Fabric rustled as Ryan sifted through the mess. “If you packed something to sleep in, I can’t find it,” he huffed, sounding very uneasy about the discovery.
With great effort, I pushed myself up on my elbows. Ryan continued to paw through the many dresses and blouses Emily had packed, missing my amused smirk. “Worried you won’t be able to resist me if we sleep naked?” It was a joke, but Ryan looked pained at the thought. I collapsed back on the bed and laughed, wincing as my head stung.
“Why would you pack all these clothes but nothing sensible? I’m not saying I don’t want to see you in a tight, short dress, Red, but where’s the comfort?”
I laughed harder, which made my head hurt more and confused Ryan further. He didn’t get it. I needed to spell it out for him, but damn, did I want to record this moment. His face would keep me sane when he travelled the world without me.
“Emily packed my clothes, Ryan.”
He stared back at me, his face void of any comprehension.
“I didn’t know I was coming here. She packed to seduce, believing I wouldn’t want to seduce.”
“That doesn’t explain the lack of sleepwear.”
I sighed. “She didn’t want us wearing clothing to bed.” I let the words hang in the air and waited for my meaning to compute.
Understanding finally dawned in his gorgeous eyes. He frowned. Not the reaction I’d been anticipating. “You’re blaming me,” he muttered matter-of-factly.
“Am I?” I really wasn’t.
“Yes, if I hadn’t—” He paused, eyes fixed on my expectant face.
“If you hadn’t what?” It took a great deal of restraint to not laugh or betray that I really had no clue where this conversation was going.
“Nope, I’m not apologising. Had I not twisted Emily’s arm, you wouldn’t be here. You’d still be avoiding my every attempt to reach you, and that’s far more painful than you lying naked beside me.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?” His brow furrowed, his confusion almost comical to my concussed brain.
“I wasn’t sure if it was solely one of Em’s mad plans. Now I know all of you – well, maybe not Jared – were involved.”
“I thought you knew,” Ryan said, the words released on a stunned exhale. I grinned. He groaned. “Did you suspect?”
“Yes, but thanks for the confirmation.”
For a moment, he just stared at me and I could almost see the cogs turning in his head. He shook himself off and picked up the pizza. “We should eat.” His voice sounded almost robotic.
My muscles felt like lead, but I forced myself up and kicked Emily’s suitcase open. As I suspected, she’d packed sensible clothes for herself. Thankfully, we wore similar sizes. I freed a black t-shirt from her messy pile and pulled it over my head.
Next, I rifled through my suitcase, searching for some underwear. All she’d packed were lacy thongs in various colours. Oh well, better than nothing.
“Is it cold?” I asked, pulling the material up my legs.
Silence met my question. Suspecting he just had his mouth full, I glanced up at Ryan. He held a slice of pizza and stared at me like I was the last macaroon on the plate. His eyes devoured me with hunger.
I got dressed. Wasn’t this meant to happen the other way around?
“Ryan!” I shouted. He startled and almost dropped the pizza on the very white sheets.
His eyes flitted between my chest and my face. “I think that might be worse, Red.”
“It’s a t-shirt. How is it worse?”
He pointed to the mirror, trying and failing to avert his eyes.
I hadn’t paid any attention to the t-shirt I chose; I’d just grabbed something soft. By some fluke, I’d pulled a Rhiannon t-shirt from Emily’s suitcase. And then I’d paired it with a lacy strip of fabric.
Ryan took one look at my guilt-ridden expression and laughed. “It’s fine, Red. Honestly, I needed to practise some restraint anyway.” His eyes scanned my body again; my skin tingled in their wake. Catching himself, Ryan covered his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Who would have thought our band merch would be such a turn on?”
I had no answers and no clue how to make the situation better, so I kept my mouth firmly shut. I couldn’t remember a time when I felt more awkward. This concussion had a lot to answer for, leaving us with nothing to do but talk.
