Ryder:
I was going to f*****g snap.
I felt it in my jaw, in my fists, in the slow, calculated way I stepped toward her—like a storm rolling in with nowhere else to go. I'd played the patient one. The calm one. The one who waited, who caught her every time she fell. But right now? All I wanted was for her to see me. See what every stupid f*****g decision she made did to me.
Phoenix Wilde—drunk on alcohol and her own damn stubbornness, always so ready to bolt—stood there with that wild look in her eyes like I was the enemy for loving her too goddamn much.
She had no idea.
No f*****g clue what it cost me to be this damn calm.
“I don’t know how to be loved,” she’d said like it was a curse, like it excused her chaos, like it erased mine.
And I’d told her I did. Told her I could wait. Tol
