Ryan's Love (Sawyer Brothers #1) (9 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Amber

Oh my God. Wow.

Any coherent thought had fled. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t form full sentences. I was momentarily speechless, and it felt amazing.

Ryan’s body was heavy against mine, still covering me completely. His head was still buried against my neck as his deep, exhausted breaths fanned out over my shoulder. He was silent as he softly stroked my thigh.

I hadn’t expected him to show up here tonight, though I knew the person who knocked at my bedroom door wasn’t Alena, since she had gone back to Chicago yesterday. I certainly didn’t expect him to make love to me, but I had to admit it was mind-blowing. He was so attentive and careful and made me feel beautiful and desired, something I hadn’t felt with any of my past lovers.

He shifted against me as he rolled a little to the left, taking the weight of his body off mine. He still hadn’t spoken, and for a moment I worried he regretted what had just happened between us.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Still breathing deeply, he nodded against my neck without speaking. His silence stirred panic deep within my stomach.

“Are you sure everything is okay?” A burning sensation filled my throat.

He rose up on his elbow and looked into my eyes as he lifted his hand and ran his thumb over my jaw. “Everything is perfect. You are perfect.” He leaned over and placed his lips against mine, and the emotions I was attempting to hold back washed over me.

I tried to hide the trembling of my lips by pulling him closer, but he noticed.

“Hey.” He pulled back once more and looked into my eyes. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

I tried to blink back the tears, but one fell anyway. I felt the moisture as it rolled down my cheek. Ryan swiped it away with his thumb as he looked down at me with concern.

“Did I hurt you?” I could hear the worry in his voice.

I shook my head and tried to stop acting like such an overemotional girl. “I’m fine, really.”

“Baby, you aren’t fine. Talk to me,” he insisted.

“I just thought maybe you regretted being with me. You were so quiet, and I worried that—” His lips smashed against mine, stopping me from continuing my craziness.

Our kiss quickly changed to more than just a gentle reassurance. I could feel him becoming aroused once more against my thigh.

“I don’t regret being with you. I’m overwhelmed by you,” he whispered as he covered my body with his once more. “You are quickly becoming someone I need in my life. I adore you, Amber. Yes, that’s scary and something I never thought I could feel, but I do. Don’t let your mind roam there. I don’t regret tonight.”

His kiss took me over once more as he pulled his hips back from mine and his hardness nudged against me. I opened up to him and wrapped one leg over his hip, allowing him to enter me again. I bit my lower lip as I looked up at him. His eyes were shifted downward as he watched where our bodies were now joined as one. His jaw tensed, and he rocked his hips gently until he was completely inside me, then his gaze moved back to mine. “You are amazing, and I could never regret a moment of the time you allow me to share with you. I’m alive when I’m with you, baby. I’m finally able to feel again, and that, beautiful girl, is because of you.”

Holy shit. If I hadn’t already been an emotional mess, I was now.

Ryan made love to me once more, with gentle touches and sweet kisses, and my heart felt like it was going to explode from his meaningful words. My body instinctually responded to him, as if his touch had been pleasing me for a lifetime.

I knew I was falling for him hard and fast. He was everything I had ever wanted, and if I could have stayed in that moment with him forever, I would have. I had never felt so treasured in my life.

He kept his eyes locked on mine, even when I felt the familiar tingle in my stomach. And when I reached the point of ecstasy and my back arched off the bed, his stare still stayed on me.

“You are so amazing,” he whispered as I gripped the sheets at my sides. “Unbelievably beautiful. I feel like my heart is going to beat out of my chest when I’m with you.” His mouth hovered over mine, and I could feel his breath on my lips. “I love how you make me feel every time you look at me. You give me back so much of the man I’d thought I’d lost.”

He covered my mouth with his, and I knew in that moment I was in love with Ryan Sawyer.

***

A faint ringing filled the silence of the darkness. Ryan was spooned behind me, his arm wrapped around my waist and his leg thrown over mine. I tried to shift to my back, but he tightened his arm around me and pulled me closer.

It sounded like a phone ringing, but it had finally stopped.

I cuddled back into Ryan just as the ringing began once again. I nudged him with my shoulder, and he groaned in protest. “I think your phone is ringing.”

Attempting to wake Ryan was like trying to wake up the dead; he did not budge. I pushed a little harder, and he released his hold on me, rolling over onto his back.

“Woman, you’re gonna wear me out.” He chuckled, peeking out from under the arm he had resting over his eyes.

I smiled in return, remembering how we had eventually passed out after our last round of sex. “I wasn’t waking you up for that. Your phone is ringing.”

He looked to the other side of the bed and was just about to reach for his phone when the bedroom door burst open and light poured in. I clutched the sheet to my naked chest, and Ryan sat up straight in bed.