“Do me a favour. Get under the covers and distract me.” Peeling the blankets back, he waited, his eyes skittering around the room, focusing on anything but me.
Had I not felt like such a fish out of water, I might have laughed at him. As it was, nerves clogged my throat, and my brain set itself on a loop that had not passed through my mind since I lost my virginity at seventeen.
Yanking the blankets up to my torso, I lay back against the pillows. Ryan focused intently on eating the slice of pizza, and I tried to suppress my bizarre reaction to sharing a room with an attractive man. An attractive man I’d already had sex with. Why the hell was this situation any different?
It couldn’t be the boyfriend part of the equation. I’d had boyfriends before. But then I’d not expected any of them to last from the outset. With Ryan… everything felt different.
Ryan shut the lid on the pizza and settled in next to me. We lost track of time talking, diving into each other’s likes and dislikes, our passions for our jobs and the places we’d most like to visit. It was almost like he had a fact file of dating questions stored away in his head. I laughed at him for it, but it came in handy since my brain wasn’t capable of thinking straight.
My eyes were drooping when he asked, “Would you ever want to be famous?”
The question froze the breath in my lungs and woke me up.
What was I meant to say to that?
The truth was hell no, but I didn’t want Ryan to think he had to give up or restrain his career to keep me. We didn’t even know if we’d last beyond the long distance. It was too soon for life-changing answers.
Even so, my answer would always be no. I’ve seen it go wrong too many times. I’d seen actors barricade themselves in their trailers, worn out from having to be constantly available. The fans sprawled out on the pavement outside studios for hours on end, the press watching their every move. It would feel like a fishbowl, a very big fishbowl, but still a cage with spectators.
With Ryan, it would be different. I wasn’t the one under the spotlight; I would be at the edges. It might not affect me the same way.
The glaring blonde popped into my head. I should have been at the edges tonight too, and yet I’d been attacked. Surely, that wasn’t normal. It was just a tense atmosphere, and it made people crazy. Ryan promised it wasn’t something Rhiannon had ever dealt with before.
I let silence fall and listened as Ryan’s breathing evened out. The overhead light was blazing at me, so I shut my eyes rather than find the energy to get up and shut it off.
Fatigue itched to wipe the floor with me. The headache had receded to a constant pulse in the back of my head, but my eyes hurt from squinting to keep them open, and it felt like someone had replaced my blood with cement.
“I don’t think you actually need to wake me every hour,” I mumbled more for my own good than because I expected him to hear me.
“I’m still doing it,” he said, surprising me.
I didn’t have the energy to waste arguing with him or chasing my thoughts in circles. Instead, I settled into the heat of his body, pushed my doubts away and revelled in the fact that this was a thing I could now enjoy.
Chapter Twenty-Six
During the night, Ryan had taken far too much joy in waking me nearly every hour. He called it retribution.
Now, I was laced with painkillers, ready to leave, when Emily walked in freshly showered. It raised eyebrows, and she quickly shut down any serious or light-hearted questions. Follow up later, Alys.
After making a quick stop at Ryan’s flat, our awkward drive home began with me sprawled out in the back se
at of Emily’s tiny car. Ryan had tried to insist I sit up front, but squashing a six-foot-two man into the back of a Fiat? I wasn’t that evil!
“Does this mean I control the music?” Ryan asked, reaching for Emily’s phone.
“Not so fast, lover boy.” Emily threw the device and its charging cable back to me without taking her eyes off the road. “Best friend rules the music.” Considering I hadn’t been allowed to so much as touch the smart screen yesterday, I’d write her words off as guilt.
“Do I get any requests, being the best friend’s boyfriend?”
“I’ll consider all requests, but careful, Mr Rock Star. We wouldn’t want you to reveal any lame musical influences,” I teased.
Ryan turned to Emily. “Does Alys have any lame favourites I should be aware of?”
