by Amy Marie
“Oh my God, Had. Did you see how sexy Ryder looks today? He gained some hot muscle over the summer.” Emie quietly gushes over the most popular guy in our class.
At over six feet tall and pulled in all the right directions black hair, with the bluest eyes you have ever seen, he makes the rest of the guys in our class look like boys. He is on the varsity football team but tends to get into trouble. Because he is the quarterback, and he helps our crappy team win most of their games, teachers tend to look the other way when he does whatever the hell he wants.
He walks past us, eyeing my body up and down, before a sideways smirk crosses his lips. His jeans fit snugly to his body, and his long fingers grasp the black straps of his backpack over his hunter green shirt. I try not to smile.
“He’s alright,” I answer her, shrugging. “Nothing to write home about.”
“Ugh, Hadley,” she says annoyed. “You really are blind, you know that?”
I leave her at the door to the locker room and walk the rest of the way to art.
I feel at home as I enter the art room. I’ve spent a lot of time in here over the past three years. I had the chance to go to Chicago High School of the Arts this year but decided I wanted to stay here. I’d like to say it was because the program here was good, but I knew better than that.
The large rectangular shaped wooden desks are positioned in the same places as last year, and I stop mid-stride when I find Ryder sitting at one of them talking to the teacher, Mrs. Cray.
When he notices me standing there his eyebrow quirks up.
“Hadley!” Cray greets me. “I was just asking Ryder here to pull some supplies out of the storage closet. Do you mind helping?”
I place my bag on a table at the opposite side of the room and nod my head unable to find my voice.
Ryder passes by me invading my personal space, and my heart rate immediately picks up. Regardless of what I said to Emie, he is smoking hot. You’d have to be dead not to notice.
Following behind him back down the hall, he opens the door to the closet lifting his arm for me to cross under. The door slams shut, and darkness fills the tiny space.
Ryder’s hands find my hips and whirl me around, pushing me up against the door. His soft lips crash into mine like a freight train and I reach up gripping the hair at the nape of his neck between my fingers.
He pulls away, but I can still feel his lips close to mine. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to wait until tonight to touch you again,” he whispers kissing me again. “Are you sore?”
My focus goes to the arousal starting to pool between my legs feeling a slight discomfort. “A little bit,” I answer.
“It’ll get better.” He comforts me. “That was just the first time. Next time will be easier.”
“When can we tell people we’re together?” I ask breathlessly.
He kisses my nose and drags his mouth down to my lips. “Soon, I promise.”
His hand slips up my tank top finding my cotton covered breast. He pulls the left cup down and takes my nipple between his thumb and pointer finger. It feels incredible and thoughts of last night rise to the surface of my thoughts again.
“Ryder,” I quietly moan out.
“I’ll always treasure what you gave me yesterday, Hadley. I promise. I love you,” he tells me causing all sorts of fluttering in my chest.
“I love you too Ryder,” I breathlessly tell him.
The alarm screams promptly at six a.m. I lean over reaching for the dream interrupter and hit the snooze button.
The sheets feel warm as I roll onto my back, staring up at the plain white ceiling, just wanting to fall back asleep. My ears perk up as I listen to Braden, my boyfriend of two years, move around in my bathroom. It’s not hard to hear everything since my studio apartment is the size of a normal living room. It’s all I can afford, and it’s really all I need. Braden doesn’t understand. He has asked me to move into his condo but I like having my space. Somewhere to call my own. Somewhere that is mine.
At least that is what I tell myself.
“Hey, babe. You awake?” His voice drags my gaze to the edge of my bed, his body glistening with the remnants of his shower. Trickles of water cascade down his torso.
With his dark green eyes watching me and hands on his hips, I take in his whole body. The towel is wrapped around the bottom of his chiseled abs and I can see his hard bodied chest taking slow, deep breaths. His buff shoulders connect with beautifully chiseled biceps. As his longer than usual dirty blond hair falls onto his forehead, I catch a glimpse of his trademark sideways smirk. It’s no wonder women try to throw themselves at him all the time.
