Holy hell, who the fuck is that hottie? my aunt asks.
Ryder texts her back before I can get it from him. My boyfriend.
“Ryder,” I growl, trying to get my phone again. He easily keeps it from me.
“Ryder, my mom is gonna be …” My phone starts ringing in his hand, and Momma lights up my screen. A pic of her and me standing in front of our Christmas tree last year.
He answers and immediately places it on speakerphone. “Ashlyn LeAnn Whitaker.” She says my full name, and I glare at Ryder.
“Hey, Momma.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you are seeing Julian O’Kane?” When I had googled him, I found out that his legal name is Julian. He goes by his middle name, Ryder. Becca had never mentioned this to me. I’ve always known him as Ryder, yet I haven’t asked why. When he feels like telling me, he will.
My brows lift. “You know who he is?” I didn’t even know who he was when I first met him.
“Of course,” she says. “You don’t allow your daughter to move across the world”—I roll my eyes at her dramatics but smile—“and not know who she is going to be spending time with.” I go to open my mouth, but she continues. “Is it serious?” I can hear the hurt in her voice. My mother and I have always been close. She felt like me moving away was going to tear us apart. She would be so hurt if I didn’t tell her what was going on between Ryder and me.
“No,” I tell her to not upset her.
“I Googled him,” she admits, and I laugh. I look up at Ryder, and my laughter dies at the look on his face as he stares down at me with a look I can’t quite explain. His eyes search my face and land on my lips. I lick them without thought.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” my mother says, getting my attention. “I just miss you so much.”
“I miss you too, Momma.”
“I think I have empty nest syndrome.” I laugh again. “It’s true, you know?”
“You’re gonna be okay, Mom,” I assure her.
“When are you coming home?”
“Maybe next month,” I say, not really knowing. It could be three months from now for all I know.
“Will Ryder be joining you?”
“Oh, no. He’s busy with work,” I say quickly. There’s no telling when this thing with him will end. My chest tightens at that thought.
She sighs. “I love you, Ashlyn. Just make sure that man is good to you. You deserve the best.”
“It’s not like that.”
There’s a long pause. “So … he’s like Bradley?” My mother and I have no secrets. She knows that Bradley and I are friends who have sexual relations. She may have not agreed with it, but she never voiced her opinion on that situation.
“Yes,” I say simply.
She sighs loudly. “Well, just be safe. And have a great first day at work.”
“I will, Momma. I’ve gotta go,” I say, trying to cut this short before she says anything else. She has no idea Ryder is listening. “I love you.” I reach out and hang up while she says I love you too.
I sit back in my seat and go to take a sip of my coffee, but the cup stops halfway as I spot Ryder now staring at me. “What?” I ask.
He leans into me, sliding his hand into my hair, and before I can take in another breath, his lips are on mine. He kisses me with force. His lips bruising mine. His teeth nibbling on my bottom lip, and his body pressing into mine. When he pulls away, I’m breathless.
Then without a word, he pulls away and goes back to reading his paper, not saying a word.
Okay. I let out a long breath. My phone dings, and I ignore it. It’s probably just my aunt. I place my phone in my purse as the Escalade comes to a stop. “Thank you for the ride,” I say, clearing my throat. Confusion clouds my mind at what is happening. Bradley and I were never like this. We didn’t pretend to be a couple. When we had dinner or breakfast, it wasn’t a date. It was two friends with the added bonus of sex. How have we crossed that line?
“Anytime,” Milton says, getting out and opening my door.
I turn to look at Ryder, and he’s staring down at his coffee mug with a frown on his face. “What’s wrong?”
He looks up at me. “Why does my coffee cup say I’ve been poisoned?” His voice is full of worry, and his dark green eyes wide.
I take it from his hands and look down at it. I smile. The outside of the cup reads Have a nice day. However, written on the bottom of the inside reads
Jk
Die, fucker!
You’ve been poisoned!
I laugh, the sound breaking some of the tension. “I bought it for Conner on his birthday a few years ago. Should I be hurt that he didn’t think to take it?”
“He’s so ungrateful,” he says with no humor in his voice.
“Right?” I say, smiling. He doesn’t return it. The air between us thickens, and I clear my throat, trying to figure out why things feel so awkward all of a sudden. Why did he kiss me like he did with no explanation? “Thanks for the ride,” I say, sounding like I’m shy. I wanna smack myself.
He looks at me with no smile, just a blank look. An expression I rarely see him wear. I wait another second, expecting him to kiss me goodbye, and then I shake my head. You don’t need a kiss goodbye! I slide out and thank Milton one last time.
“Ashlyn?”
I turn back to look at him through the open door. “Have a great day. I’ll be here to pick you up.” Then without another word, Milton shuts the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
RYDER
She compared me to Bradley!
I couldn’t hide how much that fucking stung. I couldn’t force a fucking smile if my life depended on it. Instead, I kissed her. I thought I could show her that I meant more to her. That I wanted more from her. But when I pulled away, I saw it in her eyes. The confusion. She doesn’t know what she wants—what she’s doing—and I don’t wanna push her. Scaring her away would only hurt us both. So instead, I shut her out like she does me at times.