Before Emily could answer, I selected a song from The Outfield and turned the sound up until Ryan would have to shout over it. I wasn’t really worried that she’d divulge all my deepest secrets, but Ryan could evidently be persuasive.
He turned the volume down and shifted in his seat until he could see us both.
“She used to be an avid Spice Girls follower,” the traitor said, her mischievous eyes fixed on mine through the rear-view mirror.
“I wasn’t alone in that childhood love.”
“I know, but I wasn’t the one that insisted on being Ginger Spice every Halloween,” she said without freaking out that she’d had to overtake a double-decker bus. She’d spent most of the drive into the city muttering explicitly.
“Shut up, Posh.”
Ryan grinned back at me, his blue eyes shining.
“She regularly pretends to be one of the Wilson sisters too. She belts out Heart ballads when she thinks I’m out,” Emily added, laughing at me.
“Heart aren’t lame.” They weren’t. Their voices were incredible and their music addictive. I was impressed that two sisters could work in a band together and not kill each other.
“Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.”
“I’m going to have to agree with Alys on that one,” Ryan said, earning a sharp look from Emily.
“I see how it is. Now that you’ve got her, you think you don’t need to keep me sweet?”
Curiosity had me leaning forward in my seat. “What exactly did he offer you to set all this up?”
“They’re employing me as Matt’s assistant for the international tour.” Her smile in the mirror turned gleeful.
“You sold me out for a free travel pass?” I’m proud to say I contained the shriek that should have accompanied my betrayal.
“You wanted him. I just made sure you’d have company while my favourite musical geniuses worked.”
“What about your job?”
Emily shrugged. “I gave my notice last week. I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t feel the same anymore.”
I could understand and even relate. One bonus of TV was the constant change; it kept you on your toes, engaged and constantly growing. Emily’s job didn’t offer that as much.
“When does the tour start?” My chest squeezed tight; Ryan’s silence put me on edge.
“We fly out on the twenty-seventh of December,” he said, frowning at Emily like she’d thrown him to the wolves, which she had.
Meaning we only had just over two weeks before I lost him again. That wasn’t enough time, was it? My heart raced. Two weeks to learn to trust him. Easy. I swallowed. “For how long?”
“Six months,” Emily answered when Ryan failed to produce the simple answer. “I thought you knew. They announced it months ago.”
Had I done a search on the band once since I’d met Ryan, I probably would have known, but I’d been avoiding him and then I’d stupidly decided that he’d share anything important with me the minute I became his girlfriend. Even so, there was nothing I could do about it. I knew ours would be a long-distance relationship, so it was pointless getting wound up about it – or so I tried to convince my stupid galloping heart.
“How are you going to assist the band when you’re sleeping with the drummer?” I asked, moving the conversation away from me and my fumbling emotions.
“I’m not sleeping with him anymore.” Emily brushed off her attachment to Jared with a flick of her wrist.
Conversation lulled after that. We all retreated into our heads while the music played on unchecked. Emily sped down the M5 in the middle lane on autopilot, dodging overtaking lorries and slow cars.
I could feel Ryan studying me, searching for visible signs that I’d pull a one-eighty on him after the tour announcement. Was it enough to make me change my mind? The long-distance issue was always a big fat con against him, but trying meant accepting that it would be a regular part of my life with him.
Of course, that didn’t mean that I’d been prepared for such a prolonged period of absence with countries and time zones between us, or that I’d expected it to come so soon. The pressure amped up considerably, knowing we only had two weeks to figure out if we had something worth the effort of long distance. It didn’t feel like enough time.
Ryan reached back and pried my hand loose from its death grip on Emily’s phone. He squeezed, trying to impart some calming reassurance with his eyes alone. Bizarrely, it worked. His smile did funny things to my insides, beyond the nervous butterflies I’d become accustomed to in his presence.
In what must have been a split-second decision, Emily dodged between two lorries, taking the slip road for Gretna Green services to the soundtrack of blaring horns.
