Heart (8 page)

“Well, it’s as good as you’re going to get.”
He sounded very serious about that.

“Listen, Ryder, you’ve made it perfectly
clear that you want nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to
figure out why you’re here.”

“Is that what you think? You think I’m acting
like this and that I wrote a song about you and that I dragged my
ass out of bed first thing this morning when Phoenix called me and
told me you were crashing at his place because I want nothing to do
with you?”

“Yes,” I whispered, feeling like it was a
lie.

He just shook his head. “Tell me what’s going
on,
Ivy
.”

I could tell that he really had lost whatever
patience he’d started with. I decided it was probably just better
to give him what he wanted. I told him everything. I started with
where I had been for the past year and ended with waking up in
Phoenix’s bed with Ryder looming over me.

“Where is Nix now?” he asked
thoughtfully.

I lifted one shoulder and rested my cheek on
it. “Probably on his way. I have no idea where he’s coming from,
but if Thalia called him, I have no doubt he’s going to be here
soon.”

“So what’s your plan?”

I shrugged again. “I need to figure out what
happened to Honor. I feel like I should figure out what’s going on
with my mom… I don’t know where to start.”

“Why do you even care? That woman deserves
whatever they do to her.”

The fury radiating off him surprised me. I
knew he hated Nix, but I had no idea how deep his hatred for my
mother went. “I agree with you. I don’t know though… there’s just
something off with the whole thing. What do they want with her?
What are they doing to her? I’m not saying I want to rescue her. I
just have this feeling that I need to know what’s going on. I’m
missing a piece of this puzzle.”

“Red, we’re missing a lot of pieces.”

This time when I laughed, it was real. “Fair
enough.”

“So what’s the plan?”

I chewed on my bottom lip while I tried to
make one up really quickly. I didn’t exactly have a plan. “I want
to drive by Smith’s house. I’d like to see if any of his employees
are there and can tell me anything. I’d also like to swing by my
old apartment and see if my mom still owns it or if she sold it or
what.”

“She didn’t sell it,” Ryder said softly but
with conviction.

“How do you know?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked
away from me. If I didn’t know any better I would think he was
embarrassed. But he couldn’t be. He had nothing to be embarrassed
about.

“I’ve, uh, been checking up on it.”

“You’ve been checking up on it?” I clarified.
Those words knocked the wind right out of me. I felt
sucker-punched.

“Okay, don’t make a big deal out of it,” he
demanded, sounding pissy again.

“I’m not.”

“You are. It wasn’t anything. I just wanted
to know if you came back to town, all right? I had no way of
knowing what happened to you or if you were dead or what.
Okay?”

“Okay, geez.” My chest bloomed with pain
again. “You really thought I was dead?”

His gaze shifted to mine and held. I felt
breathless again but for a different reason this time. “Yeah, Ivy.
I thought it was a real possibility.”

I slid forward until we were just a few
inches apart. My hand shook as I reached out and touched the top of
his. I just barely grazed the back of his hand with my fingertips,
afraid of what more physical contact with him would do to my
fragile heart.

He stilled so completely, I had to look at
him just to make sure he was still breathing.

“I’m not dead, Ryder. See? Perfectly
alive.”

His jaw clenched tightly. “I can see that,
Red. A phone call wouldn’t have hurt you though, yeah? You left me…
in the hospital
. Do you know what that did to me? I couldn’t
go after you. I couldn’t stop you or talk you out of it or
anything. Do you have any idea what that
did to me
?”

I struggled to swallow around the huge lump
in my throat. “I did what was best for you… for us.”

“You did what was best for
you
.”

I pulled back and jumped to my feet. “You’re
not even trying to see it from my perspective! You of all people
should know how badly I needed to leave! I don’t understand why
you’re so pissed when I did what you wanted me to!”

He shot to his feet and prowled after me. “I
didn’t want you to leave by yourself! I never wanted you to leave
by yourself! The plan was you and me.
You and me
! I never
wanted anything else!”

