“That night went from being the best of my life to the worst. Finally having you was everything that I dreamed of, I knew you didn’t love me yet but I felt a connection to you, I knew that we could be happy together. But then you were gone, and my dad died, and everything fell apart after that. For four long years I missed you, I cried over you, I wondered what I had done that was wrong that made you go away.”
“Aww, baby, you didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, putting his other hand on her other cheek and very softly touching his lips to hers.
“Then explain it to me, tell me why you left, tell me why you think you weren’t good enough for me. I want to understand, I need to know. Please.”
11:01 A.M.
It was going to be bad.
Abigail could see it in Ryder’s deep blue eyes, feel it in the way his fingers lingered on her skin as though trying to memorize how it felt in case he never got to touch it again.
What was he going to say?
“Ryder?” she prompted, all thoughts of how angry she’d been at him for not loving her enough to fight for her faded away. She could feel his love as surely as she could feel his hands on her face, but then he sighed and his hands fell away, and she had to stamp down on the doubt and focus on what Ryder had to tell her.
“I was in foster care for a while because my parents died, my grandparents wanted to take me in, but they were old and not in great health, they weren’t sure they could take me on,” he started.
“But they did,” she said, stating the obvious since they both knew he had come to live with his grandparents next door to her family.
“Because of your mom, because of your parents. My grandparents were there that day in court and your mom realized who I was. She spoke with them, found out what had happened to me and promised to help out with me if they would become my legal guardians. My grandparents happily accepted because they wanted me to come and live with them.”
“So you felt like you owed my parents?” she asked, confused. “Is that why you let my dad talk you into walking away from me?”
“In part. I owed your parents a lot. Because of them, I got out of the foster system, I got counseling, I was loved by both my grandparents and by your family. If I had of stayed in the system I don’t know what my life would have turned out like, but I know it wouldn’t be this.”
“Okay, well I see why you would be grateful to them, maybe even owe them something, but I still don’t understand why you would think you weren’t good enough for me. Because of the graffiti thing? I would have understood that, you were just a kid who had been abused and your parents had died.” She paused as a thought occurred to her. “Did your mom die protecting you? Did she kill your dad to save you?” She reached out to cover Ryder’s hands with her own, he shrugged her off, and she tried not to be hurt that he didn’t want her comfort. It was her own fault, she had pushed him away when he said he wanted another chance with her because she was still hurt and focused on not letting him hurt her again.
But then she saw the tears shimmering in his eyes.
Ryder never cried.
Her heart clenched.
“No, sweetheart, my mom didn’t kill my dad, I did. I killed him … and her.”
The way he said it made it clear that he blamed himself, but she knew there had to be more to the story than he had just said. Scared that if she did anything at all to distract him he’d stop talking, she tried to sit completely still.
“Most of the time my mom protected me from him, but I guess I developed my protective streak early because by the time I was eight or nine I wanted to be the one to protect her. My dad had hit me a few times, usually when my mom wasn’t around, but this night when he went after her I stepped in. It was bad, he told me if I wanted to act like a man he’d treat me like a man and he started hitting me. I was almost to the point of blacking out when I remember my mom shoving me out of the way. He started punching her, and she threw me something. I was on the floor, and I remember it bouncing on the tiles before coming to a stop beside me. It was a gun. She screamed at me to shoot him. I lifted the gun, tried to aim it but I was only ten and I had never held a gun before, I didn’t know we even owned one. I fired it, but the bullet went through my mom into my dad. It killed them both.”
The expression on Ryder’s face hit her deep. So much guilt, so much pain, so much regret. Abigail knew there were no words that would comfort him right now so she did the only thing she could. She climbed onto his lap, threw her arms around his neck, and held onto him as tightly as she could.
“She had bought the gun,” Ryder said quietly. He didn’t move to hold onto her, but he also didn’t shove her away. “She’d had enough of him, she had been planning on killing him the next time he came after her, there was a history of domestic violence she would have claimed self-defense and it wouldn’t have been a lie, sooner or later he would have killed her. And me. If I hadn’t interfered that night we could have finally been free, instead I lost her. I killed her.”
He sounded so broken that she tightened her hold, pressing her face against his neck. “Your mom got what she wanted,” she whispered, “you were safe after that.”
A groan shuddered through his body and then his arms came around her, holding her in a grip that was almost crushing, but she made no move to ask him to loosen his hold. She didn’t want him to.
“Did my dad threaten you with this?” she asked softly, trying to control her anger at her father.
“He was trying to protect you.”
“Don’t defend him, Ryder. I hate him for doing that to you,” she said harshly, wishing that her dad was here so she could rip into him for being so cruel.
“I didn’t tell you so you would hate him, I told you because I wanted you to understand. I felt vulnerable, I was ashamed of what I’d done, I didn’t want you to know, I was afraid that you would see me differently. That you’d leave me.”
Frustrated, she pushed at his chest until he released her, then she stood up and paced the room. “I hate my father for doing that to you, and I’m so angry with you for going along with it. No one cared about me, no one gave me any credit for knowing what my heart told me. I wish you’d told me this sooner, I would have been there for you, I would have told you as many times as I had to that you didn’t do anything wrong, that you were just a little boy and so brave.”
Ryder stood and tentatively came toward her. “I’m sorry. I should have told you the truth, I shouldn’t have let your dad or your brother dictate my decisions. If he hadn’t died that night then everything might have turned out differently, but I can’t go back and fix it, Abby, I wish I could but I can’t. All I can do now is give you the future you deserve.”
Abigail studied him carefully, her brain still told her not to trust that Ryder wouldn’t walk away again, but her heart knew that this was the only man she would ever love, just like it had known that when she was twelve. Stepping forward, she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her ear to his chest. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, I’ll go on a date with you.”
His hands on her shoulders eased her back, and his eyes said he wasn’t quite sure she’d really said that. “Yes?”