ryder’s eyes searched mine, and what he saw caused his head to drop.

“I don’t know how we’ve gotten here, Branna.”

My heart began to pound against my chest.

“Me either.”

Ryder swallowed. “I think… I think we should talk.”

I did too, and it killed me because I didn’t want to say what needed to be said, but I had to. For both of our sakes, I
had
to.

“Yeah, we do.”

Ryder leaned his shoulder against the wall. “I have a feeling the outcome is going to break me, am I right?”

Break him?
I thought.
Him?

I stared. “I don’t know, it depends on how you take what I have to say.”

He set his jaw. “Say it.”

This was it.

“I think you know what I’m goin’ to say.”

He nodded. “I think I do, too, but I want to
hear
you say it.”

My palms became sticky with sweat.

“I can’t do this anymore, Ryder.”

“Say it, Branna.”

I was always Branna or Bran now, never Sweetness, and it was pathetic how much I missed that term of endearment. The tears that sat on the brim of my eyes finally spilled over and splashed onto my cheeks. Pain pulsed in my chest. This was really it. This was the end of us.

“You feel the same way I do, I know you do.” I sniffled, quickly wiping away my tears. “We don’t make each other happy anymore.”

He pushed away from the wall and stepped towards me.

“Say. It.”

I began to sob. “I don’t know what else you want me to say!”

“Say the fucking words.” He demanded. “If you’re going to break up with me you have to say it out loud, I want to
hear
you say it.”

I swallowed and looked down at the floor, then with a heavy heart I said, “Ryder… I’m… I’m breakin’ up with you.”

“
No
.”

I looked up at him and blinked with confusion. “What do you me-mean no?”

“We aren’t breaking up,” he stated, his face red. “We aren’t giving up just because shit has gotten hard, we’re going to fight.”

He was
killing
me.

“We
have
been fighting—”

“
With
one another, not
for
one another.”

I met Ryder with silence so he pressed on.

“We’re going to start over. I don’t know where we lost one another, but if we go back to the start we can find our way back to each other. I
know
we can.”

I felt hopeless.

“So we’re thrustin’ ourselves back into the beginnin’ stages of dating?” I quizzed, shaking my head.

“Yeah.” Ryder replied, firmly. “That’s
exactly
what we’ll do.”

I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hands when more tears fell.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to make you fall in love with me all over again.”

“Don’t say things like that to me!” I shouted. “You can’t say things like that and expect me to believe you. You promised me the world when we first got together, promised to always take care of me, to always be there for me, to always show me love. You swore up and down that we’d grow old together but the only thing we’ve done is grow apart.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ryder replied, the veins on his arms bulged as he tensed his body.

“Then I don’t know what to tell you!” I snapped. “If you can’t see what’s been happenin’ over the last year then me simply explainin’ it won’t penetrate your bloody mind!”

“You have to trust me, Branna.” Ryder said, shocking the hell out of me.

“Trust you?” I repeated. “Trust fuckin’
you
! What about
you
trustin’
me
? Where did that trust fly off to when I
begged
you tell me where you go every night or why you’re always on your phone or why you shower as soon as you get home? What happened to poxy trust when
those
questions where asked?”

“You will have the answers to those question in forty-eight more hours, just give me that time and when it’s up, I’ll explain
everything
. I’ll answer every question you throw at me fifty times over. Please.”

The confusion I felt hurt my head to the point where I had to close my eyes and flatten my palm over my forehead in an attempt to soothe it somehow.

“I don’t understand.” I whispered, lowering my hand to my side, and reopening my eyes. “Why forty-eight more hours? Why not now?”

“Because in forty-eight more hours I can freely tell you.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Meanin’ now you freely can’t?”

Ryder nodded his head. Once.

“The only thing I can think is why? Why? Why? Fuckin’
why
?” My voice climbed an octave with each question asked.

“Branna,” he said, firmly. “Trust. Me.”

Exhaustion hit me at that point.

“I can’t do this, Ryder. You’re killin’ me.”

“Just listen to me, carefully,” he said as he stepped closer to me, pressing his chest against mine, reintroducing me to the sensation of what it felt like for my body to be moulded against his. “I love you. I
know
things are up in the air with us right now, and that I haven’t shown jack shit over the last year that would make you believe me when I say it, but I
do
love you. I’ve never said those words to any other woman in my life. Remember that, and remember that in forty-eight hours we’re going to hash
all
of this out.”

Slowly, I nodded, because I wanted him to just stop talking.

“I know you love me, or the man who I fell in love with loves me, but I just don’t know if that’s enough anymore, Ry.”

“It will always be enough, and I’m going to prove that to you.”

I wanted to believe him, God knew how much, but I couldn’t let myself hope for us anymore. The heartache that I felt when things fell apart was too great.

I somehow stood strong.

“We’re
over
, Ryder.”

“No, Branna, we aren’t. I told you five years ago that we’d never be over, and I fuckin’
meant
it. You’re my world, and I refuse to watch it,
you
, crumble around me. Just. Fucking. No. I’m going to fix this, I swear it.”

