The next morning, I dropped my bags—filled with my food, my
phone, and all my extra crap I brought with me every day—on the floor right by the door.
Because sitting there at seven in the morning, on top of my desk in a small glass jar, with a white ribbon wrapped around the stem, was a bright orange rose.
Just… sitting there. Just waiting.
For me?
There was only one person in the building who could have put it there.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind.
He’d upped his game from bringing me donuts to… a flower. A flower that made my throat tighten up even as I told myself that I knew why he’d done it.
Because of the guilt.
The first flower anyone had ever bought me was because of guilt. I had to let out a deep breath at that.
I had told him—hadn’t I told him?—that I wanted to go back to us being what we should have been from the beginning?
I had told him. And here he was making things complicated, giving my brain ideas that I had to throw in the trash before I thought about them. Here he was just… messing with me. Trying to pull me into a place that I didn’t want to be anywhere close to anymore.
I should have let it go, or should have pretended I didn’t see it, but… I didn’t do that.
I was tired. And worn out. And just… freaking tired.
Just like I dropped my stuff, I left it there and walked right back out of my room. One foot in front of the other. One step in front of the other.
Taking me closer and closer. I barely cleared the hallway into the main part of the building when I spotted Rip standing by the tool chest, rifling through the drawers.
I wasn’t sure why my heart started picking up speed, but it did. With each step, it got faster and faster, despite my brain telling it that it needed to calm down. It meant nothing.
It was a nice, but forced and completely unnecessary, gesture. And I didn’t want him to waste his time doing it again.
“Mr. Ripley,” I called out, knowing I shouldn’t after our conversation yesterday, but also not backing down from the promise I had made myself.
He glanced up immediately, shooting me that laser-like gaze. Today, he had on a navy blue compression shirt, and his coveralls were already on. The thing that caught me off guard was the fact that he didn’t look annoyed at me calling him the m-word. What he did look was too calm. Way too easygoing.
Even though I was positive enough he’d left the flower, I was going to punish myself by asking anyway. “Did you leave that rose in my room?”
He straightened from where he’d been slightly bent over the tool chest. His expression stayed that eerie calm one. He answered in the way I knew he would: directly. “Yeah.”
Yeah.
My heart went even faster, but I ignored it. It wasn’t like this was news. Who the hell else would it have been?
I held my breath. Leave me alone. “Thank you, but you didn’t have to. I told you yesterday—”
“I didn’t forget,” he cut me off.
Hell. “But you don’t have to feel guilty or try to make anything up to me—”
“I’m not trying to make anything up to you,” he butted in again.
That got me to stop talking. Because… why else would he do it? For the hell of it? He suddenly wanted to buy someone a rose, and I just happened to be the only woman he could get one for?
He slammed the drawer closed with his hip. “You liked it?”
Did I like it? Why the hell wasn’t my heart slowing down any? “Yes,” I told him truthfully. “It’s beautiful, but you don’t have to—”
“Good,” he cut me off for the third time. Oh, man. “Mr. Ripley—”
“Rip.”
We weren’t going there. “Please don’t buy me anything anymore.” His grunt wasn’t what I would ever call convincing.
“There’s nothing to feel bad about,” I kept going.
He just grunted again, but he kept looking at me, kept that expression on his face too. The one I didn’t know what it meant.
“I need to get started on my day, but all I wanted to do was thank you and tell you that you didn’t have to,” I said.
Ripley’s gaze seemed to shift over my face before settling on my ears. He was looking at my heart earrings. I just knew it.
I gave him a tight smile I was well aware he would know was fake, but oh well. Just as I turned around to head back to my room to start my day like I had said, the man called out behind me.
“What time are you leaving today?”
I stopped but didn’t turn around to look at him. Leave me alone. “The latest I can stay tonight is six. I have plans.” And by plans, I meant a date. With a total stranger.
I didn’t miss how he didn’t explain why he was asking.
But honestly, I went back to my room so fast, I didn’t get a chance to wonder why any longer than I had to.
I KNEW IT HAD BEEN AN EXTRA DUMB IDEA TO SHOW UP TO THE BAR
when the second question my date asked was “How old are you?” He was a decent-looking guy.
My date leaned back in his chair and muttered, “Huh,” his expression funny after I told him.
Something about it didn’t sit right with me, that or I was just picking up on things I should have let go. “Why?”
“Thought you were younger,” the man had the balls to respond with.