I stumbled back a step. My hand flew to my
chest as if I could stop the splintering from tearing me into a
thousand unfixable pieces. “We have to stop this,” I pleaded. “I
can’t… I can’t keep doing this. I have to find out what happened to
Honor.”

He took a step back too, but it was less
about retreat and more about resigning himself to my request.
“Fine, Ivy. Fine. You don’t want to talk about this, that’s fine.
Let’s go check out Smith’s house and then we’ll figure out how to
get into your mom’s place.”

“We? What do you mean
we
? I’m not
asking you for help, Ryder. I can handle this.”

Anger mingled with obvious frustration and he
threw both hands out to his side. “For the love, Red! How are you
going to get to Smith’s house? Or your mom’s? Planning on taking
the bus? What if Nix shows up? What are you going to do then? You
need my help.”

Okay, he had a few valid points.

Still, I didn’t want to spend the day going
back and forth with Ryder about how horrible of a person I was.

Mainly because it was agony. I could see his
points. I could understand why he hated me… why he wanted nothing
to do with me again. And that was the worst part.

Ryder was right. And I hated that I was
wrong.

Now that I was here, I couldn’t believe that
I had stayed away for all of this time and never considered how
Ryder was fairing without me.

I had been selfish. I had thought only about
myself.

Those were hard truths to face.

“Ryder, I can’t ask you to help me,” I told
him on a whisper.

“You’re not asking. I’m offering. And you’re
going to take me up on my offer.” When I hesitated, he finished
with, “I want to help you, Ivy. Whatever happened to us in the
past, I still want you to get out and get away from all of these
horrible people. If you think something happened to Honor, we’ll go
find out. If you think whatever is happening to your mom might
affect you, we’ll go find that out too. But as soon as we tie up
these loose ends, I’m going to help you leave and this time you
stay away. Do not give Nix another opportunity to find you.”

I nodded slowly, unable to process all of his
words. How could he be so sweet to me after everything? How could
he still want the best for me?

I ignored the crashing disappointment when I
realized he had said that I would get out… alone… without him.

Not that I expected him to drop everything
for me after all of this time. Or run away with me.

Or still want to run away with me.

No, I couldn’t think about that now.

“Thank you, Ryder.”

“Come on, Red, let’s go make you safe
again.”

Chapter Seven

We walked downstairs to find Phoenix
shoveling cereal into his mouth. “You want?” he asked around a
mouthful of Captain Crunch.

“No, thanks,” I said immediately.

“Red prefers her breakfast highly caffeinated
and in twenty ounce cups.” Ryder walked into the kitchen and
dangled his keys in front of Phoenix. I ignored how sweet it was to
hear him talk about me familiarly. If I were honest, I hadn’t had a
caramel macchiato since I’d left the States. I’d weaned myself off
of coffee for the most part and when I needed something to pick me
up, I would buy a cup of espresso from Fleur and then swear off
coffee for the rest of my life. Café Callisto served toxic waste
disguised as caffeine. It was abominably way too strong for me.

Still… I couldn’t deny that a Caramel
Macchiato sounded amazing.

“So you kissed and made up?” Phoenix waggled
his eyebrows at us.

Ice cold tension burst through the room like
Phoenix had detonated a bomb made out of hypothermic weather. I
felt the chill snake over my skin as Ryder took a step away from
me.

“We worked some things out,” Ryder deflected.
“We’re friends.”

“Is that what we are?” I hated the
defensiveness in my voice, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

“Uh…” Phoenix raised his eyebrows at me. I
shook my head. I didn’t know what he expected to happen by bringing
Ryder here, but I thought Phoenix might have been as heartbroken as
me with the way his eyes lost some of their brightness and his
broad shoulders slumped.

Ryder either didn’t notice Phoenix’s
disappointment or didn’t care. He pushed on by announcing, “I’m
going to help Ivy run some errands. I’ll call you later.”

“I can go with you,” Phoenix jumped to his
feet and slammed his bowl of cereal on the countertop. Milk sloshed
over the side, taking some cereal with it. He ignored the mess.

“We need more time to talk,” Ryder explained
quickly.