He turned and without another word, stalked out of the house. When I heard the front door slam shut, I dropped to my knees and let out the sob that desperately wanted to break free. I wrapped my arms around my waist, hugging myself as I rocked back and forth.

I did it
, I meekly thought.
I broke up with Ryder, but he refused to let me go.

A huge part of me clung onto that as a sign that something might be salvageable between us, but fear shut out that ray of light with overwhelming darkness. I couldn’t allow myself to grasp at straws like that. I couldn’t allow myself to think of what happened as anything other than a break up because if I let my mind stray, I would think of scenarios where things could end differently, and that frightened me. I was terrified that if I let Ryder back in and he closed me out again then I would cease to function altogether.

I was afraid he’d ruin me all over again.

Five years ago…

“Dominic and Bee, they’re either datin’ or they’re
about
to be datin’.”

Ryder’s foot slipped from the clutch of his car, and the gearbox made an unholy sound that caused me to cringe. He quickly shifted gears until the car was purring nicely once more.

“You want to explain that to me?” he asked, flicking his eyes from the road to me then back to the road. “‘Cause we’re on the way to the
hospital
to see your sister who got injured while beating on my
brother
because
he
was beating on her
date
.”

I didn’t need a reminder; I had just gotten off a phone call to Aideen explaining to her that I would take care of Dominic for jumping Gavin—her little brother. She had to call off her other brothers from finding Dominic and beating the shite out of him. I had to convince her not to end his life, too. The latter was proven the most difficult, but I managed to persuade her that I would make him pay, and I would. Somehow.

“You heard Kane’s twenty-second recap of what happened when he called me after Bronagh called you,” Ryder continued, regaining my attention, “so how did you come to the conclusion that they’re dating or
almost
dating?”

Do all men have such small brains?
I wondered.
Or is my man just lucky?

“I’m not disputin’ that Bee likes Gavin Collins, because if they got the chance, I’m sure they’d actually be great together. I’d love to see her date the brother of me best friend.”

“I’m sensing a very big
but
here,” Ryder sighed.

“But,” I grinned, “even though she went on a date with Gavin tonight, she likes Dominic even though he has been the king of all arseholes from the moment they met. Goin’ on a date with Gavin is her way of tryin’ to force Dominic out of her mind, but it’ll take more than that. Somethin’ about the lad draws her to ‘im, just like somethin’ about
her
draws ‘im to ‘er. You understand?”

“No, not at all.” Ryder exhaled. “You say the word ‘him’ and ‘her’ so messed up, do you know that? The letter H is just completely disregarded.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Now is not the time for the pronunciation game,
what
are we goin’ to do about our siblin’s?”

“Pray they don’t get arrested?”

I growled. “Be serious.”

“I am,” Ryder stressed. “Dominic is on
very
fucking thin ice, he could have been arrested for fighting with Gavin in school, but he got away with it. He could have gotten arrested when he fought that Jason kid too, or McDonald’s security could have retained him until the cops arrived tonight. He’s messing up and all because he doesn’t know how to handle your sister.”

I scrubbed my face with my hands.

“Can you not talk to ‘im about it?” I asked. “Maybe give ‘im some pointers on how to approach me sister? He still has the compound mentality that when he says jump, women will ask how high? That doesn’t fly here, that’s the backlash he is gettin’ for tryin’ to be bossy and intimidatin’ with Bee.”

Ryder snorted. “Tell me something I
don’t
know. I’ve been all around the world and I’ve never met women like you, your sister, or Aideen. Irish women can be terrifying. I’m glad my brothers haven’t met Ado yet, she’d horrify them.”

That amused me greatly.

“Tell your brother that.”

“After tonight?” Ryder snorted. “He definitely knows.”

I looked away as my lips turned up in a smirk.

“I love you,” Ryder said, catching me off guard.

I turned and looked at him with adoring eyes.

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

His lip twitched as he watched the road.

“Not that I don’t love hearin’ you tell me that you love me, but why say it now?”

Ryder shrugged. “When we’re around Dominic and Bronagh, we end up fighting because
they’re
fighting and we feel the need to defend our little siblings. I just wanted to say I love you once more today, in case we’re at each other’s throats in an hour.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“That’s really sweet, you know that?”

Ryder glanced at me and smiled before returning his eyes to the road.

“I have my moments,” he mused.

“They’re few and far between,” I countered, grinning.

“Which is why when my moments come along, I make them known.”

I chuckled.

“We’ll be fine,” I assured him. “I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Do you understand that if the kid you attacked presses charges, you will be arrested for assault, ma’am?”

The worst happened.

When Ryder and I showed up in A&E I was calm. So. Bloody. Calm. When my sister rang me and told me what happened, I was ready to
end
Dominic Slater, but on the car journey to the hospital Ryder relaxed me, and I reached a point where I was willing to see him and behave like a normal human being… then I walked up to the triage nurse’s office and saw Bronagh clutching her hand to her chest, and Dominic in her personal space. There is no other way to describe what happened—I just lost it.