Ryker (The Ride #4) by Megan O'Brien Read Free Book Online

his gaze head on, feeling my heart pound. My gaze dropped to his mouth, remembering what it felt like to have his lips on mine.
    His eyes heated in return before he turned away abruptly.
    “When did you patch in?” I asked quietly, changing the subject to one I’d been intensely curious about.
    “Not till recently actually,” he replied. “I took off for a while after high school.”
    After I left, I thought, with a familiar jab of pain that struck whenever I thought about that time.
    After a tense moment where I prayed he wouldn’t stop talking, he continued. “Anyway, I came back after a few years of wandering. I missed my brother, missed home, but even then I wasn’t ready for the responsibility I knew I’d be taking on. It took me a few more years to be ready for it. Now, here I am.” He shrugged.
    “Here you are,” I agreed with a small smile. “Is it what you’d always hoped?”
    “It’s a hell of a lot more.” He blew out a breath.
    I was so glad he had that.
    “Axel and I grew up with next to nothing, but with the club I feel like we have this huge extended family.”
    After the way they’d grown up, he and his older brother deserved that and a hell of a lot more.
    “What does Cole have you doing?”
    “Building shit most days. I guess it comes naturally to me.” He shrugged and I knew he was being modest. Ryker had always been hell on wheels with a hammer. “I’ve been refurbishing one of the bars the club owns. Before that I built an addition on the club. I like it.”
    “I’m glad,” I replied sincerely, my heart bursting with being able to talk with him like this. “You’re also an unofficial babysitter,” I teased. “Mason adores you.”
    He chuckled. “Yeah well, Jill’s ex is a dick. We all help out when we can. But Mace-man is my little bud.”
    My heart melted at that.
    The silence stretched. “You’ve been happy?” I ventured.
    His spine straightened, as I stared at the back of his beautiful head. “Sometimes. You?”
    “Not really.” I admitted.
    He stood up, pacing the room. “Christ, that just makes it worse,” he growled, his mood souring. “At least if you’d been happy it might’ve been worth it.”
    “Ry, you got to travel. You patched in. You’ve been happy sometimes.” I sighed. “That’s something. I was so worried—terrified—that you’d give up everything for me and resent me forever,” I admitted, relieved to finally get the words out. “The first time she got sick, you dropped everything to take care of her and me. We were so young, but being a man was as natural as breathing to you.”
    “So?” he challenged.
    “So you stopped talking about your own dreams! It was as though you’d resigned yourself to that fate. That at seventeen you’d have to carry my family’s burden.”
    Even when she had gotten better for those few years, she was never the same, and my dad’s downward spiral had started to pick up speed.
    “Ry, we both knew how you grew up. You deserved light. You deserved fun.”
    “It wasn’t for you to say what I deserved,” he ground out, shifting as though to leave.
    “You remember that party Ettie had right before graduation?” I said abruptly, sitting up in bed as he stood.
    “Yeah,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. He had to be exhausted. I was too, but I had to get this out.
    “I heard you and the guys talking. Mack, Wes, and your brother. They were trying to get you to ride out with them for a few weeks. They wanted you to visit another club with them. It was what you’d always wanted to do. But you shut them down. You said you had to help me run the store. That my mom might get sick again. You seemed so sad, so run-down.” I swallowed painfully as I risked a glance at his startled expression. “God, Ry, I know I made a decision for both of us. That we should have talked it out, but you would have never let me go and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try to give you