“No,” I answer back, hoarsely, while bringing the sheets up over my nude body, covering everything but my eyes.
His smile turns seductive. “I can help with that.”
He grasps onto the knot in his towel and pulls it apart, letting it drop to the floor. Tension immediately starts to radiate through my body. Lowering to his hand and knees, he crawls up the bed until he is hovering inches above my body. Goose bumps prickle my skin. The sheet is quickly pulled off and his smooth hands bring my knees up around his hips. Without question, he slips inside of me not caring to see if I’m ready for him.
I allow him to use my body as I continue to stare up at the ceiling. Within minutes, his thrusts get faster. His grunts louder, and I feel him swell inside me as he releases. He slides out, kisses me on the nose, and gets up to finish getting ready for work, not bothering to ask if I came.
I didn’t.
I turn to my side and close my eyes trying to remember how it used to feel when I would just see him across a room and butterflies would create chaos inside not only my stomach but my heart. Or when he would send me flowers, or make me dinner. We’ve just fallen into a comfortable routine. I feel as though we’ve lost that spark. Maybe not so much Braden’s spark for me as I for him.
I remember meeting him at a Shell gas station the summer after I graduated college. I had just arrived back into town. He was pumping gas behind me, and we just started chatting about my death trap of a Jeep and we immediately hit it off. The confidence he exuded was a turn on, and no one had made me laugh in such a long time. The boys in college acted like immature drunks but he was all man. I spent four years of college boyfriendless, sexless and lonely. I don’t know what it was about Braden that made me push my apprehensiveness about guys aside but a week later I broke my five year dry spell and we became officially exclusive.
I had taken a chance. Something I hadn’t done in a long time.
As I lay there, bare and unpleasured, I try to recall when exactly things took a turn. I rack all my memories, but it seems there wasn’t a specific point in time it all started to go south. It just happened gradually. Things between us were exciting at the beginning. Laughing, joking, and enjoying each other’s company. Barely a moment was spent apart and all I thought about was him.
Now, two years later, we’re comfortable yet so far removed from each other it’s almost senseless. I’m afraid my heart isn’t in it anymore, and if I’m honest with myself, I’m not sure it ever has been, but I stay. I stay because I trust him, and that is something I never thought I could do with a man. Not since high school. Not since my heart was shattered, my trust betrayed and my world caved in. When I was forever changed by the only other man I’ve been with. The one who broke me into a million pieces so long ago. The reason I have yet to be put back together again. After all this time, Braden hasn’t been able to do that...not that he would know it needs to be done.
Since high school, I’ve kept my heart guarded. I’ve never gotten out of the waiting to exhale moment in Braden’s and my relationship where I felt I could truly be myself. It’s hard to walk around and pretend like everything is okay. That you’re happy when you’re not. When you want to be yourself with the people you love but you don’t feel you can. That you have the perfect relationship when you don’t and it’s not even his fault. It’s mine. Despite letting him i
n, I’ve kept myself protected for seven years, hiding away, scared to let the true me out, feeling as though people won’t accept me for who I am.
The artist.
The risk taker.
I’m startled when Braden’s cold nose touches mine, and then he steals a quick kiss. “I’m off to work, baby. Dinner tonight?” he asks slipping his hand down to my breast and flicking his thumb over my nipple, taut from the cold.
My eyes flutter shut, trying to revel in his touch. “I can’t. Girls night with Erin and Noe,” I answer in a whisper.
His loud sigh doesn’t surprise me since he doesn’t like when I go to bars without him. “You know I hate when you go out without me.”
I sit up in bed, pulling the sheets over my chest giving him a knowing look. “I’m a big girl, Braden. Why don’t you trust me?”
He shakes his head. “I trust you. It’s everyone else I don’t trust. I don’t want some guy hitting on you.”