I raised my eyebrows, positive I definitely wasn’t liking where this was going, but… I could give him the benefit of the doubt. As much as I had been telling myself I was fine, I hadn’t been. Not really. “What? Am I too old?” I tried to joke.
He shrugged.
Shrugged?
Was he for real?
The partial smile I had on my face just fell right off. “How old are you?”
He was still watching me a little too closely as he said, “Thirty-four.” Thirty-four? Thirty-four and I was too old?
“You look younger than twenty-six though.”
“Oh.” I hoped I sounded as sarcastic as I felt. “Thanks?” Man, I was grumpy. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so grouchy before.
His eyes slid around the bar for a moment before coming back to me, looking me over like… well, I wasn’t sure what, but I didn’t like it.
“So,” I tried grasping for straws at that point because all I wanted was to go home. All I had to do was text Lenny a message that said RED and she’d call and save me. The second that option filtered through my brain, I reminded myself that I was supposed to be trying. I had to try. I had to want someone else to buy me flowers, and not because they’d hurt my feelings. “Have you been married before?” I asked him.
The man snickered, his gaze moving around the room again. “For about a minute ten years ago. Dumbest mistake of my life. You?”
I shook my head, not sure how to take his comment about it being a mistake.
“Thank God,” he mumbled, making a face as he said it like there would have been something wrong with me being divorced.
I opened my mouth just as the chair beside mine got dragged backward. My hands stopped, and I looked over, wondering who was taking the chair without asking, when my eyes zeroed in on the knuckles holding onto the back of the seat. I might have been able to recognize his fingers even if l
etters on knuckles wasn’t something everyone had.
Especially not on knuckles connected to dinner plate-sized hands… hands connected to wrists that were covered by a familiar elastic, tight shirt.
I was pretty sure my mouth must have been partially opened as Rip fell down into the seat hard, his legs spreading wide in a V-shape instantly, his attention straight on the man across from… us.
Across from us. Ah.
What was he doing here?
“Is this over now?” my boss drawled easily, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back in the chair, somehow making himself look even bigger by spreading out.
The other man frowned. “You lost?”
“Rip,” I started to say, ignoring the man I was supposed to be on a date with, if you could even call it a date since he’d made me pay for my
Sprite. “What are you doing here?”
The other man glanced at me. “Who the fuck is this?”
I ignored him again, but Rip wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was staring at my date with a deceptively lazy expression. But there wasn’t a single thing easygoing about his next words. “Time for you to go.”
Time for him to go?
The other man made another face before focusing on me and asking, angrily, “You got a boyfriend?”
Me? A boyfriend?
“I’m none of your business,” Rip kept talking. “You can go home now.”
I wasn’t sure why I reached over, but I did, and touched my boss’s forearm, earning his attention. “What are you doing here?” I just about hissed at him.
Those blue-green eyes slid toward me, still lazily, and his cheek moved just enough to tell me that might have been considered a smile. “Ending this bullshit-ass date you’re on,” he stated, confusing me even more.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” the man asked with a scowl.
His words triggered Rip, because his gaze swept over to the side and he gave the guy a blank look I was pretty familiar with. “You.”
“Me?”
“She’s not interested,” Rip claimed calmly.
The guy decided to include me in the conversation again by swiveling his gaze toward me. “Is he for real?”
I decided to ignore him and tapped my fingers on the bigger man’s forearm. “What are you doing here?”
That cheeky expression fell off, and he just… stared at me. All of him just… focused. Too focused. On me.
“Are you his fucking girl?” the other guy demanded, his pitch going higher.
His girl? Rip’s girl?
My “no” came out at the same time Rip said, “What do you think?”
What do you think?
Was this man, who I hadn’t spoken to in two weeks up until yesterday, implying that I was his girl?
“No,” I told Rip, tapping his forearm again through the material of his compression shirt. “What are you talking about?”
“She is?”
Rip’s expression didn’t falter for a second, but it was the man he had his attention on. “Did I stutter?”
“Are you fucking serious?” the man spat, shoving his chair back before giving me an angry look. “You know what? I don’t have time to deal with this kind of shit. You can fuck off, and she can—”
Rip got to his feet so fast, it was a blur. “You like having all those teeth in your mouth? Or you good with going home, missing a few of them?”
“Fuck—” the other man started.
“Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to finish that sentence,” Rip spit slowly. “I’ve broken fuckboys like you for fun, and now you’re giving me a reason to. You don’t wanna go there. Trust me.”
