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

by A.L. Jackson

This was what I should want, though, wasn’t it? For her to go? Move on? Chase down whatever she wanted and take it for herself? Except it was me standing there wanting to chase it down.

I carried him into the house and back to the rug where his toys were dumped out. Kid had basically confiscated the place, his shit strewn all over, and I couldn’t help but think that’s the way that it was supposed to be. That these walls were supposed to echo with this kind of love, with his giggles and sweetness and zest for life.

I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother had been in this very spot when I was little. I had so many things I wanted to ask her about. Crawl inside her mind and heart and understand who she was because really, I hadn’t been more than a kid when she’d gotten sick. Had she watched me like this? Had her heart been full? Did it ache like mine did right then? God, I missed her so fucking much.

Kayden suddenly threw himself at me, giggling as he went to wrestling around, and I rolled onto my back and tossed him high. I stared up at his sweet face as his adorable laughter rolled, dimples deep, his arms and legs flailing as I zoomed him all over, making him fly and soar. I pulled him down and squeezed him tight, and he rested his cheek on my chest. “Love is on house,” he mumbled. My spirit thrashed, pulsing so hard with that kind of love that I was feeling like I might succumb again, but in a wholly different way. His mother’s goodness rushed out of him on waves. This sweet, sweet thing who filled me up in a way I never should have let him. But I accepted it then, my arms around him as I murmured, “Love you with everything I’ve got, K-Bear.”

I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich because I was fancy like that and grabbed a beer, 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.

Ten feet separated us, but I could still feel her heat.

She peeked at me again, her gaze softening, the swirl of brown flecked with red and gold mesmerizing. “I guess you know me better than anyone else.” It was quiet as it hit. Issued like a secret. “But that’s about to change, yeah?” Keeping the spite out of it was difficult. Somehow, I managed it, following the question with a long pull of my beer. She blinked. “I don’t know what that means, Ryder.” “It means you’re going to find someone who can treat you better than me. Someone you can get closer to. Someone you can fully trust.” Someone who could completely give themselves. Someone who wasn’t about to end up dead or in jail. Doubt puffed from her nose. “I’m not sure about that.”

Reaching out, I traced my fingertip along the soft, plush ridges of her lips. “Did he kiss you?” Trembles rolled through her body, lifting like tiny spikes on her flesh. Her mouth parted, but she didn’t answer. What the hell I was doing, I didn’t know, but there was no stopping myself from leaning in, crossing a line as I murmured close to her ear, “Did he touch you?” Her head barely shook, the word a breath. “No.” “Did you want him to?” “No,” she whispered again, the word a short gasp. “Why not?” My nose brushed her jaw when I asked it. The air that had been crackling flamed. She met my gaze, and she lifted that chin. In it was both surrender and defiance. “Because the only person I want to touch me is you.”

The glass clanked against the counter as he set it aside, then he straightened to his full height. I released a raspy, frantic breath. The man loomed over me. A dark, towering storm. Chaos. Mayhem. Midnight.

“Is that what you want, Dakota? You want me to touch you?” That time my nod was as frantic as my breath had been. Terrified because this shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t let it. He and I were wrapped up in something that wasn’t real. But I couldn’t find the logical response. Found no rationale. No sound judgment when I whispered, “I’ve wanted you to touch me since I understood what desire meant.” He’d become the meaning of it. The reason for it.

What had happened to the man who had told me he would love me forever, but not that way, and the one who whispered against the sensitive curve of my neck, “What do you need, Cookie?” The flames in my stomach heightened. Licking up in a slow burn of desire. “I—” My tongue was too thick for me to answer. “I think I know what you need. I’m the one who knows you best, remember?” It almost sounded of a warning, and he pressed his mouth back to that sensitive spot and murmured, “Might make me a fucking bastard, but I want to be the one to give it to you. I don’t want to stop.” His confession was gravel. Stones that tumbled from his mouth. “I don’t want you to.” It was a needy plea. I didn’t. I might not know what this meant. I might be setting myself up to get crushed all over again. Even if he only touched me once. “I don’t want you to stop,” I rasped.

“Fuck,” Ryder hissed, and those big hands were suddenly on my butt cheeks, squeezing and kneading. “This ass, Dakota. Thing dreams are made of. Did you know that? The way I’ve wanted to get my hands all over it? Mark it? Claim it?” Lust crashed through me, all mixed with the confusion. “I thought we were friends?” Somehow, I was tossing out the weak designation we’d relegated ourselves to. Trying to make it a tease, only the last word cracked. His rough chuckle scraped the air, just like his rough hands were scraping over my backside. “Oh, Dakota, we’re friends. Really good friends.” I pushed back against him, the fire inside too intense not to beg. “Show me.” “So eager.” “What do you expect? I’ve been waiting half a lifetime.” I tried to play it light. It didn’t work. Not when it was the darkest confession of my soul. Everything I’d given him once and he’d rejected, and now…

And I think I’d always known Ryder would be a demanding lover. That he liked it rough. That he would tear me apart if I ever got the chance. But that didn’t mean I was equipped for it. That I could keep up.