“Well, if you trust me then you know that they can flirt all they want but I’m yours.”
He drops his hand and kisses me on the forehead. “Okay, but be safe and call me when you get home,” he says annoyed.
I listen to him walk out the door without saying “I love you”, bag in hand and ready to take on his morning shift, thankful that I will be able to sleep alone tonight.
~~
“Spill it, Grant!” I say to Noelle over the horrible eighties music playing in the bar.
Noelle Grant is my boss, great friend, and sometimes workout partner. I started working as her assistant for event planning and we hit it off almost immediately. Right now she is going through some major boy drama. She’s stuck between, Jace, a guy she just met and Erin’s brother Trent.
Oh, to be so troubled.
“What’s going on?” Erin asks from across the table, pretending she didn’t get a text from me about it hours earlier.
Erin is a terrible actress. I watch as her doe-ish brown eyes give her away and since she and Noelle are best friends, I know she can’t get away with it. Even I see right through her.
Her short auburn hair is perfect without a strand out of place and her smile lights up the room. I guess having a man that thrills you does that to a woman. From what I heard, Erin and Walker are a fierce couple. Fiercely in love.
“Noelle threw her bag again today and she passed up a chance to go to Maggiano’s with Jace,” I say raising an eyebrow at both ladies. “You know we would have let you bail, right?”
Erin shoves her shoulder into Noelle. “Maggiano’s? You passed up Maggiano’s for us?”
“I didn’t want to go with him,” Noelle responds and shrugs her shoulders when she realizes her slip up and her eyes go wide.
“You didn’t want to go or you didn’t want to go with Jace?” Erin pushes to get her to clarify though we both know the answer.
“So, which is it?” I push Noe a bit more when she doesn’t answer and take a sip out of my drink.
“With Jace!” she shouts causing me to drop my glass back onto the table. “I don’t think it’s working out.”
“Because of Trent,” I state. I know she is having a rough time. Having two men vying for you sounds great until it happens and you don’t know what the hell to do.
“I don’t want to talk about it and even if I did I wouldn’t know where the hell to start,” Noelle sighs into her drink.
She is normally a beautiful, confident woman. Her natural blonde hair matches her delicate skin tone and her blue eyes can turn from business to blissful in seconds. She is the total package. Sexy, secure, successful and yet she has that vulnerable side that has two men salivating over her.
I do envy her though. Not the guy trouble because I don’t even know what to do with the one guy who I do have, but she speaks her mind. She’s herself and never pretends to be anything else.
It seems we are about to drop the subject until a male voice breaks up our all female conversation. “Don’t want to talk about what?”
I look up from my drink, ready to fend off any advances by the just-turned-twenty-one year old boys in this place when my eyes find a sexy God of a man. With blond hair and beautiful green eyes that seem to be only for Noelle, I assume I’m met with one of her men of the hour...Jace.
I glance her way and, for the first time since I’ve met her, Noelle is at a loss for words. Her eyes are wide like a kid who was just caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
“Work,” I jump in to answer, shrugging. “She said no work talk tonight.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, she composes herself and slides out of the booth into Jace’s awaiting arms.
I look away because in their state of relationship, they seem to be more intimate with each other out in public than Braden and I have been lately behind closed doors. I’m almost jealous at the half-hearted hug she gives him.
My eyes shift to the dance floor to watch the drunken people grind on one another, zoning out of the table’s conversation. I know it’s rude. I’ve never met him but I already know that he isn’t good for Noelle. From what Erin has told me, Trent, her brother, has longed for Noelle for years now, whereas Jace treats her like a trophy to be won. Trent, I heard, treats her like a queen.
I’m finishing up the last of my drink when I hear a name I haven’t spoken or heard out loud in years. “...and this is our friend Ryder.”
Time stands still...or travels back years ago to the heat of the summer before my senior year.
My eyes flicker over to see the man Jace just introduced. They bypass someone who looks like he could be Jace’s brother straight to the man standing next to them.