He’d broken— Oh shit.
“Fuck you and—” the other guy started to say.
I pushed my chair back instantly, my hand going around the inside of Ripley’s elbow, giving it a tug.
He didn’t move, but I knew he’d felt me when his eyes shifted over to look at me with this crazy expression on his face. That hit me straight in the heart.
“You know, I think it’s time I left.” I squeezed Rip. “We left.”
The guy snarled as he took a step back, paused for a moment, and then took another, like one hadn’t put enough distance between the two men. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I’m done. You need to tell your man it’s you looking to fuck around.”
I could have argued with him or explained that Ripley’s wasn’t my man. He wasn’t anyone’s man. Much less mine.
But…
I didn’t really care that much, especially not when he’d made me feel old and was overall just kind of a prick and a reminder why I had no business finding a date on an app used for mostly hooking up.
Because the only person I could blame for tonight was myself. I had set this date up. I had downloaded the app two nights ago and had agreed to go out with the first person who had invited me. Because I had told myself I was trying to move on.
The jerk skirted around the table, and at the last minute, raised his middle finger at us before basically tucking his tail in and speed walking out of the bar.
“What are you doing?” I hissed at Rip the second the other guy was out of view.
Rip stood there and looked at me, his expression back to blank. “He was a fucking tool, Luna.”
Okay, he had been a tool, but… “If he was or not, what are you doing here?” I asked him, shoving my chair even further back and pretending like I didn’t see the other bar-goers nearby standing there, looking over at us. I was done. I was going home.
“I came to make sure you were all right.”
I was not going to blow his comment out of proportion. I wasn’t, and because I wasn’t, I was able to keep myself nice and calm as I asked, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Rip ignored my words but watched as I grabbed my phone and keys and stuck them into my pockets. “Where’s your car?”
I took a step back. “I didn’t drive.”
He took a step forward, making his way around the table as he said, “Good. I’ll give you a ride home.”
Nope, I still wasn’t going to overthink his comment or his offer. I had no idea what kind of game he was playing—or even when he’d decided he wanted to start playing games, especially by referring to me as his girl all of a sudden—but it wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t going to get all sucked up into him being nice to me now, then, later on, decide he didn’t want to have anything to do with me afterward. I couldn’t handle it. I wouldn’t.
“Thank you for the offer, but I don’t need a ride. I’ll just get a car—” A hand landed on the small of my back a second before Rip started steering me toward the door, oblivious to the way I was looking up at
him like I had no clue who the hell he was.
Because I didn’t.
I didn’t know who this man pushing me through the bar was, showing up and ruining an already crappy date, implying I was his girl, being all nice and protective and jealous and—
I wasn’t doing this. I wasn’t putting myself in this position. I already knew I was weak where Rip was concerned, and that’s why I had to shut this down the instant we were outside.
“You eat already?” he asked just as he led me through the door, the bouncer giving me a curious expression since he’d been seeing me so often lately.
“No.” I tried to slow my steps, but that hand on my back just kept me right on marching through the parking lot. “Rip, I really don’t need a
ride. Look, I’m just going to get a—”
“You in the mood for a burger?” he asked just as I spotted his truck parked maybe fifteen feet away under the lights of the lot.
I looked up at him over my shoulder and told my gut to back off. “I’m trying to talk to you. Could you listen, please?”
That had him stopping, his hand sweeping up my spine to stop at my shoulder, and I’d swear he didn’t just look down at me, but his body seemed to curl into mine as his eyebrows went up and he said, “I always listen to you.”
I wasn’t ready for that comment—not right then and, more than likely, not for the rest of my life, especially not when the person saying those words was this man.
The hand on my shoulder trekked even further up, cupping the nape of my neck in a warm, strong grip. “You want to waste money taking a taxi and you’re trying to get out of eating with me, am I right?” he asked softly.
Hell.
Hell, hell, hell.
What I knew without a doubt had to be a finger came up to the top of my ear, curling around the shell so lightly it almost tickled. “You told me you forgave me,” he accused me in that same tissue-paper voice.
I could do this. I could handle it. “I do forgive you, Rip. I get that people say things they regret later on.”
His expression got cloudy. “I do regret what I said, but you’re missing the part where I told you I didn’t mean it. I said I was sorry I didn’t tell you from the beginning I knew about your family.”
He did mean it. Everything had some kind of root of truth beneath it.
Everything.
