“Hope you enjoyed the show.” I came up just long enough to shut off the computer without ever getting a look at him.
She’s done for tonight. I’m calling it.
Eden seemed unfazed by my sudden cancellation of her show.
We interrupt this regularly scheduled programming…
Her eyes were hungry as she began to unbutton my shirt.
Skin to skin, we were kissing so hard, barely coming up for breath as she worked to remove my pants.
She wrapped her legs around my back and pulled on my hair, never breaking our kiss.
Eden dug her fingers into my shoulders as she said, “Fuck me, Ryder. Please…”
“You sure about this?” I asked, hoping to God she said yes. It was the only time I would question her.
“Yes. And I’m on the pill. It’s okay as long as you’re—”
“I’m clean.” I pulled back to look into her eyes as I finished her sentence.
Fuck yes.
Any doubts I might have had about whether she was ready were buried beneath the intense need to be inside of her right now. The world could have been crumbling around me, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop this.
I slid my boxers down and let my engorged dick spring free. “I need you, Eden. You ready for me?” I breathed the words into her mouth.
She answered by wrapping her hand around my cock, the tip wet from my arousal. She led me into her entrance. The opening of her tight, wet pussy felt better than anything I could remember ever feeling.
She winced a little.
I’d only made it a couple of inches in when I asked, “Am I hurting you?”
“No. You’re just…big.”
I’ve definitely heard worse things in my life.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No. Please don’t. Just go slow. I need you inside of me.”
“I can do that.”
Eden was extremely wet, which told me she was excited and not hesitant. That gave me the confidence to continue moving in and out slowly until I was fully inside. And then it just felt like pure ecstasy. Her pussy clamped hard around my cock as I took her with reckless abandon.
“You feel so good.”
Closing my eyes, I let all of the worries of the world fade away as I dove into her. When she let out a loud gasp, I covered her mouth with my palm so she wouldn’t wake her brother. When I removed my hand, she dug her teeth into my shoulder to muffle her sounds of pleasure.
With every thrust, my need to completely claim her grew. I took weeks of frustration and jealousy out on her body. I needed release but wasn’t anywhere near ready for this to end.
“Tell me this pussy is mine, Eden.”
“It’s all yours.” She looked me in the eyes as she said it, and that totally did me in.
Swallowing her moans with my kiss, I began to fuck her harder. She moved her hips in circles to take every inch of me. A part of me wished I could have gently made love to her our first time, but that wasn’t an option. The wait had been too long.
Eden gripped me tighter as I continued to pound into her. I could feel her feet flexing at my back. She seemed close to losing control.
“I need to come inside of you.”
She dug her nails into my back. “Please…”
“Look at me, Eden,” I demanded, wanting to see what she looked like when I gave her everything I had.
Her name exited my mouth on repeat as I emptied my cum into her, seeing stars from the intensity of the feeling.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
* * *
EDEN
I’d somehow nodded off and woke to the sight of Ryder looking down at me.
Glancing over at the clock, I noticed it was only midnight. Normally I’d be logging in to chat with him at this time, but instead he was here and had given me the best sex of my life.
My voice was groggy as I asked, “Can’t sleep?”
“No. Way too wired,” he said. “In a good way.”
No matter what happened between us, I would never regret this night. The muscles between my legs were sore in the best possible way, the aftermath of his girth. The delicious smell of him was all over my skin. It was worth the risk.
I looked up at him and smiled as he ran his hand through my hair, massaging my head. It had been a long time since I’d felt this satisfied, content, and safe.
Despite that, something had been nagging at me, something Ryder had promised to tell me about when he was ready. Since we were both unable to sleep, I wondered if he would open up to me about it.
“Will you tell me what happened with your ex-girlfriend?”
He seemed caught off guard by my sudden question. He stopped moving his hand through my hair and scooted up. I did the same.
He nodded and exhaled.
“A few years ago, I was probably at my worst in terms of my state of mind. My mother had just died, and I was depressed. Mallory and I had a really good relationship for the first few years. She was there for me throughout my mother’s last days, and I loved her. You know? I really did.”
I tried to curb my jealousy. “You said you met her in school?”
“Yeah. We met during my first year of grad school at UCLA. We were both business majors, but she was in her final year. Mallory is two years older than me, actually.”
“Did you live with her?”
“We moved in together the last couple of years. She moved into my house.”
I took a deep breath in, readying to hear something that might upset me, although I had absolutely zero clue what it might be.
He swallowed. “Soon after my mother died, Mallory got pregnant.”
And there it was. My stomach felt like it had been stabbed.
“Oh my God.” I reached for his hand and squeezed it.
“I know.” He let out a long, slow breath. “So, when she told me…I wasn’t happy about it. It was just too much at the time. I wanted to be happy about it, but I couldn’t. I didn’t feel ready to be a father, and my depression made everything worse.”
