Only With You (19 page)

Syd’s a romantic, and she falls in love easily.

I don’t want to see her hurt.

Your situation doesn’t lend itself for you to be in control.

Fuck, I was not happy with him for bringing that up
, for planting that seed in my mind.

“You okay?” Syd asked, and I let my head fall back against the seat behind me before I shook it few times.

Then I sat up and met the worried expression I’d put on her face. “We’re really different.”

Her eyes narrowed.
“What? What does that mean?”

I’d caught her completely off-guard.

“You. Me,” I said, shaking my head while I mentally kicked myself for doing this. “We’re so different.”

“Not rea
lly. We come from the same place, we grew up together, and we like a lot of the same things,” she said rationally.

“We do, but things –
namely our lives – are so different. Can this really work?”

She cocked her head at me. “
Holy shit. You’re seriously asking me that.”

My heart
sank. I’d freaked her out. That had been the last thing I wanted to do.

“
Kind of. I’m sorry to get all heavy on you, but it’s been weighing on my mind tonight.”

She
nodded and bit her lip. Then she sighed, her shoulders sinking almost in defeat.

“It’s okay
. I’ve actually thought about it too,” she said softly. “Chris and I talked a few days ago, and he brought up some valid points that got my mind going. I was waiting until tonight to talk to you about them.”

My heart started to pound in my chest when she said that,
and I realized what was happening. I hadn’t read her wrong when I felt something shift a few days earlier. And even though I’d brought up this subject, the very realness of what she was feeling terrified me. The last thing I wanted to hear was that she didn’t think we could be together. If she didn’t want this, it wouldn’t happen, and I knew that.

In truth
, when I’d asked her if we could work, I think I’d only wanted the reassurance that no matter how different we were, being together would trump everything else because she wanted to be with me for real. I was all in, and I needed to know that she was right there with me, regardless of what that might mean and how time and distance might separate us in the future. But I wasn’t sure she was going to tell me that.

“Wh
at did you and Chris talk about?” I asked cautiously. Did I want to know?

She slowly
let out a long breath of air. “Just that you and I live in two different worlds.” Then she looked down at our joined hands. “He asked me to hold off on breaking up with Dillon to make sure that I was certain about this thing with you, so I told him I’d use this week as a trial to see if it was what I really wanted.”

My shoulder
s sank, and I wondered if she knew how much it hurt me to hear her say that. “So I’m just here on a trial basis?” I questioned, surprised as how harsh my tone was, but her words had stung.

That
wasn’t what I wanted her to say. Here I’d been thinking about transferring schools for her, because she’d been telling me how much she wanted to be with me, but now I come to find out she had doubts about us all along? Not good.

She wouldn’t look up to meet my gaze.
“I don’t want you to think of it that way, Ryder,” she said, shaking her head, her fingers fidgeting with mine as she continued to hold my hand. “I want this with you. I do.”

“
Then how should I think of it, Syd? Shit, you tell me in one breath how much you want to be with me and in the next you say you want to use this week to see if we can even be together? How do you think that makes me feel?”

Fuck.
I knew this was going to happen. I was such a fucking idiot.

I yanked my hand away from hers, and her head snapped up.
I saw fire in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

“
It’s no wonder you don’t want to tell anyone that we’re together,” I muttered, looking away from her.

“That’s not fair
, Ryder. I do want to be with you, and I want tell people about us, but it’s not that simple. Look, in most situations, you would meet a girl, casually date her for a while and then decide to get serious and tell your friends and your family, but we can’t do that because everyone knows who I am. If I go public with you, then it’ll be all over the Internet the next day. Everyone would know! It sucks, but it’s just the way it is with me.”

“Wow!”
I was literally appalled that she would go there. “So it would suck that bad for the world to find out we’re dating? What the hell, Syd?”

Jesus, I felt like I had a knife sticking out of my chest.

Things had gone from bad to worse. I regretted ever asking my initial question, but I guess it was better to know how she truly felt even if I didn’t want to hear it.

“That’s not what I meant,” she defended.

I laughed, but there was absolutely no humor attached to it. “It’s what you said.”

“No, I just meant that once it’s out there, we can’t take it back.
And then what happens if we break up a month from now, huh? Then I’m a laughing stock once again. I don’t want that.”

I shook my head, not believing what I was hearing.
“So that’s what this is about? Your reputation? Are you that concerned that we’re not going to work out?”

Fuck!
I was so fucking in love with this girl, and she was already seeing the end for us.

“Well, the odds are
n’t exactly stacked in our favor,” she said quietly, her tone shifting. “You said it yourself. We’re really different.”

My heart sank as she said that
, throwing my words back at me. She looked away from me then, but I saw tears fill her eyes. I realized as she looked down, hiding her tears from me, that she didn’t mean what she’d said. I reached out to take her hand again and she let me.

“I didn’t mean it like that,
” I said softly.

“Then what did you mean?
” she asked, sounding hurt. “You’re the one who brought it up. I was all prepared to go back to the hotel and enjoy the first night we’d actually get to be alone together. You’re the one who started this conversation.”

O
kay, she had me there. But damn, it didn’t change the fact that she had concerns about us too.

“Well, based on the fact that you talked to
Chris about us and you’re having doubts, I’d say this conversation was probably necessary,” I told her, not wanting to say it but unable to help myself. “I don’t understand you at all, Syd. And I have no idea what you want from me anymore. I’m sitting here thinking about being with you – for real – and I’m thinking you want the same thing, because you’re flirting with me like it’s your damn job, but now I’m thinking you just want to have fun for a week and then go back to being friends or whatever.” I sat back against the seat in a huff, shaking my head. “That isn’t enough for me.”