“Ryder?”
“What?” I snap looking up from the black marble conference table to a set of dark green eyes narrowed on me.
“Am I interrupting your quiet time?” my father asks.
I shake my head as I run my hand through my hair. “No,” I answer with a sigh.
He arches a brow. He doesn’t believe me. I lean back in my chair and run my hand down my unshaven face—tired and my mind consumed by her. The girl has sucked me in.
He lifts his right hand and snaps his fingers. “Everyone out,” he orders.
“I took notes,” Kelly, my assistant, says as she stands from the seat beside me. “I’ll place them in your office for you.”
I nod. “Thanks.”
She leaves, followed by the six men who had been in the meeting.
My father shuts the door after the last guy leaves and looks at me. “You need to come off whatever is bothering you,” he orders.
“Nothing,” I say waving it off.
He lets out a long breath, irritated. He doesn’t like it when personal life interferes with business. “Ryder, I may work twenty-four-seven, but I think I know when my son is having problems,” he states.
“Problems?” It’s more than that. The woman I’m falling for thinks of me as a fuck, and I’m too big of a pussy to tell her otherwise.
“Are you in trouble?” he asks, coming to sit down in the seat Kelly had occupied. I shake my head. “Then what is it?”
“I said nothing.”
“Money? Do you need money?”
I laugh, but it holds no humor. “No.” I have plenty of that.
His brows pull together. “Ryder, you have to tell me …” He stops mid-sentence. His brows rise to his hairline, and his green eyes widen.
“What?” I ask as he looks at me as if I’ve grown two heads.
“It’s a woman,” he states, and I don’t deny it. I’m not like Ashlyn. I can’t deny what I know I feel. And I have feelings for her. “Who is she?” he asks.
“I’d rather not say,” I tell him, shaking my head. I’m not ashamed of Ashlyn. I’m keeping her a secret to protect her. My mother would have a fucking cow, and my father would be against it for his own reasons.
He runs a hand through his hair. “Is she pregnant?”
“What?” I start to shake my head but stop. Is she pregnant? I mean I guess she could be; we haven’t used protection since the first night we had sex.
“Ryder”—he hangs his head—“you have to be careful. Women will take advantage—”
“She’s not like that,” I interrupt him. “And no, she’s not pregnant.” As far as we know, but I’d rather not let him think that’s a possibility.
He sighs as if relieved. “I just don’t want you to be like …” He pauses as if to find the right word, and my jaw tightens.
“Like you,” I finish his sentence. “You don’t want me to knock up someone and get stuck in a loveless marriage.” When my mother had me, my father was twenty-three. They never speak of it, but we all know why they got married.
“That’s not what I was gonna say,” he says, his tone matching mine. He didn’t correct me about the loveless marriage, though. “I don’t regret having kids.”
“Just marrying Mom.”
“Not everything is black and white,” he snaps.
“Then explain it to me,” I demand. My father and I have never had this talk. The one where he tells me that he knocked my mother up and he married her three weeks after they found out I was on the way.
“I …” He sighs heavily. “It’s not that I don’t love your mother.”
“Then what is it?” I ask, really wanting to understand. He goes to open his mouth, but I add, “I love my job, Father. I love this company. And I have worked my ass off to prove to you that, when you decide I’m ready, I’ll do everything in my power to make you proud of me. But I want more,” I say, and his brows pull together. I realize I’m giving him the same speech that Ashlyn gave me. “I want more than a view of Manhattan,” I add. “I want a wife and kids.” His lips lift at the corners as if a daughter-in-law and grandchildren would make him happy, but I can’t tell if it’s real or not. He’s harder to read than my mother is. “And I’m sorry, but I’m not willing to sacrifice one for the other. There’s nothing wrong with wanting it all,” I tell him. Selfish. I want to be selfish.
He nods once. “I don’t pretend to be the best role model, Ryder. I wasn’t always there for you. But that doesn’t mean that I regret my life.” He turns to look out over Manhattan. The city he has slowly taken over as his own. His pride and joy. I wonder at what point in his life that became more important than any living being.
“You did the best you could,” I tell him, dropping my eyes to the conference table.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn’t. I wasn’t there for you, and I wasn’t there for your sister.” He places his hand on my shoulder. “I built this company into something, that you would one day want to run, in hopes to spend every day with you working beside me.” I frown. “I knew that Becca wouldn’t want anything to do with it. And your mother, well, she has her own life. And I’m okay with that.”
I cringe at his words. How can you be with someone who doesn’t want to spend time with you? “Then why are you married?” I ask the question that has always been in the back of my mind. Too afraid to ask.
“Because I took a vow.”
I snort. “It holds no value if the words are meaningless.”
“I loved your mother. I still do.” He swallows, correcting his words. “But people change over time.”
“Could you imagine your life without Mom?” It’s a question that no son should ever ask his father. But nothing is ordinary about our father-son relationship.