I braced myself for the rest of the story. Does he have a child out there somewhere? Was the baby put up for adoption? Different theories kept running through my mind.
“I made no secret of the fact that I wasn’t ready for a baby, that I was freaked out. I couldn’t hide that, as much as I tried to want it.”
“Was she happy about it?”
“That’s the thing—she was. Mallory always wanted to be a mother. So even though it wasn’t the right time, she accepted it and was pretty excited about it.” He stared off for a moment. “I wanted to share that excitement. I told myself I would grow to accept it, but I was cold and distant. I was scared. It sucked because I couldn’t be the person she deserved. I started going out more, drinking—anything to avoid the fact that I was going to have this huge responsibility. I was an ass. I look back at that time now, the person I was, and I hate myself.”
Unable to wait any longer, I asked, “What happened with the baby?”
He hesitated. “She was fourteen weeks along when we lost it.”
My heart sank. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“You’d think I would’ve felt relief after all the stressing out I’d done, but it was just the opposite. I felt devastated, and so guilty, like my unhappiness had somehow caused the miscarriage.”
I squeezed his hand with both of mine. “No, Ryder. Please don’t tell me you blamed yourself.”
“I absolutely did.” He shook his head. “I felt like I had wished it away.”
I knew the pain was still fresh, and that made me really sad for him. “It’s completely normal for you to have reacted the way you did. Believe me, I indirectly understand, because I remember how I felt after my mother died, when it first hit me that Ollie was my responsibility. Having a child is a huge life change. You would’ve eventually gotten used to the idea. But it takes time, a lot more than a few months.”
“I guess I understand that a little more now, b
ut at the time I just saw myself as a bad person—and so did Mallory. We fell into a bad place after that, one we couldn’t come back from.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “She blamed you?”
“Not entirely, but she’d say things like ‘Are you happy now?’ or ‘Admit it, you’re relieved’. That killed me. That killed me so much. I never would’ve wished for the miscarriage.”
I closed my eyes to fend off tears. “I’m so sorry.”
He’d been carrying so much guilt over this.
“The thing is, I wasn’t relieved. I’d committed to giving fatherhood a hundred-percent effort. I just never had a chance to prove myself.” He paused. “She had to have a D and C, and they somehow were able to determine that it had been a boy. That was fucking painful to know. But she wanted to know the gender.”
My heart broke as I imagined the little boy who never was, one who looked just like Ryder, with his eyes and smile. That choked my heart.
“So, you couldn’t come back from it—the loss. You and she…”
“No. We couldn’t. She resented me—hated me at times. And I distanced myself even more after that. We eventually broke up.”
“You never fell out of love with her, though.” I braced myself for his answer.
“Not immediately, no.”
“So, you don’t love her anymore?”
He looked like he was struggling with how to answer that. “A part of me will always love her, but not in the same way I once did. I’m gonna be honest with you and tell you that before you came along, I wasn’t fully over her. But that changed when I met you.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, knowing he’d still had feelings for her right before we met.
“Do you have a photo of her?” I asked.
He stopped to think. “Yeah…somewhere on my phone. Why? You want to see a picture?”
“Yes.”
Ryder gave me a look like he thought my curiosity was cute, then reached over for his phone and began scrolling through his photos. I didn’t feel like I was being cute at all. I felt like a jealous bitch, but my curiosity would have killed me.
He handed me the phone. “This was taken probably a month before we broke up.”
Now I regretted asking. She was beautiful—tall with long, thick black hair. Her eyes were almond-shaped, and she had plump lips that I suspected were natural and not injected.
I cleared my throat. “You said she’s engaged now?”
“Yeah. Actually, I never told you this, but right before I first came out to Utah, I ran into her and her fiancé. It was the first time that had happened, and it was easier than I’d expected it to be. I wished them well.”
That’s closure, right? “Thank you for sharing all of this with me. I’d always wondered what happened with you and her. Although I never imagined it was something like this.”
“It’s pretty crazy to think I’d have a toddler now. I try not to think about that, but sometimes it crosses my mind.”
I brought his face to mine and kissed him on the lips. “Just seeing how you are with Ollie, I know you would have been an amazing father.”
“Once I got my head out of my ass, maybe.” He sighed. “I’ve changed a lot since then, matured a lot. But it doesn’t change what happened and the pain associated with it. It’s something I’ll always have to live with.”
I placed my hand on his stubbled face and turned his head toward me. “Look at me. You did not cause that miscarriage. Do you understand? No matter how you felt at the time, your feelings had nothing to do with her losing the baby. Nothing.”
“Rationally, I know that…”
“But you have to believe it. It’s okay to feel guilty about feeling the way you did, but please don’t ever blame yourself for what happened. Let go of that idea right now, Ryder. It’s not true. You can’t terminate a pregnancy with thoughts.”
His eyes softened. “I’ll try to believe that.”
