Page 41 of Broken Butterfly
Ryder sits down beside me on the cold tile floor, pulling my hair back even though nothing more than strangled gags come out. He rubs a hand in soothing circles around my back, and I rest my head on my forearm that’s propped on top of the toilet seat. I should be grossed out by the fact I’m leaning on a toilet, but I’m too distraught to give a shit.
“Baby, please,” he begs. “Please don’t do this to yourself. I love you. Everything will be alright.”
“How can you say that? How can you stand to look at me? I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Ryder.”
He slides himself behind me, his warmth enveloping my back. He brushes my long hair to the side so he can rest his chin next to my ear, making sure I hear everything he next tells me.
“I have loved you for an eternity. I was given a second chance, one brought on by tragedy, but one I will never regret taking. You are everything to me, Elizabeth. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. I’m not going to lie and say you didn’t, because it was one of the worst pains I have ever experienced—knowing you had regained your memories and the first thing you did was run back to him. All my fears came true, and it was like everything you had said to me was a lie.”
I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the agony his words bring me. I hurt the man I love. I broke his trust. I don’t deserve him or his love, but if given another chance, I will spend the rest of my life making it up to him.
“You’ve been through so much already, Elizabeth, but I promise we’ll work through it. There’s something Fallon said when he called to let me know you were with him. I told him that you went back to Jay, and his exact words were, ‘No, she didn’t.’ It took me a minute to understand, but I do. If it’s Old Elizabeth that needs my forgiveness, she has it. But she’s not the woman in front of me now. She’s not the woman I hope to spend the rest of my life with. When you came back to us after being gone for over a year, you were different. You had changed, whether you meant to or not. That’s the woman you are. The feisty fighter with pink-streaked hair who loves new adventures. The one who drives a Hellcat. The one who curses and drinks and gave me her whole heart. The first woman I ever made love to. And I love you with every fiber of my being.”
His words slay me. Ryder Cutton is the most amazing man, and I am so damn grateful for his love. I’m about to tell him how much I love him in return when he rises up from his place behind me and I hear the shower turn on. He lifts me up and carries me under the spray where he holds me as the warm water sluices down my cold body. Too emotionally exhausted to do anything, I give myself over to Ryder as he tenderly washes me, holding me upright with one strong arm wrapped around my waist. As he rinses the shampoo from my hair, I look up at him with huge, green eyes filled with love and desperation.
“Fallon has helped me so much these past couple of weeks. I wouldn’t have made it without him. I owe him so much. I know who I am now. I will spend the rest of my life loving you with everything in me. I only want you, Ryder. I don’t want Jayson or anyone else. You’re it for me. My heart will always belong to you. It already did. Ever since I was nine years old.”
Ryder’s dark hair is plastered to his head, rivulets of water dripping down his face and chest and stomach. But my eyes never waver from his. “My love for you is and will never be a lie, Ryder. I have always loved you. That night after I left your garage, I had already decided. I was going to choose you. I will always choose you. You’re my forever.”
“And I choose you, Elizabeth. I don’t want to spend another day without you by my side. I know we’ll have a lot of things to work through, and then there’s Jayson and Julien to deal with. But if it’s absolution you need, Elizabeth, then you have it. I forgive you.”
How many times can I shatter tonight? Hearing him say he forgives me both rips me apart and glues me back together.
“I forgive you, Elizabeth,” he repeats, adding steel to his words. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. You must have been so scared. I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you to help you through it.”
God, this man, his soul so pure and good. I may have to reconsider my hatred of the Fates. I would endure any trial, any struggle, any fight, to have this man love me.
Ryder bends down and takes my mouth in a gorgeous passion-filled kiss that leaves me breathless. I haven’t lost him. He still wants me. I wasn’t expecting his forgiveness even though I was desperately hoping for it. Julien talks about my capacity for love, but this beautiful man standing before me puts it all to shame. His love humbles me, and I will cherish it and protect it for the rest of my life. My heart expands and my skin warms as if the sun is breaking through the dark clouds of a thunderstorm, creating a rainbow in its wake. We kiss and caress one another in the close confines of the shower until the water runs cold and our skin is wrinkled and pruned. Ryder finds two large towels rolled up in a cabinet in the corner of the bathroom and wraps me in one of them when we exit the shower. The past hour of great sex and heart-felt confessions has been cathartic, leaving me feeling lighter and unburdened.
I smile. “There’s one good thing about my memory returning. I have every memory of you back, and I wouldn’t trade those for the world.”
“Even the one of me doing a backflip on the motorcycle?”
“Especially that one. You were so sexy that night. I wanted to rip your clothes off.”
“I think you succeeded in that objective quite well earlier,” he chuckles, looking at the clothes littering the bedroom floor. His laughter makes my stomach cartwheel in that special way only he can make it do.
I tug his towel away from his waist and throw it across the room. “Let’s see if I can work on some more of those promises I whispered to you earlier.”
“I think I also remember guaranteeing you more orgasms,” he adds.
He tosses me back onto the bed, and my laughter fills the room until it turns into moans of delight as he crawls between my legs.
Chapter 12
Day 18: He Found Me
Barcelona
After our marathon of make-up sex, and with the effects of jetlag catching up to him, Ryder falls into a very deep sleep. Even though I’ve been up well over twenty-four hours, my brain doesn’t want to shut down. I’ve spent the last several hours wrapped in Ryder’s arms, staring at the man I love more than life itself, and tracing the lines of the tattoo above his heart. I’m still in disbelief that he’s here; that he forgives me. It’s so much more than I deserve, but I will grab hold of it and never let go again.
Knowing Ryder should be asleep for a while to come, I disentangle myself from his arms and legs and go in search of Fallon and coffee. I slip on a pair of leggings and a hoodie and make my way downstairs. Through the window, I see Fallon sitting out on the patio. I make two cups of coffee and take them outside, placing one in front of him on the table, then sit down in the chair beside him.
“Thank you, Fallon.”
“I take it things went well?” he casually inquires, but I see the smirk he’s trying hard to hide.
I blush hard because there is no possible way that he didn’t hear my very vocal orgasmic screams coming from the bedroom all night long.
