Always His (Crazed Devotion #1) (4 page)

I
sat outside Nicole’s apartment for close to half an hour, trying to find a way to convince her to talk to me. I know the way I’d handled things five years ago was wrong. But at the time I felt like I was doing the right thing by her.

Now I knew it was the worst choice I had ever made.

After driving through Arab, remembering the streets and places that held memories of Nicole and me, I found myself parked outside Lucy’s. I may have been setting myself up for more punishment, but it was worth the risk. I would take all the shit I had to if in the end I was one step closer to having Nicole back in my life. I pulled the keys from the ignition of my old truck and crawled out. After taking a moment to calm my racing heart, I shut the door and walked toward the entrance. I knew Alan would be here. He always spent his days getting things ready for the evening rush.

Entering the bar, I was amazed at how little it had changed. I was also amazed at how many people started drinking around midday. At least ten people were sitting around with a tall beer in their hands as they enjoyed highlights from last night’s sports on the TVs.

Heads turned in my direction as the door shut behind me with a loud bang. But my stare was locked with the eyes of the guy behind the bar.

Allan Russell had always been a kind, loving man, but from the look on his face, I wasn’t sure he was still that same man. He narrowed his eyes and stopped polishing the glass in his hand as I walked toward him, holding his gaze.

“Allan,” I said as I stepped up to the bar that separated us.

I held out my hand, and he just looked down at it before looking back up at me once more. Just when I thought coming here was a mistake, he shook my hand. “It’s good to see you, son,” he said as a smile tugged at his lips.

“I wish your daughter felt the same way,” I said with a chuckle as I took a seat at the bar. I rested my elbows there and looked around the room. A few familiar faces offered a nod and a smile.

“You seen Nicole?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said as I turned back to face him. “I stopped by her place. My parents sorta kept tabs on her for me, so it wasn’t hard to find it.”

“Well,” he said as he grabbed the towel and began drying glasses once more. “I’m surprised you made it out alive.”

“Yeah, me too.” My tension was slowly fading now. “I know I messed up. If there had been another way, I would have taken it. But I asked her to come with, and she said she couldn’t leave.”

Allan stopped drying cups and tossed the towel over his shoulder as he leaned a hip against the bar.

“I knew she’d say no, but I still had to ask. And I was fooling myself thinking we could have a relationship being so far apart. I mean, hell, what girl wants to be with a guy that’s living thousands of miles across the world?” I paused as I picked at the edge of the bar. “I couldn’t hold her back. It just didn’t feel right.”

“I listened to my daughter cry herself to sleep for weeks after you left,” Allan said, and it felt like he’d kicked me in the stomach. “Then I watched her fall apart when you stopped calling. We fought, and, Ryker, you know we never fight.”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat as I nodded in agreement. I had never in my life met a father and daughter that had the kind of relationship Allan and Nicole did. They were so much alike they were like two best friends rather than a parent and child.

“I tried to help her through it all, but nothing worked. So I sat back and watched her fall apart a little more each day.” He cleared his throat as he pushed off the counter and began drying glasses once more. “If I’d known she was hanging around with that loser Tyler, I would have stopped it.”

Thinking of Tyler being around Nicole made my blood boil. He and I had never gotten along. I can even remember beating his ass on more than one occasion.

“When she told me she was pregnant, she didn’t have that look of happiness a woman gets when they share that news. She looked devastated. It was real rough patch, and without Liz, I’m not sure how we would have gotten through it.” The tormented look on Allan’s face only made the ache in my chest that much harder to bear.

“But the moment she saw Victoria for the first time, it was like everything shifted into place. That sweet little girl brought back my Nicole.” Allan’s eyes appeared glossy as he looked down at his hands as they continued to dry the same glass over and over. “I know it’s been hard for her, but that girl’s strength inspires me. She’s just like her momma, and Tori’s her world. Despite the shitty father she was stuck with, there is not a day goes by that my granddaughter doesn’t make our days brighter.”

“She’s beautiful,” I said, and he looked up at me, nodding in agreement with a proud smile.

“I’m rooting for ya, Ryker, but you have to know it isn’t gonna be an easy road. You hurt her, even though your intentions were good.”

It was my turn to nod. I couldn’t say anything more because I’d heard more than once now how rough my leaving was on Nicole.

“I can’t help ya, because right or wrong, I’m in Nicole’s corner. But that doesn’t mean I’m not quietly praying for her to give you another shot. I never met a man I thought was good enough for Nic until I met you.”

Like I said, Allan Russell was a good man.

