“Seventeen, by the time she arrived. But yeah. Even so, I can’t pretend I didn’t know what I was doing. That I’d more or less sold my soul—or at least, my integrity—in order to provide for my child. And it’s eating me up, living this lie.”
Expelling a harsh sigh, Ryder grasped the railing, not looking at her. “Not any more than it’s eating me up, that when you get right down to it, this is all my fault.”
“And how on earth do you figure that?”
“So you didn’t hook up with Jeremy to get back at me?”
It was funny, really, if you thought about it: years of experience had taught Mel that few human males seemed ready, or able, to accept responsibility for anything. At least, the human males in her experience. To the point where she’d forgotten that Ryder had probably been the most responsible human being she’d ever met. Except, because Ryder had been stalwart and noble and honorable as all hell, in a convoluted way he had a point.
“Didn’t say that,” she said at last. “But it’s ridiculous to blame you for my actions. No matter what I might have told myself at the time.” She paused, then breathed out, “Please don’t hate me, Ryder. Since I still hate myself plenty enough for both of us.”
Ryder’s chest constricted at the self-deprecation trying so damn hard to undermine Mel’s tough bunny persona. He looked away, giving her the space she clearly wanted. And he needed. Because he had no idea how to bind up her wounds when his own were still so fresh.
Even as the old compulsion reared its head, refusing to be ignored.
“How could I possibly hate you when I’m the one who botched things so badly—”
“What you did was save me from making an idiot of myself.” Her mouth twisted. “At least, that night.”
Acid flared in his gut. “Still. I could’ve handled the situation with a bit more … grace. And afterwards … I should have called. Emailed, something. To check on you, make sure you were okay. I mean, I owed you that much.”
“Owed me?” Mel gave him a puzzled look. “You didn’t—don’t—owe me anything—”
“You were grieving, Mel. Whatever else might have been going on, you came to me for comfort, and instead of figuring out how to give you what you really needed I pushed you away. Harshly, if memory serves. So you can’t possibly be beating yourself up more than I am. On that score, I figure we’re probably about even—”
Her sharp laugh caught him up short. “Did you really think my actions that night were solely motivated by grief? Yeah, that might’ve short-circuited my inhibitors, but I wanted you because I wanted you.” She looked away. “Because I was sick to death of being treated like a little sister. Stupid, huh?”
Ryder looked up into the navy sky before saying, very quietly, “Then you have no idea how much of a struggle it was to turn you down.”
He felt her eyes on the side of his face for several beats before a soft, startled laugh fell out of her mouth. “Holy crap. Are you serious?”
“Yep. And you can stop laughing,” he said, even as chagrin pushed at the corners of his own mouth. Then he sighed. “All our lives, I thought of myself as your protector. A role I took very seriously—”
“Tell me about it.”
“—and you were a kid. Legally, anyway. And what I’d begun to feel for you … inappropriate doesn’t even begin to cover it. No way on God’s earth was I going to act on what I was feeling, but damn, it scared me. That everything our relationship was predicated on …” He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his jaw, then banged it against the railing. “What you wanted that night—hell, what I wanted—redefined wrong. You’d always trusted me. And I refused to violate that trust. Even though it nearly killed me.”
She took a deep breath. “So you freaked.”
“To put it mildly. No matter what I did, I was going to hurt you. Worse than you already were. And afterward, when I went back to school …” His gaze touched hers. “I had no idea how to fix it.”
Yanking her sweatshirt hood up over her head, Mel faced the moonlight-stippled currents for some time before finally saying, “It took a while, but eventually I got over the rejection. Once the hormone fog cleared. Because, like you said, what else could you have done? Your silence, though … That devastated me, Ry. Not gonna lie.”
His gut twisted. “So you got even.”
“Not on purpose,” she said after a moment. “I mean, I didn’t set my sights on your brother. Small consolation though that might be.”
Ryder frowned. “He came on to you?”
“Not blatantly, no. Not at first, anyway. He just suddenly seemed, I don’t know. Interested. Like he cared. And I was hurt, Ryder. Hurt, and confused, and adrift …” One side of her mouth ticked up. “And, okay, mad. At you, for basically walking out of my life. At myself, for being an idiot. For ruining the one good thing in it.”
She paused. “I made a terrible mistake, Ryder. Not that I don’t love Quinn with every fiber of my being, but the rest of it?” Her head wagged. “I disappointed everyone, especially my mother. Who adored Quinn, don’t get me wrong, but I know she never quite got over how badly everything ended. Then there was Nana, who never spoke to me again—”
“This being the same woman who cut herself off from her own daughter, right? For reasons known only to herself? You’re not responsible for other people’s grudges, Mel. And as far as that agreement goes—legally it’s worth bupkiss.”
“Yeah, well, it’s amazing, how strong a motivator fear is. You want to talk freaked?” She pointed to herself. “Poster child. And if I’m being completely honest, at least it got me out of St. Mary’s. Me, and my mother, even if she never quite saw it that way. Got both of us away from … everything.”
“Meaning my family.”
Several beats passed before she said, “In all fairness it’s not as if they treated my parents badly—and I always did have a soft spot for your father. At heart he’s a good man. In fact, I gathered he was behind the generous financial considerations. And as far as Jeremy and I went—we used each other,” she said flatly. “And we both knew it. So there was never any ohmigod, you can’t separate us we’re in loooove thing going on. If the dude couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge his own kid, I could live with that. I hated him for it, but I could live with it. For your parents, though, to turn their backs on their first grandchild …” She gave her head a sharp shake. “For your mother to go so far as to demand that I take care of the ‘problem’—that was a lot harder to handle.”
Of course it was. Because while he may have detected a glimmer of regret in his mother’s eyes, he doubted it was any match for the stubborn pride that motivated every action and decision Lorraine Caldwell had ever made. And hearing Mel echo his mother’s earlier admission …
Ryder shut his eyes, wrestling to control his breathing before saying, “I want to make things up to you.”
“Forget it, Ry. What’s done is done.”
“Even if I say I’d like to get to know Quinn? Why not?” he said when her gaze slammed into his. “Just because my brother had his head up his ass—”
Mel pushed herself away from the railing and started back down the boardwalk. “Not gonna happen.”
“She’s still my niece.”
“Which I can’t tell her, brainiac.”
“They can’t legally—”
“Legal has nothing to do with it!” she said, stopping short, the wind whipping strands