Chapter 174 Forgiveness at last
Sage's POV
I took another step toward Ryder, close enough now that I could see every detail of his face. The exhaustion in his eyes. The hope and fear warring in his expression. The way his hands were trembling slightly at his sides despite everything he had just said with such steadiness.
"Yes," I said simply.
He blinked, like he had not quite heard me correctly. "Yes?"
"Yes, I still love you." I felt the tears start to fall and did not wipe them away. There was no point hiding them now. "Yes, I came back to Millbrook for you. Yes, there's a chance."
"Sage—" His voice broke on my name.
"I was hurt deeply by what you did," I said, needing him to understand the full weight of it before we moved past it. "Your silence hurt me more than anything Dante ever did. It hurt more than being forced to stand at that wedding arch with a gun to my head. More than almost losing Jaxon. It just so much because it was betrayal from someone I loved dearly. Someone I had trusted with the parts of myself I do not show easily."
Ryder flinched but did not look away, and I was glad for that. I needed him to acknowledge the weight of what he did, not deflect from it.
"That pain hasn't completely healed yet," I continued. "I still feel it. I still remember what it was like to sit in that waiting room watching the door every time it opened and it never being you. That is going to take time to get over. I want you to know that going in."
"I understand." His voice was rough. "I'll wait as long as it takes."
"But I came back anyway," I said. "Because I spent two weeks in Arizona trying to convince myself I could build something with Diego. He is a good man. He showed up and took care of me and proved in every practical way that he would be there. I told myself if I could leave Bradley behind when I left Manhattan, I could do this too. I could choose the safe option. The proven option." I shook my head. "But it was the most miserable two weeks of my life."
"Why?" Ryder asked, even though I thought he already knew the answer.
"Because all I could think about was you." I moved closer until we were almost touching, near enough to feel the warmth coming off him. "I would wake up in the morning and my first thought would be wondering what you were doing. Whether you were okay. Whether Tommy had recovered enough to go home. I would go to bed at night and lie awake going over every conversation we had ever had like I was trying to memorize something before it was taken from me. Diego would say something kind and I would wish it was you instead. Everything reminded me of you and I could not make it stop no matter how hard I tried."
"You tried to stop loving me," Ryder said.
"I tried so hard." I admitted it without shame because it was the truth and he had just laid himself bare for me and the least I could do was the same. "I tried to focus on Diego's kindness and the steadiness he offered and the life I could have had with him. I tried to convince myself that consistency mattered more than love and that I was being practical, not settling. But I couldn't do it. My heart would not cooperate no matter how many reasonable arguments I made to it."
"So you came back." Ryder's eyes were intent on mine.
"I came back because I love you," I said. "Not because you deserve another chance or because I have forgiven you completely or because I think everything is fixed just by me walking back through that door. I came back because I cannot not love you, no matter how hard I try. I came back because spending my life with the wrong person, even a genuinely good person, would be worse than taking a risk on the right one who messed up."
"I won't mess up again," Ryder said, and his voice sounded like he was making a vow to me. "I swear to you, Sage. I will never go silent on you. I will never make you wonder whether you matter to me. Whatever is happening on my side of things, you will always know where I am and that I am thinking about you."
"I want to believe that." I reached up and touched his face, feeling the rough stubble under my palm, and felt him lean into my hand like he was starved for it. "I am choosing to believe it. But you need to understand that trust does not come back overnight. You are going to have to prove it. Not once. Every day, over and over again, until the proof is louder than the memory of that waiting room."
"I will." He turned his face slightly into my palm. "However long it takes. Whatever I need to do. Just tell me and I will do it."
"Okay." I took the last breath of distance between us. "Then yes. Yes to another chance. Yes to trying again. Yes to us."
Ryder pulled me into his arms so fast it knocked the breath out of me. I felt his chest heaving against mine and his hands gripping my back like he was afraid that if he loosened his hold I would disappear.
"I love you," he said into my hair. "I love you so much. I'm so sorry. I'll never stop being sorry."
"I love you too," I said, pressing my face against his chest and closing my eyes and letting the tightness that had been living in my ribcage for two weeks finally ease.
We stood there holding each other and I felt something settle in me that had been unsettled since the morning I walked out of that hospital without looking back.
Ryder pulled back just enough to look at my face, his hands coming up to frame it on both sides, his thumbs brushing the last of the tears from my cheeks.
"Can I kiss you?" he asked.
Instead of answering, I pulled him down and kissed him myself.
It was different from every time before. Not desperate or hurried or wrapped in secrecy. This was open and deliberate and real. We were standing in the middle of Jaxon's office in the clubhouse and neither of us was hiding from anything anymore.
This was us choosing each other. Plainly and completely.
Ryder kissed me like I was oxygen and he had been drowning for two weeks. I kissed him back like I was finally standing somewhere solid after a very long time of uncertain ground.
When we finally broke apart we were both breathing hard and grinning like idiots.
"I really missed you so much," Ryder said, his forehead pressed against mine.
"I missed you too," I admitted.
He kissed me again, softer this time, and I melted into it completely.
We might have stayed like that indefinitely if someone had not knocked on the office door.
"Ryder!" Tommy's voice called from the other side. "Is everything alright?"