Noah filled the open doorframe, and Bailey stood a few feet behind him. Both of them looked terrified.

“Olivia’s been in a car accident.” Noah’s voice was laced with panic. “They convinced Jackie’s parents to let them walk to the ice cream parlor. They gave them an hour, and when they didn’t return, her parents went looking for them.”

“Is she okay?” Ryan began scrambling for his clothes, not caring he was completely naked and his brother and Bailey could see him. “Tell me she’s okay, Noah,” he demanded while placing one leg into his jeans, followed by the next one.

“They were with Charlie,” Noah continued. Ryan’s body tensed at the mention of the name. “They were out on Willow Grove, and he took the bend entirely too fast.” I began to shake as I imagined what he was describing. “He flipped the car, and it rolled into the ravine.”

Ryan sat down on the edge of my bed with his head hung low. His shoulders shifted as he took in a deep breath. “Please, Noah, just tell me my little girl is okay. I can’t lose her too.”

His words made my throat feel as if it was constricting and cutting off the air I needed to breathe.

“Jackie was able to call 9-1-1, and we got them. They’re at the hospital. All three of them are banged up pretty good, but they’ll be fine.”

Noah’s reassuring words seemed to bring Ryan back to life. His back began to shake as he sobbed into his hands, the emotional roller coaster he had just experienced hitting him hard.

Noah came forward and helped him from the bed, then led him toward the hallway. “I’m sure he’ll call ya later,” he said to me as they left.

I sat in my bed, still clutching the sheet to my chest. My heart was breaking.

Bailey followed behind them, and once she’d locked the front door, she joined me in my room. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and grabbed my tank top off the floor before turning my back to my best friend. After I slipped it on over my head, I began searching for my panties.

“Do you think I should go be with him? Or do you think it isn’t my place?” I felt horrible for not offering him support, but I worried my presence would only make things worse.

“I don’t know. I mean, I wouldn’t want him to think you didn’t care,” she replied.

That was my exact concern. I was worried that not showing up would make me come across as a self-absorbed bitch to his family. “Maybe we could just drive to the hospital, just so they know I do care about Olivia. I may not truly know her, but she’s Ryan’s daughter, and that means she’s important to me too.”

“Okay, let’s get dressed,” Bailey said as she stood and rushed off toward her room.

Chapter Nineteen

Ryan

I needed to see Olivia. Only when I heard her voice and felt her hand in mine would I be able to calm down. I needed to know my little girl was okay. I hadn’t even paused to greet my family in the waiting area. I stormed toward the nurses’ station and demanded to see my daughter.

When I entered her room, my heart felt like it hit the floor. Olivia sat on the edge of the bed while a doctor stitched a large cut above her right eye. There was a sling on her arm, and her shirt was covered in blood.

She winced as the doctor fed the needle through the tender skin, and I rushed to her side.

“I’m sorry, Daddy.” Her voice vibrated as her lower lip trembled.

“Shh, I know. We’ll talk about it later. Right now let’s just get you fixed up, okay?” I rubbed her back while the doctor continued to work.

After about ten minutes, another doctor came into the room, followed by my mother. She took a seat on the chair beside the bed and patted my knee, offering her motherly support without even speaking.

“Hello, Ryan.” I was shocked seeing the woman before me. “I’m Olivia’s doctor.”

“Zoey, how are you?” It had been years since I last saw her. Claire and Zoey used to be friends before Zoey left for college and took a job in Seattle as a doctor.

“Good. I just moved back about three weeks ago. Missed my family, so when this job opened up—” She shrugged. “—I took it.”

“Well, it’s good to have you back.”

She smiled, and after a long pause, she averted her eyes to the chart she held. “Olivia’s X-ray shows a fracture to her right wrist, which will require a cast. She sustained minor injuries to her head—a concussion and a decent-sized laceration above her right eye, which required stitches.” Zoey paused as she flipped the page. “There was something that showed up in her bloodwork that concerns me. I would like to go over the results with her.”

My chest tightened. “What kind of things?”

“Do you want to step out or—?”

I shook my head as my eyes shifted toward Olivia. She suddenly appeared nervous, and that only made my mind race faster.

“Right here is fine,” I said as I took a seat next to my mother. She gripped my shoulder in support.

“Olivia had a high level of alcohol in her bloodstream.”

My heart sank at the thought of my fifteen-year-old daughter drinking. I looked up at her, and I knew she saw the disappointment in my eyes. She immediately looked away and twisted her hands nervously in her lap.

“What the hell were you thinking?” It left my mouth before I had time to think about it. “Drinking, Olivia, goddamn it.”

“Ryan,” my mother whispered as she gripped my shoulder a little tighter. I shrugged out of her hold and stood up to pace the room. I was trying to control my anger, but I just couldn’t.