“Ah, but I miss the ninja! I need some
quality time with my favorite ginger.” Phoenix’s solid arm slid
around my back and he pulled me into his side. I took comfort in
his easy forgiveness and genuine desire to be around me. There
weren’t many people that felt that way.

Ryder’s voice was granite when he explained,
“She’ll be around for a couple days, Man. We need to get this stuff
taken care of first.”

Phoenix was undeterred. “I could help. I’m
excellent at errands!”

“I’ll see you later, Phoenix,” I jumped in.
“This is probably something I should do with Ryder, but I promise
I’ll come hang out with you later. I’m sure you have another movie
I
need
to watch or my life will forever be incomplete.” I
smiled at him and hoped that would be enough. It wasn’t as if I
wanted to spend all this alone time with just Ryder, because I
didn’t. I just didn’t want to bring Phoenix into my messy life. So
far he had been completely protected from the negative side effects
of knowing me and I wanted it to stay that way forever.

“Yeah, alright,” he conceded slowly. “I do
have a few movies that I know you haven’t seen yet.
Mighty
Ducks
?” he asked and I shook my head. His grin grew back
slowly. “
Terminator
?
Aliens
?
Sandlot?
”

“None of those.” I wrapped my arms around his
waist and squeezed tight. “We have hours of bonding ahead of
us.”

“Good news.” He looked down at me and pinched
my cheek. “Be safe, yeah? Call if you need help.”

“We will.”

“Let’s go, Red.” Ryder backed out of the
kitchen and I got the message.

I turned around and followed Ryder to the
front lawn where his new and improved Bronco sat waiting for
us.

“Wow,” I exclaimed. “She looks amazing!”

“Yep.”

“Have you been working on her this whole
time?” I ran my fingers over the glittery new paint and perfectly
restored door handles.

Ryder’s Bronco had once been the most
pathetic vehicle I’d ever been in. I called it the Death Trap,
while Ryder lovingly referred to the horrid thing as his baby. Last
I’d seen it, I’d basically stolen it to leave the hospital and get
myself to Smith’s. I’d left it there and hoped Smith would return
it.

Apparently he had.

“Yep,” Ryder answered succinctly.

“She looks really good, Ryder. Seriously. I
don’t feel like I’m risking my life anymore just standing near
her.”

“Get in, Ivy.”

Okay, then. Apparently the car was off
limits.

I slid into the passenger’s seat, enjoying
the new upholstery. I pressed my palm to the clean dash and
marveled at all of the work he had done.

After he closed the door and started the car,
I asked, “This is the same car, right? Or is this a new one?”

“It’s the same car.”

“But it looks so new! Did you do all of this
yourself?”

“Red, I really don’t want to talk about the
car right now.”

I slumped back in the seat and avoided
looking anywhere in his general direction when I buckled up. He
took off through the neighborhood while I gave him directions to
Smith’s.

As soon as he was headed in the right
direction, I crossed my arms over my chest and fell silent.

I could admit to myself that I didn’t always
know how to act around Ryder. He had always been this overwhelming
force of something I couldn’t exactly understand. At the same time
he felt both too much for me and just enough. He was too smart, too
strong and too perceptive while I floundered in front of him always
exposed and always frustratingly vulnerable. He had been, up until
this point, always ready to catch me, while I had been forever
poised at the edge of a cliff ready to fall.

And now all of that was amplified intensely
because those things had never been truer.

I didn’t know what to say because whatever I
said felt wrong. I didn’t know how to behave because whatever I did
felt like not enough. And I really, really didn’t know how to think
because every thought I had about him was in absolute opposition to
how he felt about me.

“Smith,” he finally said and I didn’t
understand at first.

“You’re going the right way,” I told him.

“No, Smith did this to my car. Before he
dropped it off for me, he had it completely redone. I didn’t even
recognize it when I got it back.”

“Smith did this?” My words were a pained
whisper.

“Yep.”

“I’m so sorry, Ryder. I didn’t ask him to. I
swear I didn’t. I just… I just wanted you to get her back. And I
guess that’s something else I have to apologize for. I’m sorry I
stole your car. I’m sorry-”