I knew I sounded desperate, but in that moment, I was. Everything I’d been feeling that night, the ups and downs
, the full range of emotions I’d gone through, were closing in on me and making me feel like I was going to suffocate.

She looked at me in surprise, but then her face crumbled, catching me off-guard.

“I don’t want to just hook up for a week, Ryder. I don’t want that at all,” she said, as tears filled her eyes and started to spill onto her cheeks. “I want everything with you, but I’m so scared of taking that step.”

The relief I felt was short-lived when I heard her say she was scared.

“Why?”

“Because
this is you and me, and the last thing I want is to screw it up. You mean
everything
to me. And you are everything I want in a guy,” she said, looking at me desperately through her tears.

It wa
s exactly what I needed to hear,  but her in tears was the last thing I wanted. I let out the breath I’d been holding, the relief coursing through me at the same time I realized that she was afraid of the same things as me. So I did the only thing I could think of and pulled her against me, my arms wrapping tight around her, never wanting to let her go as her words repeated themselves again and again in my head.

“Shh, Syd. Shh.
Don’t cry, baby. Please. It’s okay. I’m scared too. This is a big step, but I to want take it with you. I want this.”

“
I love you,” she said so softly I almost thought I hadn’t heard her correctly.

“What did you say?” I asked, my heart practically pounding out of my chest.

She pulled back to look at me. “I said I love you, because I do, and I think I have for a while.”

Those were not three words I’d expected to hear her say just then.

That was it. I was transferring schools. I’d take time off. Hell, I’d give up college for her. Okay, I wouldn’t do that. That was crazy, but I’d do what I had to do to make this work. End of story.

I was speechless. I didn’t know what so say. I should have said it back, but I froze in that moment as her words washed over me.

Sydney started talking again before I could say anything. “Ry, I love you, but you have to understand where I’m coming from. Why I’ve hesitated, and why I’ve wondered if we should do this isn’t because I don’t want to be with you, but it’s because I don’t know if I can be the kind of girlfriend you want or that you even deserve. I probably won’t be able to go with you to your fraternity formals or to football games or do other normal things with you, but I’ll do everything in my power to be the best girlfriend I can be in whatever capacity I can, and I’ll try to make you happy. I can’t promise it’ll be easy and fun all the time, and we might go for stretches of time without seeing each other, but I think it’ll be worth it. I do. But if you don’t, I’ll understand. If you want out, I won’t stop you. It’ll kill me to do it, but I’ll let you go.”

Her chest heaved as she ran out of breath,
and my only instinct was to wrap my arms tighter around her so she’d know I wasn’t going anywhere.

“I love you,” I
told her then, the words spilling out of me in a rush. I needed to say them, and she needed to hear them. She needed to know that I felt the same way, that I wasn’t going to push her away, that I didn’t want out. I wanted everything with her. “And I don’t want out, Sydney. Don’t think that for a second. I don’t care about any of that other stuff. None of it matters as long as I have you. Shit, I’ve been in love with you for half my life. I can’t even imagine being with anyone else.”

She looked up at me, her cheeks tear-stained.
“But you have to know that this life – my life – it isn’t for everyone. There are cameras everywhere and fans, and I have obligations that force me to be certain places at certain times even if I don’t want to be. Sometimes it’s hard and demanding, and I travel a lot. It could put a toll on any relationship, but we’re talking about long distance, across the country, and that makes it even harder.”

I pressed my lips to her forehead, letting them linger there for a few seconds
, still holding her against me.

“I know, but I don’t care. If we want this to work, we can make it work. Hell, I’l
l transfer to UCLA if it’ll make things easier for us.”

She look
ed up at me in surprise. “No, you can’t do that. I’d never ask you to do that.”

I looked down into her brown eyes and saw just the smallest flash of hope there. She said one thing, but she wanted another. I knew that.

“You wouldn’t be asking. I’d be offering. I’ve already thought about it. I was going to apply to their law school anyway.”

She shook her head and hugged me. “I love you,” she said against my chest. “I love you so much
, but we’ll find another way. There’s got to be another option. I won’t let you transfer for me.”

She might not get a say in the matter quite frankly. I might do it anyway.

“I love you too,” I told her, as I leaned down to kiss her gently. Then I pulled her back into my arms.

I wanted so much more, but with everything we’d just said laid out in front of us, raw and exposed, I didn’t want
to push things. I just wanted to enjoy holding her and being in the moment, knowing that we wanted the same things. And I didn’t doubt for another second that if we could figure this thing out, if we could trust that loving each other would be enough, with her I’d get everything I’d ever wanted.

Sydney
looked up at me and smiled, and after the tears from a few minutes earlier, that smile was like sunshine. “All I’ve ever wanted is a boy like you to love me.”

“I’ve always loved you
,” I said honestly. “I just didn’t have the courage to tell you, but Sydney Chase, to me you are the most perfect, beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”

She rested her head on my shoulder once more. “You’re perfect to me to
o, Ryder. And I don’t want you to ever doubt how I feel,” she said, looking up at me with those big brown eyes. “I’m going to tell Chris tomorrow that I need to break things off with Dillon. I don’t want to hide with you. I really don’t. I want the people I love to know that we’re together.”