“Geez, Emily. Try not to wreck the car!” I shouted.
“Sorry, it snuck up on me.” She took the roundabout on two wheels.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Really need to pee.” She pulled into a space and yanked up the hand brake. “You coming?” She threw the door open before I could reply. I watched, bemused, as she jogged across the car park.
“What did we do?” Ryan asked, watching her go.
“The fuck-me eyes might have scared her. What if you’d tried to jump me while she was doing seventy?”
“Now there’s an idea.” I shrieked as he launched his body into the back seat. Laughter stunted Ryan’s progress, and he ended up face down in my lap in what must have been the most uncomfortable position. I patted his shaking shoulders.
“It’s tight back here,” he said, shifting himself into the seat beside me. His legs still dangled through the gap, probably a wise decision considering his seat had been pushed as far back as it would go. The fact that he fit himself through the gap had been impressive enough.
“Did you think I took the back seat just to defy you?”
“The thought had crossed my mind, yes.”
“A meaner woman would make you switch seats with me to prove a point.”
He smiled, leaning over to kiss me softly. Then, pressing his forehead to mine, he said, “You’re not going to change your mind, are you?”
“I promised to give us a chance and I will.”
“Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’?”
“But I don’t know how we could ever work out without a few compromises.”
“Understood. That’ll have to be good enough for now.”
“It won’t be easy for me. Trust has never got me that far in the past.” I forced the words out past the lump of fear clogging my throat. Admitting I had a weakness was painful, but the least I could do was warn him.
Ryan unclipped my belt and pulled me into his side, tucking me beneath his arm.
“Emily alluded to your bad run with men. I’ll listen if you ever decide to share, but I won’t force the information out of you.”
Ever a gentleman. Relaxing into the warmth of his hold, I found myself opening my mouth to tell him. If I wanted this relationship to be different, I needed to change. And that meant letting myself be vulnerable and honest. And if it ended up ruining me, so be it.
“My longest relationship was the year I turned eighteen. We were together a year, and th
rough most of it, people close to me told me he was cheating with one girl or another. I chose not to believe them, and I lost some really good friends through it.” I swallowed hard, absently picking at a loose thread on Ryan’s jumper. He freed it from my restless fingers before I could unpick the set, squeezing my fingers in reassurance or encouragement, I’m not sure which.
“I’d ask him about it every time someone made a new claim, but he’d just laugh it off and accuse me of not trusting him.” I paused, blinking rapidly to prevent the growing pool of liquid from falling. My mind still threw up a clear picture of his well-rehearsed look of hurt. I hated that it still affected me after all these years. Not because he’d hurt me, but because it was a reminder of how naive I’d once been.
Ryan drew lazy circles on my hand with his thumb, following some unheard tempo. It was kind of soothing, not quite numbing the remembered pain, but the reminder that he was present and hopefully different allowed for breathing room.
“It took me most of the year to really open my eyes and start looking for proof, but I didn’t have to try hard to find it. With only eighty kids in our year group, that kind of drama has an expiration date. People got a bit tired of it all. I ended up in the same club in Carmarthen as him one night and saw him pick up some random girl. I guess his local choices had run dry.
“It didn’t really set me up for a free and daring university experience, you know? I’d try one thing or another, give chances like there was no tomorrow trying to put it all behind me, but I always ended up hurt or embarrassed. Ghosting, cheating on me and other girls, disappearing acts. I guess it got to a point where I lost faith in humanity.” I shrugged, relieved to have my issues laid bare but no happier for it.
“No wonder you fought me,” Ryan said, staring straight ahead at the headrest.
“I’m not saying I believe you and I will end any differently. But the running is tiring and nothing else has worked, so I’ll try.”
“We’ve got plenty of time to figure this out.” Cupping my jaw, Ryan leant towards me. “You’re important to me. Just give me time to prove it.”
Chasing Alys Page 19
