Ryder (Slater Brothers 4)

“Why do you do that?” Ryder asked, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

I was stumped.

“Do what?” I asked.

“You’re trying to make me feel better about Bronagh because I said she hates me. You’re trying to save me from being hurt when you’re furious with me.”

I gnawed on my inner cheek. “Bronagh says I do it to ‘er because I’m protectin’ ‘er. Maybe I’m doin’ the same for you, too.”

Ryder stepped towards me. “I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier.”

I straightened.

“You hurt me,” I said. “Accusin’ me of cheatin’ on you was somethin’ I never thought you would ever say to me.”

Another step.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I just pictured this Ash person touching you, and I got so angry that I lashed out at you.”

I shrugged. “I’m used to you lashin’ out at me.”

Ryder looked like I slapped him across the face.

“Please, don’t say that,” his voice low.

I licked my dry lips.

“I bruise you and you bruise me. That’s how things are between us now.”

Ryder’s eyes searched mine, and what he saw caused his head to drop.

“I don’t know how we’ve gotten here, Branna.”

My heart began to pound against my chest.

“Me either.”

Ryder swallowed. “I think… I think we should talk.”

I did too, and it killed me because I didn’t want to say what needed to be said, but I had to. For both of our sakes, I had to.

“Yeah, we do.”

Ryder leaned his shoulder against the wall. “I have a feeling the outcome is going to break me, am I right?”

Break him? I thought. Him?

I stared. “I don’t know, it depends on how you take what I have to say.”

He set his jaw. “Say it.”

This was it.

“I think you know what I’m goin’ to say.”

He nodded. “I think I do, too, but I want to hear you say it.”

My palms became sticky with sweat.

“I can’t do this anymore, Ryder.”

“Say it, Branna.”

I was always Branna or Bran now, never Sweetness, and it was pathetic how much I missed that term of endearment. The tears that sat on the brim of my eyes finally spilled over and splashed onto my cheeks. Pain pulsed in my chest. This was really it. This was the end of us.

“You feel the same way I do, I know you do.” I sniffled, quickly wiping away my tears. “We don’t make each other happy anymore.”

He pushed away from the wall and stepped towards me.

“Say. It.”

I began to sob. “I don’t know what else you want me to say!”

“Say the fucking words.” He demanded. “If you’re going to break up with me you have to say it out loud, I want to hear you say it.”

I swallowed and looked down at the floor, then with a heavy heart I said, “Ryder… I’m… I’m breakin’ up with you.”

“No.”

I looked up at him and blinked with confusion. “What do you me-mean no?”

“We aren’t breaking up,” he stated, his face red. “We aren’t giving up just because shit has gotten hard, we’re going to fight.”

He was killing me.

“We have been fighting—”

“With one another, not for one another.”

I met Ryder with silence so he pressed on.

“We’re going to start over. I don’t know where we lost one another, but if we go back to the start we can find our way back to each other. I know we can.”

I felt hopeless.

“So we’re thrustin’ ourselves back into the beginnin’ stages of dating?” I quizzed, shaking my head.

“Yeah.” Ryder replied, firmly. “That’s exactly what we’ll do.”

I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hands when more tears fell.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to make you fall in love with me all over again.”

“Don’t say things like that to me!” I shouted. “You can’t say things like that and expect me to believe you. You promised me the world when we first got together, promised to always take care of me, to always be there for me, to always show me love. You swore up and down that we’d grow old together but the only thing we’ve done is grow apart.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ryder replied, the veins on his arms bulged as he tensed his body.

“Then I don’t know what to tell you!” I snapped. “If you can’t see what’s been happenin’ over the last year then me simply explainin’ it won’t penetrate your bloody mind!”

“You have to trust me, Branna.” Ryder said, shocking the hell out of me.

“Trust you?” I repeated. “Trust fuckin’ you! What about you trustin’ me? Where did that trust fly off to when I begged you tell me where you go every night or why you’re always on your phone or why you shower as soon as you get home? What happened to poxy trust when those questions where asked?”

“You will have the answers to those question in forty-eight more hours, just give me that time and when it’s up, I’ll explain everything. I’ll answer every question you throw at me fifty times over. Please.”

The confusion I felt hurt my head to the point where I had to close my eyes and flatten my palm over my forehead in an attempt to soothe it somehow.

“I don’t understand.” I whispered, lowering my hand to my side, and reopening my eyes. “Why forty-eight more hours? Why not now?”

“Because in forty-eight more hours I can freely tell you.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Meanin’ now you freely can’t?”

Ryder nodded his head. Once.

“The only thing I can think is why? Why? Why? Fuckin’ why?” My voice climbed an octave with each question asked.

“Branna,” he said, firmly. “Trust. Me.”

Exhaustion hit me at that point.

“I can’t do this, Ryder. You’re killin’ me.”

“Just listen to me, carefully,” he said as he stepped closer to me, pressing his chest against mine, reintroducing me to the sensation of what it felt like for my body to be moulded against his. “I love you. I know things are up in the air with us right now, and that I haven’t shown jack shit over the last year that would make you believe me when I say it, but I do love you. I’ve never said those words to any other woman in my life. Remember that, and remember that in forty-eight hours we’re going to hash all of this out.”