by Ann, Natalie
But she kept giving him the slip. Every time he turned around she moved next to another person. He had gone inside to help Mac carry out Zoe’s gift and when he returned she was gone, nowhere to be found. Lucas explained she had left.
He’d sent her a message, but she didn’t respond. Then he tried calling, only it went straight to voicemail. So that left sitting on the deck and drinking. Exactly what he was doing.
And he was doing a good job of it, alone. Company was the last thing he wanted, least of all from his family right now, the people who knew him better than anyone else.
“Is that any way to greet your father?” Thomas asked, walking over and sitting in the chair next to his son.
“Sorry. I’m not fit for company today.”
“So I see. And saw earlier. Trouble with Kaitlin?” he inquired.
Ryan shrugged, no use confirming or denying it. It wasn’t like his father would leave either way.
“Don’t want to talk about it, then? That’s fine. I’ll just go get a beer and sit here and watch the lake with you.”
Thomas stood up to make his way to the house for his beer when Ryan blurted out, “I’m afraid I’m going to lose her.”
Thomas sat back down and turned to his son. “What did you do?”
Ryan laughed humorlessly. “Nothing. At least nothing today. Something from the past.”
Thomas frowned. “I can’t believe Kaitlin would be upset over one of your ex-girlfriends,” he said, guessing. “I’m sure she has run into a few of them by now.”
“She has. And no, she has never been bothered by them. This is a bit more complicated,” he said solemnly and took a long drink from his beer.
Thomas looked at him thoughtfully, staring longer than necessary. “Does this have anything to do with the summer before you left for Duke?” Thomas asked.
Ryan’s eyes went wide with disbelief, no words coming from his mouth. Then he finally gathered his wits and asked, “Where did that come from?”
“When you have a child of your own someday you will understand. We know everything our children do,” his father informed him, then picked up Ryan’s beer, took a long drag on it and handed it back. “I’m shocked you would have told Kaitlin about Monica and her son, though.”
Ryan accepted the beer back, finished off the bottle and set it back down. He shouldn’t have been surprised his father knew, but he was. No reason pretending or hiding anything now, since it seemed his father had always known. “I didn’t plan on telling her. Or anyone for that matter. We ran into Monica the other day. She made a point of coming to the table and saying hello.”
“I bet she did,” Thomas said with a grimace.
“Her son walked up a few minutes later. I hadn’t seen him since he was a baby. He looks like his father, whom I knew was blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Built similar to me, too. It was a jolt, and she took advantage of it, made a few snide remarks, then left. Kaitlin caught on, though.”
Ryan looked at his father and sighed. “I explained everything that happened back then and she wasn’t mad about it at all. But it triggered something else. Something that I would rather not talk about.” He didn’t want to tell his father the details of his and Kaitlin’s relationship. Those details were private. It was no one’s business.
Thomas nodded. Ryan knew his father wouldn’t press him on this. And if he did, Ryan lips were remaining sealed regardless. “Have you told her you love her yet?”
“No,” Ryan said.
“What are you waiting for?”
He shook his head sadly. “Believe it or not, I planned on it this weekend. I probably shouldn’t have waited this long, but I did. Then everything happened and I lost my chance.” Ryan dropped his shoulders and laid his head back. “She isn’t ready to talk yet.”
Thomas stood up and looked down at Ryan. “Want my advice? If she is the one you want, then don’t wait any longer. When she is ready to talk, lead with those three words first.”
Ryan nodded. “I will. When she is ready. I hope it’s soon.” He looked up at his father, knew that his eyes were getting misty, and didn’t have the energy to hold it back any longer. If he couldn’t cry in front of his father, then he couldn’t do it in front of anyone. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“I don’t think you will,” Thomas said slyly.
Ryan saw his father trying to hide a grin, looked at him curiously, not understanding why he seemed happy all of a sudden and asked suspiciously, “What brought you over here tonight?”
“Besides the looks you two were giving each other today at the party?” When he saw Ryan’s eyebrows rise he laughed. “You two tried to act as normal as possible, but I told you, a parent knows. But that wasn’t what brought me here. I had a visitor of my own tonight.”
Ryan looked at his father, caught another grin and frowned. “Who?”
“Let’s say Kaitlin spent some time staring out at the lake tonight, too.”
***
The next morning Kaitlin knew what she needed to do. She woke up early, dressed and walked out of her parents’ house. A few minutes later she let herself into Ryan’s house, glad he had given her a key weeks ago.
The house was silent. She hated to wake him and was starting to have second thoughts about coming over so early. But she couldn’t wait, not a minute longer.
Thoughts of her mother’s words ran though her head all night, and she’d come to the conclusion the only thing she would have done differently was not wait to tell him she loved him.
She couldn’t take back the way they met. Or what even resulted in her return home in the first place. Although she hated that was how it happened, she couldn’t change anything about it, because then she would never have started dating him. Would have never fallen in love with him.
The most upsetting part of it all was that she’d used him and hated if he felt that way too. But if she heeded her mother’s advice, nothing about that could change. Not without negating everything else between the two of them.
She reminded herself that she had always been honest with Ryan. The entire time. About everything. She’d never deceived him. She really only wanted one thing from him, but she told him that in the beginning.
He was the one that wanted the relationship. He was the one who changed all the rules. And the more Kaitlin thought about it, the more she hoped that it was because Ryan loved her too.
