by Susanna Carr
His world slowly stopped moving. Having sex with him was Katie’s New Year’s resolution? That was what all this was about?
“What did she say?” he asked hoarsely, his gaze fixed on Katie’s face.
Katie stared helplessly at him, and he knew he hadn’t gotten it wrong. He’d risked every important relationship he had, broke his code of honor and gave Katie the wild affair she asked for.
All for a stupid New Year’s resolution.
“You were cutting it close,” Melissa continued, oblivious to the growing tension. “Only two days left, but you did it! High five, girlfriend!”
Ryder stared at Katie. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen for all her tricks. Maybe Jake was right about her. She wasn’t so sweet. In fact, she knew just how to hurt him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Katie was horrified. Melissa often got in trouble for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, but Katie never thought she’d act this dumb. Why couldn’t she keep her big mouth shut? Now everything was ruined!
Melissa kept her hands up for a few seconds until she realized no one was in a celebratory mood. She curled her fingers in her palm and hesitantly lowered her hand. “Did I just say something I shouldn’t have?” she asked in a small voice.
Hilary snorted. “Understatement of the year.”
Ryder’s gaze never left Katie’s face. It felt like he was searching for something underneath the surface. “New Year’s resolution?” he repeated dully.
Katie nervously licked her lips. How could she possibly repair the damage? “You are more to me than—”
He lifted his hand to stop the excuse bubbling past her lips. “It’s a yes-or-no question, Katie. Was I your New Year’s resolution?”
She couldn’t get out of this. She had to tell him the truth, and she didn’t even have the courage to look him in the eye. Katie glanced away and focused her attention where his truck was parked a few spaces behind him. “Yes.”
Ryder didn’t move a muscle. The quiet seemed to screech down her spine like nails on a blackboard. Katie looked up at him from below her eyelashes and then wished she hadn’t. He held himself erect and proud, as if he would crumple if he moved. The pain shone in his dark eyes and was etched in his face. He suddenly looked older.
“My resolution was about more than sex. I wasn’t aiming for a one-night stand or a fling,” she hastily explained.
“Really?” he drawled. “Your actions for the past week have said otherwise.”
She frowned, trying to remember. “When?”
“When you tied yourself to my bed,” he reminded her. “You announced you hadn’t planned to spend the night.”
Melissa jerked her head, her face turning bright red. It was only then that Katie remembered Melissa was still standing right there. She felt Melissa’s shocked look before Melissa scurried backward to give them some privacy.
“That—that—” Katie exhaled with frustration and tried again. “You can’t use that against me. I only said that because it seemed you were going to kick me out of bed. I was protecting myself.”
“It wasn’t obvious to me.” Ryder dipped his head and rubbed his hands over his face. “Why would you make me your New Year’s resolution?”
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.”
He lifted his head and gave her a look of disbelief. “That’s because it is! How would you have felt if I’d made a resolution to get you into my bed?”
She put her hands on her hips and thrust out her chin. “Honored?”
“Think again.” Ryder shook his head. “This is like making a bet or putting me on a to-do list. You weren’t being honest. You used me so you could cross the event off and move to the next item.”
“Oh, please.” He had no idea what she’d been through just to make the resolution, to even write it down. It was scary to decide to go after your greatest fantasy, knowing that you could go all out for it and never have it granted. “You act like it was so easy and unemotional. You have no idea how much courage it took just to flirt with you.”
His face tightened and his jaw was rigid. “I’m sorry it was such a hardship,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
Katie gasped when she realized what Ryder was thinking. Didn’t he know that she desired him so much it scared her? “You are twisting my words. I made you a New Year’s resolution because I have—” She pulled back just in the nick of time. “I have wanted you for years and I was too shy to act on it.”
“You didn’t have any problems this week.”
“That’s because having a New Year’s resolution pushed me out of my comfort zone,” she said. “But I still wasn’t making any headway. When I found out you were leaving for good, then I knew I had to do something drastic or I would regret it forever.”
He kept shaking his head. He couldn’t even look at her. “A New Year’s resolution,” he muttered. “A freaking New Year’s resolution. And all this time I thought you were so sweet.”
Just because she was shy and invisible, people automatically thought she was sweet. And now it sounded like that was the kind of fantasy girl Ryder actually wanted. “I can be sweet,” she said. It just didn’t come naturally.
“You told me you weren’t, and I didn’t believe you.” He looked up in the sky and shook his head. “What a fool I was!”
“Ryder, I am so sorry.” She grabbed for his arm, wanting him to stop and listen, really listen to her. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
He slowly looked down at her hand on his arm. Most people would have been smart enough to snatch it away, but she needed to hold on to him before he slipped through her fingers forever.
