Page 10 of Awaited Love with You (Wasted Love #3)

What Matters More

Autumn

R yder’s car idles quietly across the street from my parents’ house, the low hum of the engine vibrating through the silence between us. My hands rest in my lap, but my fingers won’t stop moving.

Outside, my dad is fiddling with the bungee cords that secure our fishing boats to the back of his truck while my mom tosses gear into the cab. I know this scene by heart. I’ve lived it a hundred times. But it feels different now—like I’m watching my old life from the wrong side of the glass.

“Are you going to do it?” Ryder asks.

“Do what?”

“Introduce me to your parents.”

My pulse skips, and the air catches in my throat.

That is not what I expected him to say…

I glance out at the driveway again, at the boots my father always wears, at the pink fishing gloves my mom insists are lucky. They’re already halfway packed, about to leave for a weekend conference.

“They’re heading out. They won’t be back until Sunday.”

“Did you tell them you’re recovering from a breakup?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I hesitate. “I don’t know.”

“So now’s not a good time?”

I shake my head. “It is.”

Without another word, he gets out of the car and walks around to my side. His fingers find mine as he helps me out. They’re warm, steady, grounding.

We cross the street, and the gravel crunches beneath our feet like it’s announcing us. My stomach twists. This is happening.

“This is Ryder,” I say when we reach them. “My boyfriend.”

My mom arches a brow. “Oh. So you were serious about being done with Nate.”

“Good,” my dad says, without missing a beat. He extends a hand toward Ryder. “What do you do for a living?”

“I operate a family business,” Ryder says, his grip firm.

“Nice.”

My mom’s eyes linger on Ryder a beat longer than necessary. She’s not wearing the tight-lipped smile she used to force around Nate. No tension in her shoulders. No pointed silences. Her expression actually softens—and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear she’s blushing.

“We look forward to getting to know you better when we return,” she says.

“Likewise,” Ryder replies smoothly.

As they pull away from the curb, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

“Would you like to give me a tour?” he asks.

“That would be nice.”

We end up in my bedroom, the door quietly shutting behind us. The room still smells like lavender and dust.

Afternoon sun filters through the blinds, laying golden stripes across the faded bedspread. My comforter hasn’t changed since high school. Neither has the cork board above my desk—pinned photos curling at the corners, old earbuds tangled like a nest, key fobs that no longer work.

Ryder walks slowly, his fingers grazing the edges of things—touching the past like it’s fragile.

He stops at my desk and picks up the cracked casing from my destroyed pocket blade and pepper spray. “This looks familiar.”

“I know… I used to carry this everywhere, but I shouldn’t have.”

“Why?”

“It was a tracker.”

“What?” He arches his brow.

“Kylie gave it to me for so-called protection, but she was listening in and monitoring me sometimes.”

A soft smile crosses his lips, but he doesn’t let it stay.

“She didn’t tell you she worked for the FBI?”

“You knew?”

“Of course, but she’s only a junior-level agent and it shows. She might have gotten a promotion recently, though…”

“If her tracking led to anything that happened to you?—”

“Stop,” he says softly. “You have nothing to apologize for. Someone is always trying to bring me down. That’s the price of being at the top.”

His phone vibrates against the nightstand.

He doesn’t check it. Just presses a side button and sets it face-down.

Then his watch comes off. Deliberate. Slow. He sets it beside the phone like a quiet declaration:

I’m not here for anything but you.

Silence stretches between us, but it hums with electricity.

He steps closer, slow and certain, like he already knows I’ll meet him halfway.

When our mouths come together, it isn’t tentative—it’s urgent.

A kiss drawn from longing and silence and everything we haven’t said.

His hands settle on my hips, steady and possessive, as he guides me back across the room with a patience that feels anything but calm.

By the time the backs of my knees hit the bed, I’ve forgotten how we got here. I only know I don’t want to stop.

He starts to lift me onto him, but I press a hand to his chest and shake my head.

“Not yet,” I murmur, my voice already fraying.