“Who the hell got you alcohol? Was it Charlie? How did he get it? Where did he get it?” She curled into herself a little tighter and wouldn’t look at me. “Tell me, Olivia, right now. Or so help me God, I will go find Charlie myself, and whatever injuries he sustained from this carelessness will be minor compared to what I’ll do to him.”

The room was silent except for the sounds of my heart pounding in my ears. Controlling my anger was growing harder with each passing second. I had never in my life wanted to hurt someone as bad as I wanted to hurt Charlie.

“He took it from the refrigerator in his dad’s garage,” she whispered.

“Took what?” I growled.

“Some kind of whiskey.”

I spun on my heel and left the room, my mother following closely behind. Olivia called after me, attempting to stop me, but my mind was set. I was going to find Charlie and beat the snot out of that little jackass.

Just as I was rounding the corner, Noah stepped in front of me. “Whoa, brother. Where are you storming off to?”

“I’m gonna stomp that boy’s butt. He needs to know that messing with my daughter is the worst mistake he’s ever made. I’m gonna make sure he understands that he better not get within five feet of her unless he wants my foot up his ass,” I said, trying to move around him.

Noah and I were comparable in size, height, and build, but I knew I could get past him without a problem. Jackson, on the other hand, was the biggest of us three, thanks in part to labor on the ranch. He used his size to his advantage way too often.

My mother must have been thinking the same thing, because she rushed off, leaving me with Noah. I knew I had about sixty seconds to overpower him before Jackson intervened.

“You don’t want to do that,” Noah said. “Ryan, he’s not worth it. He’ll get his own, you know that. He was driving drunk and endangered two other people as well. He is seventeen, almost eighteen. I’m sure he’ll be suffering for this mistake for years, brother. Use your head, Ry.” Noah was doing what he did best—trying to talk me down.

When Jackson stepped up behind him, I knew I was fighting a losing battle. Jack squared his shoulders and crossed his arms over his built chest, puffing up and widening his stance.

“Calm down there, Hercules.” I chuckled at Jackson, and he grinned in return. “I don’t need you holding me back. Dr. Logic here just put a stop to my rage.”

Jackson looked disappointed that his strength was no longer needed. He was such an arrogant ass.

I spent a good fifteen minutes outside Olivia’s room calming my nerves before I stepped back in. As I did, she looked up at me with eyes full of unshed tears. I stood at the end of her bed, staring down at my little girl. I remembered her with her hair in pigtails, running around the backyard, and the days when Claire and she would blow bubbles off the back deck and then run around, trying to pop them all before they hit the ground.

She was no longer my little chubby-cheeked girl. She was now a beautiful young woman, and I had no idea how to handle that.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy.” Her chest shook as she tried to control her tears. “I never should have drank or gotten in the car with Charlie after knowing he’d been drinking. I never should have lied and left Jackie’s house. I know right now you hate me, but—”

My chest tightened and I rushed for her. I leaned over the left side of the bed and pulled her good side flush against mine. “I don’t hate you, Liv, baby girl,” I soothed. “I could never hate you. You’re my world, Olivia. I’m hurt by your choices, sweetheart, but I could never hate you, ever. I love you.”

She curled into my chest, and another part of me broke as she sobbed against me.

“I miss you,” she whispered. “It’s been just you and me for so long, and now it feels different. You have Amber, and I feel like—” Her voice cracked just before she breathed in deep.

“You feel like what, darlin’?”

“Like Mom is fading away more and more. I can’t see her anymore when I close my eyes. I can’t remember what she sounded like when she would talk to me at night until I fell asleep.” Her tears began to soak through my shirt, and my throat burned at her confession.

“Remember that pillow I have on my bed? The one that smelled like her?” Olivia looked up at me, her eyes red and swollen. I nodded. “I can’t smell her anymore,” she continued, shattering me a little more.

She pushed back from me and looked directly into my eyes. “I know you like Amber, and I also know you spent the night with her. Or at least you were going to until you got called to come here.” She shrugged. “I saw your truck there when we drove by the bakery.”

“Sweetheart—”

“I just know that when things get more serious with the two of you, Mom will then be a distant memory, and I’m having a really hard time with that. You’ll forget her, I’m forgetting her, and she’ll just be a picture on the nightstand. Just an occasional thought hidden in the back of our minds. I hate that. I can’t remember what it felt like when she brushed my hair or kissed my cheek. I hate that when things get rough, I can’t feel her arms around me or hear her telling me everything will be okay.” Her body shook as she sobbed. “Why did she have to leave us?”

“I’m so sorry, Liv.” The rawness in her voice was killing me. There was nothing worse than you child hurting and being unable to take that pain away.