Because I might want to pretend like this was only physical, but I felt him like a life-beat speeding through my veins. Like purpose. Like reason.

And if it was just one time, then I wanted it all, and the plea was raking up my throat as I yanked at his hair. “I want you to fuck me, Ryder. I want to feel you. All of you.” He groaned as he stalled for a fraction of a moment before he turned that intense gaze on me. Remorse or maybe it was guilt filled his eyes. “No. You don’t want to go there. Not with me.”

Pleasure split me in two. The blinding kind. Splintering out. Obliterating every cell. Knocking through all the reservations that warned that I was setting myself up to get hurt. But loving him had always hurt, and there was no stopping the surge of it right then. The way it got carried on the rapture.

His expression twisted in shame and gluttony, his words dragging like blades through the dense air. “What I would do to be good enough for you.” “You’re wrong. Whatever you’re thinking right now, you’re wrong, Ryder Nash.” Because I saw it. That same sadness that he fell into sometimes. The grief that he covered with those easy smiles and that casual demeanor. But the thing about me and Ryder was I thought I knew him best, too. Was sure I was the only one who recognized those things. The one who felt the darkness that poured out of him.

“What I’m thinking right now is I have a goddess kneeling in front of me.” “I’ve always been here, Ryder. On my knees for you.” “No, Cookie. It’s always been me. A beggar at your feet.”

Still, he was grating, “You don’t have to do this, Dakota.” “No one implied that I did. I want to. I want to see you. I want to touch you. I want to taste you, too.” A tortured groan left him when I tugged at his jeans.

Always knew you were going to wreck me.”

it wasn’t me who was doing the wrecking.

He hit the back of my throat each time. And he was yanking harder at my ponytail, so hard it pricked at my scalp. And I liked it. God, I liked it, the way he was handling me.

I vibrated with need. With joy. With the pleasure of what I was giving him. And for a flash, his expression went tender. So tender that it hurt to even look at him.

I felt it when he came apart. When the glistening on his flesh somehow illuminated. A flash of light. A thunderbolt.

Ragged pants echoed from him, and he slowly withdrew. Only he kept ahold of my face. Big hands gentle. Gunmetal eyes gazing down. He ran the pad of his thumb over my swollen lips. “Cookie,” he whispered.

I tried not to ogle him, but I couldn’t help myself. It was the first time I felt like I could really look at him without feeling like I was stealing something that wasn’t mine. That I wasn’t creeping on what would forever be out of reach. It still felt like gluttony. Like decadence.

Only it made all those questions swirl to the surface. Ryder’s expression went soft, like he could read every one of them. “Would love you every day of my life if I could, Dakota.” “Why can’t you?” Dragging his fingers through his hair, he looked to the floor. His words were close to a mumble. “Your brother would kill me for one.” “My brother doesn’t get to say who I can date or love or how I spend a single day of my life.” “No, but he will do everything he can to protect you from the monsters in this world.” Confusion drew my brow together.

“Mean it when I tell you I’m not good enough for you.” “How could you ever say that?” “Because it’s the truth. You don’t know the things I’ve done.” “I don’t care.”

“And I’m the bastard who doesn’t know if he can stay away from you.” “Then don’t.” He pulled back, and his hand cinched down on my hip. “I don’t want to hurt you, Dakota.”

He walked me to my bedroom door. He paused there, uncertainty in his eyes. “I don’t want you to regret what happened tonight.” “I couldn’t.” There was no chance. “I should, but I don’t think I can, either,” he said. “Maybe we should have been doing this for a long time.” That sweet wickedness gleamed in his eyes. “You are playing with fire, Dakota Cooper.” “Maybe I want to burn.” Greed hardened his features to stone, and he wavered before he brushed his fingertips down the edge of my face. “Go to bed, Dakota.”

“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.” I knew he’d gotten mixed up in some bad things. When I’d been afraid he would forget me that night of her funeral, he had. Everything had changed after that. For years, he’d detached himself from our family. Had become reclusive. A ghost. The rumors had run rampant. The poor orphan who’d lost himself. The one who’d started hanging out with a rough crowd in the next town over. I had seen it in the demons that had played in his eyes the few times I’d seen him during that time. The way his stare was too distant.

I’d known it for a fact when he’d been arrested for possession the night he’d stood for me. The night he’d fought for me. I’d left for college right after that, and by the time I’d returned, he had become so much more like the boy I’d once known back when we were kids. Whole and happy. He’d gone through a rough patch, but he’d made it through.

He stared at his door for the longest time before he finally looked back at me. “No one said it was in the past, Dakota.” Then he opened the door and shut himself in his room.

I never should have touched her until I’d gotten free. Until I was sure.