“W
hat the hell do you mean Ryker is back in town?” Liz screeched through the phone. I held it away from my ear as she rambled on about beating his ass and a dozen other ways to torture him.

Once she had calmed down long enough for me to intervene, I put the phone back to my ear. “He didn’t reenlist. At least that’s what Bert said he told him. So he’s back for good.” I tucked the phone between my shoulder and ear as I lifted the basket of clothes from the floor.

“And he just showed up on your doorstep this mornin’ like nothing ever happened?” she said, a little less high-pitched this time.

“I wouldn’t say like nothing ever happened.” I paused in the hallway, remembering his face when I finally looked up at him. “He was nervous. He still does that sexy squint when he’s unsure of something.”

“And?” she pressed.

I looked over at Tori, who sat on the floor in my father’s living room, eating Cheerios and watching
Dora the Explorer
. “And nothing,” I replied. “He’s back, and my life continues to move forward the way it has for the last five years.”

“I call bullshit,” she said with a laugh.

“Excuse me?” I repositioned the basket.

“We’re talking about Ryker, Nic. The guy you fell in love with years ago and never have stopped loving. Regardless of all the shit, he’s still the one. You can’t pull the blinders over my eyes, sweetheart. You forget I know all your dirty little secrets.”

It was pointless to argue with her; she was right. During all these years she’d been the one to hear my biggest fears and deepest regrets. She knew me better than I knew myself, it seemed.

“So what time should I be at your place tonight?” she asked, breaking me out of my haze.

“Um, about tonight.” I smiled, knowing she was going to be more than happy to fulfill my request. “I actually don’t need you to watch Tori. I need you at the bar.”

“And why, might I ask?” I could hear the smile in her voice.

“In case I need a buffer. Something tells me Ryker may show up.” The thought of him being at the bar made my stomach tense.

“I get free drinks, right?” she asked in a hopeful voice.

“Yeah, you get free drinks.”

My dad was happy when I called him an hour ago to ask if he could keep Victoria tonight. He told me he was gonna feed her full of junk food and teach her how to spit. I hoped not in that order. When I mentioned Ryker he didn’t sound surprised. Which made me believe my father and I needed to have a little talk later.

It was a quarter after eight, and my nerves were on high alert. I had been watching the door all night. Every time someone came in, I felt a pang of disappointment that it wasn’t him, followed by relief that maybe I’d be able to hold my shit together for one more night.

Just before nine the crowd got a little thicker, and Greg looked like he could use some help behind the bar. Rachel was too busy shaking her tits in the face of any man who showed interest, and I knew she was hopeless. If she hadn’t been one of my momma’s best friends growing up, I would have convinced my father to fire her by now.

I was so engrossed in the drink orders that I nearly dropped a bottle of beer when my best friend drunkenly screeched, “Well, look who decided to grace us all with his presence.”

I looked up to see Ryker approaching the bar, and my throat tightened. If I thought he looked good earlier, that had nothing on his appearance tonight. Jeans that seems to mold to his lower half showed off his narrow waist and thick thighs. And I was ashamed that the way his Henley showed off his chest affected me the way it did. Suddenly the room felt warmer and a whole lot smaller.

I noticed I was staring when my gaze reached his and he grinned knowingly. That and the fact the cup I’d been filling from the tap was now overflowing with beer that was pooling on the floor at my feet.

“Shit,” I mumbled as I grabbed a towel and started cleaning up the mess I’d made.

“Hold it together,” Elle, Liz’s sister and our part-time waitress, whispered as she walked past me, trying to remain discreet.

If only being in Ryker’s presence didn’t make my body hum the way it did, her suggestion may have been possible. As he continued to move toward the bar, I chose to busy myself once again with customers. But the moment he sat on the barstool next to Liz, my suggestion that she be my buffer came back to haunt me. What the hell was I thinking when I asked her to do that? As if there was anyone out there that could possibly keep my mind off the man my heart still belonged too.

“You sure aren’t giving up easily, are you?” She bumped shoulders with him, and he smiled at her. “Oh my, and still he has that pretty-boy smile. Only it’s backed up by all this yummy goodness.” She squeezed his bicep and faked a shiver. “And he smells damn good too,” she added, then took a deep breath and let her eyes flutter shut.

Ryker’s chuckle made my stomach flip. I was going to beat the snot out of my useless best friend.

“Still the same fireball of fun, I see,” he said to Liz, and she shrugged like she wasn’t surprised to be referred to that way. “But to answer your earlier question, no, I don’t give up easily.”