So she decided to take the risk. She was going to tell him she loved him and find out. If he didn’t love her, if it wasn’t what he wanted, then she would survive. She would move on. It would hurt, but she could do it. She was tough. She hoped.
Now she just needed him to wake up. Screw it, she wasn’t waiting. She raced up the stairs two at a time, not even caring if she scared him. She had to see him. He had wanted to talk and now she was ready. Too bad if he was still sleeping.
But when she opened his bedroom door he was nowhere to be found. His bed looked slept in, but he wasn’t in the room. Not in his bathroom, either.
Walking back down the stairs, she went to the deck to see if his boat was gone. Just as she guessed, it was. Maybe he went out for a ride this morning, so she sat in a chair on his deck and decided to wait.
She didn’t have long to wait, not ten minutes later the boat pulled back next to the dock and she watched as he secured it and then jumped out and raced up the lawn toward the house. He saw her sitting there and stopped dead in his tracks. “I was just at your parents’,” he told her, panting slightly.
“I’m not there,” she said, then realized how stupid that sounded.
“So I see.”
“Why were you running?” she asked instead. For the life of her she couldn’t remember anything she was going to say to him originally.
“Because I thought you went back home.” He clarified, “To Albany. I was going after you.”
“Why?” Again with the stupid questions. That wasn’t at all what she meant to say.
“Why did you come here?” he ask
ed instead.
She shrugged, then finally found her courage, pulled her shoulders up straighter and looked him in the eye. She was going to be strong; she as going to tell him. “Because I needed to tell you something.”
She saw him holding his breath, looking anxious. “What?”
“That I love you,” she said simply and watched the air rush out of his lips.
He ran the last few steps toward her, picked her up and swung her around. “I was supposed to say it first.”
“Then you should have.”
Epilogue
“So who’s playing today?” Kaitlin asked Ryan on the drive to Lucas’s house a Sunday afternoon in mid-October.
Ryan looked over at Kaitlin, a smile tugging at his lips. They had just gotten back from a glorious five days in San Juan. They needed that break. He never thought it would have taken six weeks for them to work out a good time for a small vacation. “The Giants and the Cowboys,” he replied.
“Is this a playoff game?” she asked with a frown.
He smirked. “No.”
“Then why is he having a party for it?”
“Don’t know much about football, do you? They’re big rivals, so it’s a big game.” He chuckled at how disgruntled she looked sitting next to him.
“I’ve never been into football much,” she defended herself, sitting up straighter in the seat, then looked over and winked. “But I know this really hot ex-quarterback that used to play at Duke. Does that count?”
God, he loved her. “You get points for that. You also know an ex-receiver from Penn State.”
“I do? Who’s that?”
He shook his head. “Mac. He played football in college, too.”
“He did?” she asked astonished. “I had no idea. Did you two know each other back then? Did you play against each other?”
“No, we didn’t.” He pulled his car in behind several that were already at Lucas’s house. “Looks like we’re the last ones here?”
Kaitlin climbed out and looked around. “I didn’t know my brothers were going to be here.”
“Everyone is here. Even your parents.” He reached for her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. “Don’t worry, no one expects you to understand the game. Just look at the guys in uniform like Cori does.”
She punched him lightly in the arm.
At halftime, Ryan’s mother walked into the room with six envelopes in her hand. “Can I have everyone’s attention please?” She waited until the Harper brothers and their parents looked in her direction. Thomas, Mac, and Jack were already smiling, along with their wives. Ryan stood up, and Kaitlin looked confused.
“Before everyone takes a break, I asked my mom to help me hand out the winnings,” Ryan announced. Michele walked over and handed Lucas, Mac, Jack, Ben and Alec their envelopes, then tucked his father’s winnings into her pocket causing everyone to laugh. “I can pony up when I lose. Of course, I didn’t actually lose in this case,” Ryan said.
He turned to look at Ben, laughing. “Guess when you made that bet you didn’t expect it to be your sister, did you?” He had no choice but to push Ben’s buttons, heaven knows Ben had pushed enough of his in the last six months. “Well, you were right—not only did she give me a run for my money. But she brought me to my knees.”
Kaitlin gasped and cupped her hands in front of her mouth as her eyes popped out of her head when Ryan knelt on one knee in front of her. “Don’t ever expect me to be brought to my knees again,” he said joking, then grabbed her hand, kissed it, and slipped the large diamond ring surrounded by multiple smaller ones on her finger.
He saw the tears pooling in her eyes just as she shouted out, “Yes.” The entire room erupted in laughter.
“I didn’t even ask,” he said, laughing and fighting back his own tears.
She threw her arms around him, almost knocking him to the floor. “I wanted to say it first.”
“What is it with you always having to be the first?” He held her tight, kissed her on the lips, and whispered for her ears only, “Then again, being the first was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
More Books
The Road Series
Lucas and Brooke’s Story- Road to Recovery
Jack and Cori’s Story – Road to Redemption
Mac and Beth’s Story- Road to Reality
Ryan and Kaitlin’s Story- Road to Reason
The All Series
Ben and Presley’s Story – All or Nothing (coming summer 2015)
Phil and Sophia’s Story – All of Me (coming fall of 2015)
Alec and Brynn’s Story – All the Way (coming winter of 2015