He gave her a sidelong glance. “How did you think I would feel?”
“I don’t know.” She hadn’t really considered it, but in all honesty, she hadn’t thought he would ever find out. “I thought you might have found it funny or cute. You might even have been flattered.”
“Cute?” His tone sharpened, and his eyes were dark and stormy. “I risked my friendship with Jake to be with you.”
Katie paled. She was slowly realizing just how foolish she’d been.
Ryder flicked her hand off his arm. “I tested my relationship with your parents. The very people who took me in and asked for nothing in return. And you thought I would have found your motivations funny?”
Kate flinched. When he put it like that, she seemed like the bitchiest, most selfish woman he could ever come across. “I would never have asked you to make that kind of choice,” she said, shamefaced.
He towered over her. “I never thought to ask why there was an urgency for you to be in my bed. I thought it was because you couldn’t wait to be with me.”
“That was true, but you were also leaving town,” she insisted. “What else was I supposed to do?” She tilted her head to meet his eyes. “This New Year’s resolution was not as coldhearted as you think.”
“What was the resolution?” he asked, his eyes glittering savagely, his voice quieter than she’d ever heard it. “Tell me, Katie. Word for word.”
“Ummm . . .” She hesitated to tell him, not sure how he would interpret it. She’d really walked into this one. “Well, if you hear it out of context it—”
“Word for word.”
Katie’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “To have a wild love affair with Ryder Scott.”
His whole body flinched. He was fighting to keep his emotions in. The struggle was so fierce that he went pale.
Katie knew she should have lied, but she wasn’t good at thinking on her feet. She could easily figure out that he had a huge problem with the word “affair.” Had he heard the word “love” before it?
All this time she had used that terminology because she was afraid to reach for the impossible. She didn’t want to ask for something more substantial and permanent because she was afraid she wouldn’t get it. She had played it safe and now that decision was going to haunt her.
Ryder abruptly turned his back to her and sil
ently walked to his truck.
“Ryder? Where are you going?” She followed him. “You can’t just walk off in the middle of an argument.”
“Watch me.”
“I made a resolution to get closer to you,” she insisted. “There is no reason to punish me for it.”
“You made a resolution to have sex with me,” he corrected her as he got into his truck. “Mission accomplished. Cross it off your list and focus on the next item, because we have nothing more to say.”
“I have plenty to say.” She marched over to the driver’s side of his truck. “You are the one who had sex with me knowing you were going to leave a few days later.”
He didn’t look at her as he turned the ignition. “You knew it, too.”
“So how are your actions different from mine?” She tried to open the truck door, but he had already locked it.
“Because I didn’t set out to seduce you,” he said, looking down at her. His eyes were dead, his voice low but neutral. “I didn’t decide to turn your life upside down just to scratch an itch. And I wasn’t the one who thought our ‘wild love affair’ meant there would be no consequences.”
She closed her eyes in defense. There was that “no consequences” offer being thrown in her face, too. She had really blown it with him.
“Because I took you to bed knowing the risks,” Ryder continued, “knowing the consequences, and I still chose you above all else. I only wish you had chosen me, not because it was a game, but because you couldn’t imagine being without me.”
“I did feel that way! I still do!”
“I don’t believe you.” He put the car in drive and slowly inched out of the parking space. Katie walked to keep up with his truck.
“What about the risk I took?” she called out as he maneuvered the truck into the driving lane. She had to walk fast to keep level with the driver’s side. “I turned my life upside down. I put all my trust in you. I didn’t do anything lightly.”
He pushed on the brakes and looked at her. “You went to bed with me because you craved the sexual danger. You wanted to know what it felt like to have sex with the town’s bad boy. I hope it was worth it for you.”
She thrust her hands in her hair. “Ryder, haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? What is it going to take for you to believe me?”
“Nothing. There are no words to convince me. There is nothing you can do. It’s too late.” He took his foot off the brake and drove off before she could catch up with him. Katie stood in the middle of Main Street and watched his truck disappear.
“I am so sorry, Katie,” Melissa wailed for the millionth time in the back of Hilary’s purple hatchback. “I didn’t mean to ruin your life.”
“Melissa, if you don’t shut up,” Hilary warned as she sharply turned the steering wheel, “I am going to throw you out of the car. And I’m not going to slow down while I’m doing it!”
“I thought he knew,” Melissa said as she automatically clung to her seat belt as the car tilted with the deep turn. “I really did. I don’t know why. We’ve talked so freely about it, so I assumed . . .” She let her voice trail off, deeply upset.