And even if this didn’t…. that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want to go through something like this again. Not ever. Not with him.
That light little touch moved over the shell of my ear again, making that tingle start at the base of my spine. Warm breath washed over my forehead as he curled into me even more. “Whatever the hell you might think, you’re the last person I would ever want to hurt. Why are you fighting this?” he asked, sweeping his finger again over my ear and dragging it across the studs at my earlobe.
I could be strong. I could be brave. I could do this. “I’m not… fighting it. I’m just being real. I don’t want you to waste your time—”
“You’re never a waste of my time.”
Where was this coming from? “Rip—”
This mountain of a man took his other hand off my back and settled it on my throat, managing to cup it between his hands before I realized what he was doing. Lucas Ripley dipped his face even closer to mine… so close I tried to move backward so I could get a good look at him, but he didn’t let that happen. He brought his mouth, his face, his eyes, some of the things I liked the most about him, inches from me. His mouth a lunge away…
What the hell was I doing thinking about that? Jeez.
“You haven’t listened to a single fucking thing I’ve said, have you? Seen a single thing I’ve done? You the only person who hasn’t put shit together?”
I breathed in through my nose and heard it rattle right out of me.
“I don’t know how to give you flowery words and shit like that, Luna. I don’t know how to tell you what you want or need to hear. It’s been a long fucking time since I’ve given a fuck about anybody. Do you understand that?”
I could do this. I could—
“I don’t like the idea of you sitting next to some random asshole who wants to get in your pants.”
And that wasn’t at all what I was expecting him to say. “What?” I didn’t mean to whisper.
His finger came up, and the pad of his thumb dragged across my cheekbone. “Don’t like the idea of you going on a date with somebody.” The pad moved back the way it had come, and he said low, “Can’t fucking stand it. Just when I thought I couldn’t get more pissed…”
He… He…
Was… jealous?
“I get that I fucked up, and I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know about me being a Reaper. Wasn’t sure I ever wanted you to know about me being in a club like that. You said you grew up in San Antonio. The club had a bad rep there, but I got out of it. I’m sorry I didn’t fucking tell you that night in your bed when you said something, but like you said, that shit’s on me. But I want it back anyway.”
Like an idiot, I asked, “What do you want back?”
“I want my goddamn Luna back,” he breathed, stealing the air from my lungs. “I don’t want you to leave me alone. I want you bugging my ass for random shit again. I wanna see your fucking face first thing in the morning, even if you don’t bring me my coffee anymore. I wanna make you something to eat so you don’t end up with Salmonella from that shit
you try to cook,” he said in this strangely calm voice that seemed like the opposite of what someone using a jackhammer on my entire existence would have been.
And he told me carefully, too carefully, “Two fucking weeks and I want it back. You gave me these pieces of you I know you haven’t given to anybody else, and they’re mine. You can’t take ’em back. I need them more than you do, you hear me?”
I took a breath in through my nose, ignoring that thing bubbling and living under and inside of me. But as I stood there, watching him, the distrust running so fiercely through me as my brain called out liar, liar, freaking liar, something big and hard formed in my chest. This knot. This… prediction. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be of, but it was going to be something… something I wasn’t positive I was ready to handle after all.
The hands on my throat slid down to cup my shoulders, and it was his turn to let out a deep breath. “I know I fucked up, and I can tell you’re not gonna make this easy on me, and I get it. But I want you to eat a burger with me in the meantime, yeah? Get some ice cream with me. You promised the day of the wreck. Remember?”
Of course I remembered. How could I forget?
Rip took a step back, and I still didn’t say anything. He took another step and, still, nothing.
Then another and another, until he stopped right before the door and gave me an intent look as he said, “Let’s go eat a fucking burger and some ice cream, baby girl. There’s nothing for you to be scared of. You can trust me.”
I wasn’t sure about all of that. I wasn’t even sure about part of it, especially the part of my head that needed to make rational decisions.
But I had never been one to hold grudges. That wasn’t what this had been about in the first place.
And… I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe him so bad it burned my throat and everything else south of the border. I wanted to trust myself even though I wasn’t sure I could.
But this need in me to try, to believe, burned the brightest flame in my chest. In all of me, really.
Trust him?
“I got you,” he said with so much conviction there was no way to ignore it.
When we went to go eat a burger and two ice cream cones a few minutes later, I wasn’t sure how I felt.
What I did know was him telling me to trust him was on repeat in my head the rest of the night.
