Only When It's Us (Bergman Brothers #1)(69)

A door shuts somewhere nearby, drawing her eyes. They widen, then flick back to me. Before I can answer her, she wraps an arm around me. “You look faint. Would you like to lie down? I have a room next to your mother’s that—”

“No.” I stand shakily but manage to stay upright. “I’ll be okay, thank you, though. I’m so sorry I barged in. I thought…” Mortification tightens my stomach. “I’m going to go.”

I walk backward, knowing I’m being weird and rude. I’m intruding. I’m out of place and emotional. I need to go back to Mama’s and my little cave.

Elin stands, her face pinched with worry. “Please, Willa, just sit here a moment.”

“I can’t.” I start to spin away. “But thank—”

I bump viciously into a wall of very solid human which knocks the wind out of me. As I stumble backward, a hand reaches out and steadies me.

Wait.

Evergreens, warm man, clean soap. It’s Ryder’s scent. I glance down at the man’s feet. It’s his knit socks he always wears. His worn jeans. My eyes travel higher. Flannel. My breath is flying, my heart racing. Higher. Higher. Squirrel tail beard. Perfect Nose. Green eyes.

Tears blur my vision. Ryder’s eyes lock with mine, tight with concern.

“It was you,” I whisper.

I stumble back, out of his grasp. Swinging around, I look at all of them. His family. Their faces resemble his. Guilt. Pity. Sadness. They all know. They’ve been in on this. Turning back to Ryder, I blink rapidly, disbelief rushing through me like a numbing cold.

Peripherally, I hear his mother herd everyone away. There’s a pocket door that she closes, leaving us alone in the entranceway. Even though it’s humongous, the room feels painfully small, the space between us claustrophobic. I have to get out of here. I can’t even begin to straighten this in my head.

Backing away, my hand fumbles for the front door handle. I wrench it open and sprint outside, running as fast as humanly possible. Humiliation, confusion, betrayal, roar in my ears as I round the house. I’ve sat in Mama’s room, staring out of its glass doors enough to know their backyard is flanked by a grove of trees I can disappear into.

I’m sprinting, but I hear footsteps pounding behind me, gaining on me. I’m almost to the trees, so close—

“Willa!”

I gasp, my toe catches in the earth, and I slam to the ground. Staring up at the dusky sky, I gulp like a fish out of water. I had to be imagining it. It couldn’t…it can’t…

Ryder drops over me, his hands whispering over my body, checking for damage. Tears stream down my face as I stare at him. I have never felt this many things at once. When his eyes meet mine again, they’re brimming with emotion, too.

“Ryder?”

He makes a noise I’ve never heard before—a full, pained sound. His palms go to his eyes, wiping them furiously. I sit up and grasp his wrists, the tables somehow turned. Now I’m worried about him. “What is it?”

Ryder’s hands drop, his eyes meet mine. “Beautiful,” he says quietly. His voice is low and gravelly with disuse. It’s velvet stretched across raw wood, hot tea poured over crackled ice. “Your voice, it’s…” His voice gives out and he mouths, then signs it, the word I couldn’t figure out that day we ate outside.

Beautiful.

He can hear. He can speak. How is it possible? Was it the surgery? My confused thoughts dissolve as a sob wrenches out of my chest because suddenly all I can do is feel. Happy for him. Relieved. Insanely desperate to touch him. His voice and emotion feel like a mortar blast that ripped through my ribs and wrecked my heart.

I grab his shirt and yank him toward me. It’s not a kiss. It’s a collision. It’s the smash of one mouth into another, a demand for something I never believed I’d have, desperation for it to be mine. His groan is loud and uninhibited. It echoes in my mouth as his lips meet mine hungrily, as his fingers delve into my hair.

Roughly, Ryder shoves me down, his weight anchoring me against the grass. Elbows framing my shoulders, chest against mine. I push him off enough to gasp for air and grab his face. “Say it again.”

“Willa,” he says immediately.

I yank him back to me. Another punishing kiss bruises our lips, clacks teeth. I suck his tongue, palm him through his jeans. I’m wild. I’m off the deep end. I need him. His hands fly up my shirt, as my fingers work his jean buttons loose. He pinches my nipples gently while he leans into my palm’s grip. My eyes roll back in my head.

“Again,” I whisper.

He breathes it against my skin. “Willa.”

It finally sinks in, every question that demands to be answered, ringing inside my head and heart. He’s talking. It has to be the surgery which he kept from me. He’s kept so damn much from me. “Ryder, stop…” He leans back, staring at me in confusion. “You…you, you lying asshole!” I screech, madly crawling out from underneath him and yanking down my shirt.

How did I end up underneath him, about to beg him to take me in the grass right here, under the stars? I got sidetracked. I got a lot sidetracked when that voice called my name. The voice made possible by surgery to correct his hearing and enable speech once again. The surgery I never knew about until after the fact. Just like I never knew his dad was an oncologist, that his dad was my mom’s oncologist. He damn well better not have known either.