He stares at me, his hand still on my shoulder and his face unreadable. “Your mother has been a constant in my life for thirty years.”
“And?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything else.
“And no one lives forever, Ryder.”
His words are like a knife to my chest. No one lives forever. It reminds me of what Ashlyn told me about Romeo and Juliet. How a love so consuming can make you irrational. I want to love someone who can’t breathe if I were to die, Ashlyn had said.
“So you stay married until one of you dies? Then what?” I ask through gritted teeth. “Move on to the next?”
“Love is a weakness,” he says softly. “A weakness that costs you more than any amount of money can fix.” He removes his hand from my shoulder and stands. He buttons the single button to his gray suit jacket as he stares down at me. “I’m not gonna tell you not to fall in love, Ryder. Because maybe your love will be better than mine is. I’m not gonna tell you to pick this job over love either. But what I am going to tell you is this. Make sure that what you feel is love. Because in the end, it’s gonna cost you something. Your dignity. Your pride. Or maybe it’ll be something as simple as thirty years of your life.” I cringe that he can talk so easily about wasting more than half his life. “I may not have been there for every sports game or your daily life, but I have taught you that everything has a price. You just have to make sure it’s worth the cost.” Then he turns around and walks out, leaving me sitting alone looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows of Manhattan.
I’m not sure what I expected that conversation to accomplish, but finding out the truth about him and my mother didn’t help the knot in my stomach. He confirmed everything that Ashlyn said to me last night. How ordinary love is to some people. How a few words and a piece of paper can mean nothing at all.
I’ve never told a woman that I love her because I never have. Well, I have to my sister, but I would lay my life down for hers.
But Ashlyn is different. For five years now, I’ve been married to this job. And I blame it on my parents. I saw how distant they were, and I never wanted that. I didn’t want a woman who would be more wrapped up in her social life than in me. I guess, in a way, I’m kind of selfish too.
I look down at my watch and see it’s a quarter till noon. I shove my chair back and stand, heading toward the door. I have somewhere to be.
ASHLYN
I spent half of my first day at Talia’s filling out paperwork. I also sat through an hour class taught by a man named Thomas, who I remember from sitting behind the front desk the day of my interview. He shows me around the building and gives me a little backstory on the gallery.
“The owner lives in Canada,” he informs me.
I nod. “What made them want to open a gallery in New York?”
“Their daughter was a painter,” he says. “She died when she was seventeen.”
“Oh God, that’s awful.”
He nods softly. “I believe it was cancer. Her dream was to come to New York and become an artist. She wanted to have her paintings showcased all over the world, but she wanted her lifelong dream to start in New York. The family had traveled here for her cancer treatments, and somehow, something went wrong, and she passed, with the fault to the hospital. The parents sued and won then bought this gallery in her name.”
“That’s horrible.” I don’t know what else to say.
“That was over fifty years ago,” he states. “Her parents have since passed, and I believe they handed it down to another relative.”
“Do they come here often?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve never met them.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Five years.”
The front doors open as we make our way back to the desk in the front lobby, my black heels clapping on the floor. I smile in surprise when I see Ryder walk in. He wears the same black dress slacks and white button up shirt that he had on earlier. Only he’s ditched his jacket, and his sleeves are rolled up.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he says, smiling as he pushes his aviators up into his messy yet styled to perfection hair.
“You know that man?” Thomas asks, looking him up and down.
“Ryder,” I say
excitedly.
“Mmmmmhmmm,” Thomas says in approval. “That man can ride me anytime.”
I ignore him. “What are you doing here?” I ask as he reaches us. He wraps his right arm around my stomach as his other hand is behind his back. He pulls me to him, and I look up at him with a smile on my face. Glad he’s in a better mood than he was this morning when he dropped me off. “Thought I wasn’t gonna see you until after work?”
“I thought I’d surprise you for lunch.”
My eyes light up. “I love surprises.”
“Good.” He lets go of me and brings his left hand around to the front, and I squeal like a schoolgirl when he produces red roses.
I lean forward and sniff them. “Smells so good.” I take them from him. “Thank you,” I say.
He finally looks over at Thomas and reaches out his hand. “Ryder O’Kane,” he says.
Thomas actually giggles. “I know who you are, Mr. O’Kane. Nice to meet you.”
Ryder looks back at me. “Hungry?”
“Starving.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RYDER
I couldn’t spend another minute at the office without seeing her. My father would call that weakness; I call it an obsession.
We didn’t even make it to lunch. As soon as we got into my Escalade, we were all over one another. If Milton hadn’t been driving, I would have done her right then and there, but he was, so we decided to go back to my apartment. We weren’t even through my front door, and she already had my pants unbuttoned and my shirt ripped open.
My phone rang loudly in the pocket of my slacks the entire time I fucked her in my bed.
An hour later, I had to find a new shirt to wear since she ripped the buttons off my other one. I watch her slide her skirt up and over her legs and then step into her black heels. She smiles at me as she picks her bra up off the floor.
“I’m gonna make us some coffee,” she says before she walks out.
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