No longer a boy.
All. Fucking. Man.
My heart stops.
It can’t be.
Butterflies that have long since lost their wings start to wreak havoc furiously inside my stomach as if they just emerged from their cocoon. My body heats up under the carnal stare of the dark ocean of blue eyes and I hate it. I want to hate it.
A flashback of his mouth in the crook of my neck, and his hands grabbing onto me for dear life cause me to involuntarily tilt my head back. I can feel his breath all over me.
I break the trance of his unbelieving stare and lower my eyes to take in his body. It’s much thicker than I remember. More muscular yet lean. His biceps flex against the black shirt that shows off the car he used to sneak me around in, reminding me of all the nights they surrounded me.
A smile stretches across his face and heat rises in my cheeks. And then I meet his eyes again. They seem to be looking right through me. Smug, as if though they know me. Like they can see right through the bullshit façade I’ve been putting up for everyone and it instantly angers me.
He doesn’t know me. Not anymore. He lost the right to a long time ago.
Noelle’s voice breaks through my angry thoughts. “This is Erin and this is...”
“Hadley,” Ryder says, his eyes still searing into me. The way my name falls from his lips seems effortless when I can barely think his without breaking a little bit more. I’m pissed and simultaneously turned on. I’m officially a walking contradiction.
In the loudness of the bar silence fills the space around us.
“You two know each other?” Jace asks seemingly uncomfortable, and his brother snickers.
Neither of us says a word, silently daring the other to speak.
Ryder breaks first quirking a brow up at me. “Do we?”
“No,” I answer without hesitation. “I don’t know him at all.”
Because I don’t. What I thought I knew wasn’t true. He lied. He schemed, and he lied again. I spent years trying to forget him yet he never left my thoughts.
Our exchange seems to make everyone uneasy. I decide to leave the table, but before I have a chance to jump up Ryder slides in next to me.
My body turns electric. I’m at war with my emotions and my hormones. I hate him, but my reaction to the brush of his leg on mine says otherwise.
�
��You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” he says while sliding his hand over mine in the gentlest of touches.
I push him away as the spark strikes. Whether it’s an angry spark or not, I’m unsure.
“Hadley, look at me.” He pleads but I continue ignoring him while looking down at my phone, acting as though I’m more interested in my email than I actually am.
“Hadley,” Noelle calls out. I look up at her. She seems just as uncomfortable as she sits next to Jace. “Is Braden coming?”
The look in her eyes tells me she is trying to help the situation I’m in.
I’ve never spoken to her about Ryder. There was no reason to. He was my first love...my first everything but he ruined it with just three sentences. It’s amazing how much words can skew your world. Change you for life. I get what she is doing...and I’ll play along. “No, but I told him I’d meet him at home later,” I lie shooting her a wink.
Ryder stiffens next to me. “Braden?” he questions, but his words are directed towards Noelle.
“Her boyfriend,” she says looking at his hand next to mine.
“Braden?” He repeats to me once Noelle and Jace travel onto the dance floor and the man who I now know as Jace’s twin, AJ, moves next to Erin.
I ignore Ryder, taking the first sip of a new drink the server brought me. My finger glides along the edge of the rim as I watch Erin eye Noelle across the room.
I chuckle as I wonder how later is going to play out since Erin gave Trent the inside info on our whereabouts tonight.
“Spark.” Ryder’s firm tone calls me when I don’t respond to him.
I turn my angry gaze towards him. His head jerks back at the ferociousness of my stare. “Don’t call me that!”
“Braden. Is he really your boyfriend?”
His question irks me.
“Yes!” I yell pushing on him until he hits the edge of the booth and scrambles to his feet. “I wouldn’t lie,” I say looking up directly in his eyes. “That’s your thing.”
I slide out before he can say another word and throw my purse over my shoulder headed for the bathroom. I need to get away from him and fast.