“Now that I know about this, please don’t hesitate to talk to me if you need to. Sometimes guilt over the past can creep up when you’re stressed about other things.”
“Okay. Thank you for listening. I haven’t told many people what happened. Only a few people even knew she was pregnant. It’s good for me to talk about it with someone I trust.”
The hurt in his eyes was still fresh. What happened was most definitely still having an impact on his life. Maybe you never really get over a loss like that. But I wanted to help him work through it.
“What about you, Eden? Anything you need to get off your chest?” he asked. “Anything you haven’t told me?”
I tried to think on that, but there wasn’t anything significant to confess. My independent life had been cut short before I had a chance to make too many mistakes.
“No, not really.”
He searched my eyes. “I feel like I had this idea of you before we met, and then when I met you, while I still recognize your soul, there’s so much I don’t know about your life, who you were before these responsibilities fell into your lap.”
“I’m not sure I remember who I was.”
He rubbed my thigh. “That makes me sad.”
I attempted to answer his question. “I was a girl who loved music, who was a little boy crazy but hadn’t fallen in love yet. I loved my life. It was simple. My mother was my best friend. I could tell her anything. Ollie was an unexpected gift, the sibling I never thought I’d have. At twenty, I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do with my life yet, but that was okay. I had a good life. I still do—just different now. A lot different.”
“So you don’t feel like you ever had the chance to discover yourself.”
“Right. I feel like I’m still a work in progress. Right now, I’m doing what I have to in order to get by, and that takes precedence over self-discovery.”
“What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t taking care of Ollie? You mentioned once that you dreamed of moving to New York to perform on Broadway. Do you think you would have gone through with it?”
“That was mostly a pipe dream. I can’t be sure if I would have bitten the bullet, but I definitely don’t think I would have stayed here these past four years. I think I would have traveled, but I don’t know if it would have been to New York.”
After all, I’m the daughter of a drifter. It’s in my blood. I didn’t know my father, but there were parts of me that I suspected came from him—namely that feeling inside of me that there was always something more, something bigger I was missing out on. I knew I wouldn’t have stayed in one place all these years. That’s why I was so envious of Ryder’s trip to India.
“I would’ve liked to see the world a little bit before I got tied down,” I told him. “It’s hard to imagine what I would’ve done, though. That’s sort of a pointless thing to focus on.”
“I know you lost a lot when your mother died—opportunities that may or may not have arisen. But I’m grateful I found you. You went through a lot of shit to get to where you were the night I met you. But I’m happy the stars aligned. Life is funny sometimes.”
I caressed his stubble with the back of my finger. “That’s the thing. Life takes you in unexpected directions. There’s good, and there’s bad to that. Sometimes on a detour, you find what you need in the least likely of places. And then you wonder if that was the direction you were always meant to go.”
He winked. “You mean like falling for a cam john?”
“Exactly. I’m glad you were one of the detours on my journey, Ryder.”
He was definitely a detour. But was he a temporary stop or the final destination?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
RYDER
The following morning, Ollie took a really long time to wake up.
Eden and I kept waiting for him to hear my voice and walk into the kitchen, surprised as hell to find me. She said he almost never overslept, so it figured he’d do it the one morning I was here and wanted to surprise him. We’d al
so been waiting to make pancakes. Eden had the batter all mixed with chocolate chips and ready to go.
Telling Eden about what had happened with Mallory was a huge weight off my shoulders. I hadn’t been sure how she was going to feel about it. Here she was doing the best she could to raise a child she didn’t anticipate. And I’d admitted I hadn’t felt myself capable of the same thing.
But her words had comforted me, and I was grateful for that.
I massaged Eden’s shoulders as she sipped her coffee. “Should I go wake him?”
“Might as well. At this rate, we’ll be waiting all day.”
Eden stayed close behind me as I ventured to Ollie’s room and opened the door. His legs and arms were splayed across the mattress. He was totally out.
I placed my index finger against my mouth to let Eden know I didn’t want her to say anything. Instead, I curled my lips, unleashing my infamous cricket sound.
Ollie stirred, then jumped up. Eden tried hard to hold her laughter in as we watched him move his head around in confusion before calling out, “Ryder?”
I stopped making the sound. “Yeah, buddy. It’s me.”
“You came back!”
Hugging him, I said, “I told you I would.”
“You didn’t write me back yesterday. I thought maybe…” His words trailed off.
“No. Whatever you were thinking was wrong. I was on a plane to come see you.”
The sun streamed through Ollie’s window. He was happy to see me. This was a good day.
“Why don’t I let you two hang out while I make pancakes for all of us?” Eden suggested. “I’ll holler when they’re ready.”
After she retreated to the kitchen, Ollie turned toward me.
“It’s weird that you’re here. I dreamed about you last night.”
“Really? What was I doing in your dream?”
“Nothing, really. You were just there.”
“Well, I guess your dream was more like a premonition then.”
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