Ryder leaned away and looked her dead on. That was the heaviest “I’ve Never” he’d heard, and his mind spun out trying to piece her motives together. Trying to wrap his brain around what to do with her declaration of love. Trying to figure out what this tug in his stomach meant.
He needed space. Needed to gain control. Because Whitney once again was throwing him for a loop.
He backed away, his hands falling from her, and he put several feet between them.
“Ryder,” she whispered his name, and he frowned at the floor.
“Shit,” he said. The paint he’d just touched up on the trim was now smudged against the wall where he’d held Whitney.
She looked down, seeing the paint marks on the back of her sandals and the smudges on the wall.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to mess that up.”
Ryder just shook his head. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
It was paint, it could be fixed, but it was also more than that. It was his work and his mind suffering because he wasn’t fucking thinking. With her, he just acted. Just gave in to his instinct. And that had been to hold her. Challenge her.
He had to stay away from her. Despite his efforts to have it all—both Whitney and his control—it wasn’t working. He was losing. His will, his mind, everything he valued and worked hard to keep locked up was threatening to burst free and be consumed by chaos.
She just looked at him, those big chocolate eyes wide, waiting for him to say something.
Whitney tried to inhale, but her lungs somehow didn’t register that concept. She could only take short, quick breaths, and it was hurting her chest. Or maybe it was the silence passing between her and Ryder.
The look in his eyes was one she’d never seen. Confusion? Anger? Loss? She didn’t know what was rolling through his head. But she had a feeling she was on the brink of something bad. She’d just admitted she loved him, and he looked like she’d kicked him in the face.
“Knock, knock!” Clara’s voice rang out, and her heels clacked against the marble floors. “Oh, hello,” she said with surprise when she came across Ryder staring down Whitney.
“I was just finishing up,” Ryder said to Clara, then turned his gaze back on her. “Whitney was just leaving.”
Whitney’s mouth dropped at the harshness in his tone. That was all he had to say to her? After all these weeks, and all his manners, she got a brush off?
“Is that what you want?” Whitney asked, not giving a shit if Clara was present to hear this or not. “You want me to go?” They both knew she meant for longer than tonight. She’d come to him with the desire to stay, and now he fastened those gray eyes on her and held her fate in his hands.
“Yes,” he said.
She saw a flash of regret in his eyes, but it didn’t matter. That single word struck her spine like shrapnel, slicing all the way to the bone. Turned out, Mr. Diamond with his good polite manners didn’t want her for long after all. She’d been kidding herself to think that his “in the meantime” attitude could ever translate to more.
“I don’t want to interrupt, but I wanted to talk more about the event,” Clara said. “And my daddy said you were looking like the prime candidate to take on the development project for the county.”
Ryder just nodded at Clara, and Whitney put the last piece together. Ryder was up for a big job with the same man whose last name was on the building they stood in. A package deal it would seem, since Clara was the one “coming to chat” about all the details.
If Whitney could ever have a wish, it would have been the ability to teleport far away instead of having to walk past Ryder and Clara and out the door. She’d been discarded. The worst part? She should have seen this coming.
She didn’t fit in his world, just like he didn’t fit in hers. She wanted to experience life and joy, to live for Kacey and try to find some kind of adventure. Ryder was looking to stay right where he was, wielding control over his world with an iron fist.
The problem was that she loved him.
And she’d lost him. The one thing she’d never wanted to experience again.
Every step she took away from him was tearing open her chest. Because she knew what it was like to lose something she loved and be left with only memories of the good times. It hurt worse than any pain she’d ever encountered, and she’d just set herself up for it.
“I knew better,” she whispered as she passed Ryder. Using every ounce of strength she had, she lifted her chin and tried to mask her grief. When she met his stare, her disguise faltered only for a moment, but she had to say one thing. “I knew you were a risk, and I took it anyway. But you have your distance now.”
With that, she walked out and into the summer night. When Kacey had died, Whitney had cried until she couldn’t cry any more. And now that she’d lost Ryder, too, she found she had no tears left, only a bitter, aching emptiness.
Chapter Fourteen
Ryder opened his fridge, grabbed a beer, and slammed the door.