I’d spent so many years ignoring what I felt for her. Pretending it didn’t exist. Had planned on doing it forever, but something inside me had snapped on Monday night when she’d walked in on me, and I’d spiraled into a deviancy that knew no bounds. The barriers I’d erected had been demolished the second she’d stumbled into my room like an apparition of every warped, greedy fantasy I’d ever had. Girl panting, eyes wide, standing there salivating over my dick. So, I’d given into the depravity because I was exactly that. A selfish bastard. I had pushed into the space I shouldn’t have gone.

It hadn’t felt as easy as that, though, when I’d emerged from my room at five-thirty and he was already gone. Anger had pulsed. I wasn’t about to stand for letting Ryder be a coward. I wouldn’t let him. Wouldn’t let him just…disappear like he had before. We might have crossed a line, but we’d crossed it together.

I’d spent the last years thinking I’d been a complete fool. A lovestruck little girl with stars in her eyes who didn’t get it. One who wanted something far above her reach. But now…

I hesitated, then said, “I think who we are got confused for a minute.” “Confused?” Paisley rocked back on her boots and crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah.” She tossed a lock of her white hair over her shoulder. “Are you joking with me right now, Dakota?” A soft puff of air blew from my nose. “It’s what makes the most sense.” After everything, it’s what added up.

“You are the most amazing person I know, Dakota Cooper. Talented and smart and hardworking and stunning in a way that leaves the rest of us in your shadow. And I know you see it when you look in the mirror. But it doesn’t show when you stand in front of him. And it’s time you stood up and felt it. Let go of whatever he did in the past that made you think you are anything less than incredible.” “He didn’t—” I cut the denial off myself. Because he had. He hadn’t meant to. But he’d hurt me.

I wasn’t sure I could fully lay myself on the line again. Wasn’t sure my heart could take it if Ryder rejected me again.

Pride swelled, and I couldn’t help but remember how it’d been made possible. And maybe that should have been enough. His care for me. But with Ryder, being friends with him…or family…or whatever we were? It just had never been enough. I wondered how I hadn’t recognized it all along because a moment later, that energy pulsed through the air. The ground shifted. It wasn’t a slight tilting. It was an earthquake below my feet. A crack right through our shaky foundation.

Jostled from the daze, I swatted at her. “Would you stop it?” She laughed too loud. “Absolutely not. Not until my Doodle-Boo gets all the good stuff she deserves. And judging by that? It’s going to be good.”

I choked over the affection. “Thank you. For everything. I couldn’t do any of this without you. I don’t know how I could ever repay you.” She brushed her thumb under my eye. “Love is on the house.” Everything swelled and rushed. “Thank you for teaching me that. What it means.”

Sniffling, I turned back to the living room that was a complete disaster. Ryder was right. My son was nothing but a tiny tornado. “You’d better pick up your toys if you want to go to Ryder’s house.” Kayden jumped into action, running around and tossing all his toys back into the bin. “Watch me. I fast, Mommy.” “Hmm, someone sure loves that Ryder, don’t they?” Mom mused from behind. Yeah, we definitely did.

I was climbing the porch steps when something stalled me. When a feeling crawled over me, lifting the hairs at the nape of my neck. Slowly, I shifted to peer over my shoulder, eyes moving over the street. Riding over the houses that sat farther back from the road and the lines of dense trees that gave each of the lots privacy. More of the late summer afternoon peace hung in the air. Birds chirping as they flitted through the branches and a calm that whispered on the light breeze. But it was hard to hold onto it when I went to the door and unlocked it. Because it didn’t matter that I saw no movement or anything out of place. I was sure we were being watched.

Ryder’s voice echoed through the house, all rumbly and low, sending tremors through my body. I let Kayden’s bag fall to the floor near the door, and I slowly eased across the room, stopping at the threshold. The sight of him hit me like a shockwave. A sonic boom that reverberated through my senses. Shaking me all the way to the bone.

I finally got myself together enough to offer him a smile. “Are you making dinner again? You really are trying to spoil me, Ryder. Keep it up, and you won’t be able to get rid of me.” “That’s the plan.” He sent me the softest smirk, the man letting some of that easy cockiness into his tone. A slight razzing that touched his words. My heart wouldn’t make it through if I dug too deeply into it.

“The plan, huh? It sounds like you’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” I teased. “A whole lot of thought.” It was rough. Scraping the air.

“I think you might be biased.” He hummed. “Maybe. Have to admit, every time I go through the café’s door, I feel like you’re making something special, just for me. That you’re thinking about me.” He peeked my way, like he was looking for a hidden truth. And I wondered if he knew. If he’d known all this time that whenever I wrote a special on the board, it was a memory of him. That I kept them like a secret diary. But he was owed that gratitude either way, wasn’t he?

“The entire day, Dakota. The entire fucking day I was thinking about you. Couldn’t get you off my mind. Not for a second.” A ragged breath left me when he suddenly went back to the stove. “Shouldn’t be, I don’t have a right to be, but it’s the truth.” I wanted to argue with him. Press him. Ask him why he thought he didn’t deserve me.