Free Heart by Rachel Higginson Page A

just standing near
her.”
    “Get in, Ivy.”
    Okay, then. Apparently the car was off
limits.
    I slid into the passenger’s seat, enjoying
the new upholstery. I pressed my palm to the clean dash and
marveled at all of the work he had done.
    After he closed the door and started the car,
I asked, “This is the same car, right? Or is this a new one?”
    “It’s the same car.”
    “But it looks so new! Did you do all of this
yourself?”
    “Red, I really don’t want to talk about the
car right now.”
    I slumped back in the seat and avoided
looking anywhere in his general direction when I buckled up. He
took off through the neighborhood while I gave him directions to
Smith’s.
    As soon as he was headed in the right
direction, I crossed my arms over my chest and fell silent.
    I could admit to myself that I didn’t always
know how to act around Ryder. He had always been this overwhelming
force of something I couldn’t exactly understand. At the same time
he felt both too much for me and just enough. He was too smart, too
strong and too perceptive while I floundered in front of him always
exposed and always frustratingly vulnerable. He had been, up until
this point, always ready to catch me, while I had been forever
poised at the edge of a cliff ready to fall.
    And now all of that was amplified intensely
because those things had never been truer.
    I didn’t know what to say because whatever I
said felt wrong. I didn’t know how to behave because whatever I did
felt like not enough. And I really, really didn’t know how to think
because every thought I had about him was in absolute opposition to
how he felt about me.
    “Smith,” he finally said and I didn’t
understand at first.
    “You’re going the right way,” I told him.
    “No, Smith did this to my car. Before he
dropped it off for me, he had it completely redone. I didn’t even
recognize it when I got it back.”
    “Smith did this?” My words were a pained
whisper.
    “Yep.”
    “I’m so sorry, Ryder. I didn’t ask him to. I
swear I didn’t. I just… I just wanted you to get her back. And I
guess that’s something else I have to apologize for. I’m sorry I
stole your car. I’m sorry-”
    “Ivy, I’m not mad you stole my car. If you
need my car, no matter where we are or what has come between us,
the car is yours. It’s not the point. I’m not interested in
material possessions. I want you to be safe. That’s all. If my car
has to be a casualty to make it that way, then so be it.”
    I pressed my lips together, unsure what to
think about that. Eventually my mind spun as fast as my heart and
the question just fell out, “So why do you seem so upset about the
car?”
    “Because he didn’t even ask me! He did
everything without asking me and then he handed it over like it was
my reward for helping you. Like I wanted some kind of monetary
repayment for falling in love with you! I told him I didn’t want
it. I didn’t want the damn car or anything to do with you running
away. I didn’t want the reminder and I sure as hell didn’t want to
be bought off while I couldn’t even recover from losing you… while
my world ended.”
    “Ryder,” I whispered, but it was the only
word I could force out.
    “Ivy, I’m going to say this one more time… I
don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Okay.”
    He gave me a sideways look that I couldn’t
read and the rest of the drive was spent in silence. The gate to
Smith’s house had been left open, so we drove up the long drive and
parked in front of his sprawling estate.
    By the time Ryder turned the car off, I had a
thousand questions to ask him, but in the end only one made it
beyond my lips. “If you didn’t want anything to do with it, why did
you keep it?”
    He stared straight ahead, without moving,
without even breathing and said, “It turned out that I did want the
reminder. That I couldn’t live without it.” He shoved his door open
and jumped down before I could respond.
    Not that I could