I push him down instead, easing him onto the mattress. He watches me through hooded eyes, breath shallow, muscles coiled. I lean over him, placing soft, open-mouthed kisses along his throat, then lower—down his chest, past his ribs, until I reach the line of his waistband.

When I take him in my mouth, he groans—a deep, broken sound that tells me exactly how close he’s been to losing control.

His fingers tighten in the bedding first. Then they find my hair.

But he doesn’t push. He just holds on, letting me set the pace.

I draw it out—slow, deep strokes designed to unmake him.

I can feel the tension building in his body, in the way his breath catches and his hips flex just slightly under my hands.

It’s all control and restraint until it isn’t.

Until he’s falling apart and saying my name like he doesn’t know what language he’s speaking.

“Autumn…”

When I rise to meet him again, his hands move fast. He pulls me into him, kisses me with a hunger that’s all teeth and heat, then flips us without breaking rhythm.

He lowers me to the mattress, settling between my thighs like he’s done it a hundred times and never forgotten a single detail. His body presses against mine, hard and hot and deliberate, and when he enters me, I lose my breath all at once.

It’s not frenzied.

It’s deep. Slow. Intentional.

Like he needs this to last.

He moves inside me with a rhythm that feels like memory and promise woven together, like everything we tried to bury is still here—alive and burning between us.

“I missed you,” he says, voice raw. “I missed you so fucking much.”

My hands slip into his hair, pulling him closer, holding him to me like I can’t bear the space between us.

“I missed you, too.”

And I do.

With every part of me.

When I fall apart beneath him, it feels like a release and a return all at once. He holds me through it—hands firm, mouth soft—and kisses me with a reverence that makes my chest ache.

“I love you,” he whispers, his voice a rough echo against my skin.

I look up at him. Heart wide open. Guard down.

“I love you, too.”

And I mean it.

All of it.

He stays with me at my house for a few days, creating a bubble that I know will eventually have to burst. He makes love to me in the mornings, I lay against his chest and ask questions in the afternoons, and in the evenings, he threads his fingers through my hair and listens to my worries about going back with him to Seattle.

He only picks up his phone to speak to Adele.

He doesn’t look at it for anything else.

When our time is over—when the fourth day hits—he brushes my cheek and says, “There are some things I need to finish back in Seattle… I’d like you to come with me, but I understand if you’d rather stay.”

“Do you really understand?”

“I’ll pretend to.”

I smile. “I would like to go.”

“How long would it take you to get everything you need?”

“Not long.” I hesitate. Then I blurt, “I need to get Kylie back for fucking me over.”

“Why?” He studies me. “She was doing her job.”

“No. She was playing mind games once she knew who I was dating.”

He tilts his head to the side, looking slightly unconvinced.

“Her rush to meet me all of a sudden—from one phone call—didn’t make sense.”

“Even if she was your best friend?”

“Estranged best friend… And no. It didn’t make sense, and all her warnings might have been warranted, but the manner in which she went out of her way to deliver them wasn’t.”

“Trust me.” My chest aches. “The overdrawn stories, the way she mentioned things, the binder she gave me?—”

“What binder?”

I hold back a sigh and unzip my suitcase, freeing it from a stack of jeans before handing it to him.

He flips it open, slowly scanning through the pages, stopping when he reaches the ones that feature the photos of his family.

He clenches his jaw, his fingers tightening around its edge.

“I was feet away when they were murdered. At our dinner table,” he says, his voice a shadow of itself. “By my biggest enemy. The same man who tried to kill you.”

His eyes are suddenly distant, and for a moment, it’s like something has shifted.

Briefly shutting his eyes, he sighs and tells me the story like a novelist. The parmesan shells. The kitchen. The hiding. The four days he listened to their killers joke about what they’d done.

“That’s why I have to leave for Seattle now, Autumn,” he says, pulling me into his arms. “I have to get him back, and I won’t rest until I do. Are you coming with me or do I have to come back to get you later?”

I answer his question with a kiss.

End of Episode 10