“Stop worrying about it. It was an honest mistake,” Katie said as she looked out the passenger-side window. At first she had been so tempted to place all the blame on Melissa, but Katie knew it would be wrong. She was solely responsible for this disaster, and her friend had just said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
“Oh, there!” Katie sat up straight when she thought she saw Ryder’s truck. Then she realized it was the wrong model. “Sorry, no. It’s not his truck.”
“I had no idea there were this many trucks in Crystal Bend,” Hilary said as they sped down yet another residential street.
“Where could he be?” Katie asked as she kept looking out the window. “We have been everywhere.”
“We probably keep missing him,” Hilary said.“Maybe we crossed paths on one of the side streets. Do you want to go back to the point of origin and start over?”
“No.” Katie propped her aching head on the window, which jostled and shook from Hilary’s erratic driving. “We’ve been at this for hours.”
“Maybe he already left Crystal Bend,” Melissa said.
Hilary slammed on the brakes in the middle of the deserted road. Katie lurched forward and slammed her hands on the dashboard. Her heart felt like it had fallen and shattered, but not from the movement of the vehicle. What if Ryder had already left town? It was possible. He could have arranged to get an earlier flight.
Katie and Hilary looked around in the back of the car and glared at Melissa.
“Out of the car,” Hilary ordered Melissa. She pointed at the door. “Right now. Get out.”
“I didn’t mean that.” Melissa held out both hands in surrender. “I really didn’t. It just sort of slipped out.”
“Fine. This is your last chance,” Hilary said. “Keep it up and you are just sort of going to slip out of the car at high speed.”
“I won’t say another word,” Melissa promised. She mimed the motion of zipping up her lips and throwing away the key. Melissa settled back in her seat, her lips firmly pressed together.
Katie looked at Hilary. “Do you think he left already?”
“God, I hope not.” Hilary pressed on the gas and they lurched to the end of the road.
Katie quickly looked out the passenger window as the tears stung in the back of her eyes and clawed her raw throat. “I can’t have him leave thinking the worst of me.”
“We’ll find him,” Hilary assured her. She reached out and patted Katie’s arm. Katie appreciated the gesture, but she really wished her friend would keep both hands on the wheel. “And when we do, you are going to tell him the truth.”
“Hilary, I’m sure you saw and listened to the whole thing. I told him the truth and look where it got me.”
“I’m talking about the whole truth,” Hilary said, checking both sides of the road before she squealed across it. “That you love him.”
“The forever and always kind,” Melissa added.
Hilary shot a warning glance in the rearview mirror. “Ryder needs to hear it.”
“Maybe, but the timing is all wrong,” Katie explained. “He’s not going to believe me.”
“Then make him believe you.” She slammed back in her seat as they went down a winding, steep hill. “You can be persuasive.”
Katie looked out the window again, not really seeing the trees passing by in a blur. Panic and urgency squeezed her chest. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. She could easily imagine trying to persuade Ryder, being on her hands and knees while declaring her undying love. And he wouldn’t say a thing as he walked right over her and out the door.
“It’s not that easy,” Katie insisted quietly.
“Yes, it is,” Hilary argued. “Just say those three little words: I. Love. You. And in that order.”
Melissa leaned forward, her face between the front seats. “It’s not that easy, because if Ryder still leaves town after she says those three little words, then she knows that her love didn’t mean a lot to him.”
“Is that true?” Hilary looked at Katie. “Is that what you think?”
“More or less.” Katie shrugged, but she was stunned by Melissa’s insight. That was exactly her greatest fear. That, when all was said and done, her love wasn’t going to be that important to Ryder.
“Oh, God, woman!” Hilary said in a fit of frustration. “If that’s what happens, then just suck it up.”
Melissa patted Hilary on the shoulder. “And this is why we don’t have you handle the pep talks.”
“You are not telling him how much you love him just to keep him here,” Hilary told Katie.
“That would be manipulative,” Melissa said, leaning against Hilary’s seat to look at Katie. “Which you are not.”
“And,” Hilary continued, “you are not saying it to see if he loves you in equal measure.”
“Because that’s competitive,” Mel
issa said, “which you are also not.”
Hilary pointed at Katie as she made a wild one-handed turn. “You are telling him something he needs to hear before he goes off in the world alone,” she explained.
“Think of it as a . . .” Melissa rolled her wrist, trying to grab on to the word she was seeking. “Think of it as a gift.”
“Exactly.” Hilary punched on the horn. Katie wasn’t sure if it was for punctuation or because the car in front of them was going too slow for her taste. “He needs to know that there is someone in the world who loves him. Who is thinking of him and wants the best for him.”