Don't Forget Me Tomorrow (Time River, #2)

by A.L. Jackson

“Haven’t you learned yet that you don’t need to ride in like the cavalry, Ryder?” “I already rode in, Cookie, so you might as well let me.” I’d started calling her that years ago. Now there was no way I could stop.

Because I’d wanted to give her everything I had, but the only thing I had been able to do was give her the one gift that I could.

“You could never be a waste, Dakota Cooper.”

I’d been in love with Ryder Nash since I was nineteen, probably earlier than that if I was being honest with myself. I was working on getting over that, though.

The man midnight at the helm.

She tsked a sound of surprised disbelief. “That boy always seems to know when you’re in trouble, doesn’t he?” I couldn’t keep from rolling my eyes. “He didn’t know I was in trouble. We just happened to be in the same place at the same time.” It wasn’t like he had some sort of sixth sense about me.

The man his own brand of chaos where he sat there looking both raw and smooth.

Love is on the house.

“I’m not sure, Dakota, but if you are? I promise I will take care of you. Protect you.” “Why?” “Because protecting you is what I was created to do.”

Meet me in the place of the forgotten. And I wondered so many times if that’s the way he felt. As if he’d been forgotten. Left behind.

“I think everyone just wants me to disappear. Go away. Forget all about me.” “Well, that’s not going to happen, Dakota. I could never forget about you.” Her heart did that throbbing thing where it felt like it might blow up from the pressure. “You have to say that because you’re like my family.” “No way. I’m saying it because you’re probably my favorite person in the whole world.”

“Love is on house.” He slurred through the words, and my chest fisted, so tight I thought it might cave, and I leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “That’s right. Love is on the house. Free and forever.” Because he would never have to ask for it.

“I’m a big girl, and I get to make that choice.” He had me backed to the wall so fast I couldn’t comprehend how I’d gotten there. Pinned. Gunmetal eyes flamed in a way I didn’t think I’d ever seen them do before. But his voice was pained. “I can’t take that risk with you, Dakota, and not with Kayden, either. Please. Stay with me.”

But love was like that a whole lot of the time, wasn’t it? Painful. Unfulfilled. Unrequited. That or you were terrified you were going to lose it once you had it.

Looking for something that didn’t exist. But my bestie was a dreamer. A romantic of the highest sort. A believer of white knights and twisted fates and fantasies that always came to fruition.

I wondered if he’d always know it. If he’d know when he got older that he could come to me for anything. That I’d give it all.

Or maybe I just needed an excuse to be close to Dakota. It seemed the more I was around her, the more I wanted it. To be in her space. To experience her goodness, inhaling it like secondhand smoke.

You were a fucking vision standing in my door.

Like you’d been manifested in my dreams.

Ryder Nash could demolish me, and the last thing I needed was to get my heart shattered.

Ryder hovered at the entryway. Midnight in the light of day.

“You deserve everything. Had once thought I’d be the one to give it to you.”

“Take care of my girl.”

sat down at the table, and ate by myself, watching the goddamn clock like it was a ticking timebomb. Like the later she was out, the closer we came to destruction. To everything getting blown to shit.

And there she was again. A landslide. Quicksand that immediately sucked me under. No escape from her lure.

“I’ve wanted you to touch me since I understood what desire meant.” He’d become the meaning of it. The reason for it.

Gunmetal eyes raved as he looked up at me. Sparks in the middle of the night. Midnight at my feet.

“Ryder, no, I’m going to break it.” A growl ripped from him, and his hands cinched down on the tops of my thighs. “You’re not going to fucking break it. And if it breaks, then we broke that shit together.”

“So gorgeous, Dakota.” His voice was hushed, dragging through the dense air. “Earth shatteringly beautiful. You make the world stop spinning every time I look at you.”

“What I would do to be good enough for you.” “You’re wrong. Whatever you’re thinking right now, you’re wrong, Ryder Nash.”

Always knew you were going to wreck me.”

“Would love you every day of my life if I could, Dakota.”

“You are playing with fire, Dakota Cooper.” “Maybe I want to burn.”

“Your past doesn’t define you, Ryder. No, I don’t know the full circumstances, but I know you lost yourself after your mom died. I would never blame you or judge you for that.”

She was good and right and fucking deserved the world laid at her feet, and she had no fucking clue who I really was or what I really did.

“If you want him? Then go for him, Dakota. I know there’s history. I know there’s pain and your brother and all these voices that are telling you it’s a bad idea. But if you want it? Then you go for it, and you do it unafraid.”

“The entire day, Dakota. The entire fucking day I was thinking about you. Couldn’t get you off my mind. Not for a second.”

“Look at you,” I said again, voice so low. “Do you see what I see? Because what I see is this fuckin’ stunning woman who’s got me so hard I can hardly think straight. So twisted up, I might black out. A woman who walks into the room and every head turns, drawn to her beauty.”

“Look at her. This woman who is so strong and fierce. One who strives for what she wants. Fights for it. But she’s also good, through and through. So thoughtful and kind that it breaks my heart looking at her because I know I could never be a match to who she is.”

“Well listen now and don’t ever forget it. You are everything. Inside and out.”

“I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you, Ryder. You think it was me driving you insane? Couldn’t you feel it coming off me every time you came in the room? I don’t know how one man can make me shake the way you do. The way you make my heart race.

She finally gathered the courage to look at him. And it was like she was looking at midnight. Falling into it. Getting lost in it. A storm raged through his expression,

“Running from something you don’t think you can face, but the only thing you do is end up running straight into the grips of something so much worse. And before you know it, those claws are so deep in you, you can’t get free.”

“He’s a fool, Dakota. A fucking fool. You’re beautiful. Everything about you. The inside. The outside. That smile and the way you light up the room. Don’t fucking listen to anyone who ever tells you otherwise.”

A goddess in the morning. The light breaking inside me.”

I slowly shuffled around to face him, drawn to a man who’d held me for so long I couldn’t recognize what not loving him looked like.

“I love you, Dakota. I’m gone for you. Since I was twenty-two fucking years old, I’ve been gone for you. Since you became the one thing in this world that could soothe the ache inside me. Since you became the reason to look beyond my circumstances. Since you reminded me of the good things this world might have to offer.”

“You saved me, Dakota. Saved me when I was lost. When I’d given up. And I keep trying to push you away because I know I don’t deserve you. But I can’t do that any longer. I can’t fucking deny that you are the one thing in this life that I’ve been living for. You are the light breaking the darkness inside me. And I’m begging you, please don’t walk away.”

“Cookie,” I murmured. “Tell me I’m not too late. Tell me you still love me, too.” “Do you think I could ever stop loving you?”

“Because this is the way we’re supposed to be, Dakota. You were meant for me. You’re mine, Cookie, mine.”