Chapter Fifteen
Sydney
Me: What’s taking you so long? Are you
writing a damn book?
I don’t know if my rubbing his shoulders is
putting him to sleep, but he’s been staring at his
phone for five solid minutes.
Ridge: Sorry. Lost in thought.
Me: I can see that. So, Sounds of Cedar?
Ridge: It’s kind of a long story. Let me
grab my laptop.
I open up our Facebook messages on my
phone. When he returns, he leans against a
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counter several feet away from me. I’m aware of
the fact that he’s put space between us, and it
makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable, because
I know I shouldn’t have been rubbing his
shoulders. It’s too much, considering what’s
happened between us in the past, but I feel as if
it’s my fault his shoulders hurt in the first place.
He doesn’t really complain about what playing
on the floor is doing to him, but I can tell it hurts sometimes. Especially after nights like last night,
when we wrote for three hours straight. I asked
him to start playing on the floor to help with the
fact that things seem to be more difficult when
he’s on the bed. If I didn’t still have such a huge
crush on his guitar playing, it might not be as big
a problem.
But I do still have a definite crush on his guitar
playing. And I would say I have a definite crush
on him, but crush doesn’t even begin to define it.
I’m not even going to try to define how I feel
about him, because I refuse to let my thoughts go
there. Not now and not ever.
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Ridge: We had all been playing together
for fun for about six months before we got
our first real gig at a local restaurant.
They needed us to give them the name of
our band so they could put us on the
schedule. We had never really considered
ourselves an actual band before that,
since it was all in fun, but that night, we
agreed that maybe for local things like the
restaurant, it would be good to have a
name. We all took turns throwing out sug-
gestions, but we couldn’t seem to agree
on anything. At one point, Brennan sug-
gested we call ourselves Freak Frogs. I
laughed. I told him it sounded like a punk
band, that we needed a title with more of
an acoustic sound. He got upset and said I
shouldn’t really be allowed to comment on
how music or titles sound, since, well, yay
for lame deaf jokes from sixteen-year-old
little brothers.
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Anyway, Warren didn’t like how cocky
Brennan was back then, so he said I
should choose the name and everyone
had to agree on it. Brennan got pissed
and walked off, said he didn’t want to be
in the band anyway. I knew he was just
having a Brennan tantrum. He didn’t have
them often, but when he did have them, I
understood. I mean, the kid had virtually
no parents, and he was raising himself, so
I thought he was pretty damn mature
despite the sporadic tantrums. I told the
guys I wanted to think on it for a while. I
tried to come up with names that I
thought would mean something to every-
one, but mostly to Brennan. I thought
back on what got me into listening to mu-
sic in the first place.
Brennan was around two years old, and I
was five. I’ve already shared to you all the
qualities my parents possessed, so I won’t
go back into that. But in addition to all
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their addictions, they also liked to party.
They would send us to our rooms at night
once all their friends began to arrive. I no-
ticed that Brennan was always wearing
the same diapers when he woke up that
he wore to bed. They never checked on
him. Never fed him at night or changed
him or even checked to see if he was
breathing. This is probably something that
had been occurring since he was an in-
fant, but I didn’t really notice until I star-
ted school, because I think I was just too
young. We weren’t allowed to leave our
rooms at night. I don’t remember why I
was too scared to leave my room, but I’m
sure I’d been punished for it before, or it
wouldn’t have bothered me. I would wait
until the parties were over and my par-
ents went to bed before I could leave my
room and go check on Brennan. The prob-
lem with this was that I couldn’t hear, so I
never knew when the music would stop,
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and I never knew if they had gone to their
bedroom, because I wasn’t allowed to
open my door. Instead of risking being
caught, I would just press my ear to the
floor and feel the vibrations of the music.
Every night, I would lie there for no telling
how long, just waiting for the music to
stop. I began to recognize the songs
based on how they felt through the floor,
and I learned how to predict which songs
were coming next, since they played the
same albums night after night. I even
began to learn how to tap along with the
rhythm. After the music would finally
stop, I would keep my ear pressed to the
floor and wait for my parents’ footsteps to
indicate that they had gone to their bed-
room. Once I knew the coast was clear, I
would go to Brennan’s room and bring
him back to bed with me. That way, when
he woke up crying, I could help him.
Which brings me back to the point of this
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story, how I came up with the band name.
I learned how to differentiate chords and
sounds through all the nights my body
and my ears were pressed against the ce-
dar floor. Hence Sounds of Cedar.
Inhale, exhale.
Beat, beat, pause.
Contract, expand.
I don’t even realize how on edge I am until I
see the white in my knuckles as I grip my phone.
We both remain still for several moments while I
attempt to get the image of the five-year-old
Ridge out of my head.
It’s gut-wrenching.
Me: I guess that explains how you can dif-
ferentiate vibrations so well. And I guess
Brennan agreed once you told him the
name, because how could he not appreci-
ate that?
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Ridge: Brennan doesn’t know that story.
Once again, you’re the first person I’ve
ever shared it with.
I lift my eyes back to his and inhale, but for the
life of me, I can’t remember how to exhale. He’s
a good three feet away, but I feel as if every
single part of me that his eyes fall on is being dir-
ectly touched by him. For the first time in a
while, the fear etches its way back into my heart.
Fear that one of these moments will be one
neither of us can resist.
He sets his laptop on the counter and folds his
arms across his chest. Before his eyes meet mine,
his gaze falls on my legs, and then he slowly
works his eyes up the entire length of my body.
His eyes are narrow and focused. The way he’s
looking at me makes me want to lunge for the
freezer and crawl inside.
His eyes are fixed on my mouth, and he quietly
swallows, then reaches beside him and picks up
his phone.
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Ridge: Hurry, Syd. I need a serious flaw,
and I need it now.
I force a smile, although my insides are
screaming for me not to text him back a flaw. It’s
as if my fingers are fighting with themselves as
they fly over the screen in front of me.
Me: Sometimes when I’m frustrated with
you, I wait until you look away, and then I
yell mean things at you.
He laughs, then looks back up at me. “Thank
you,” he silently mouths.
It’s the first time he’s ever mouthed words,
and if he weren’t walking away from me right
now, I’d be begging for him to do it again.
Heart 1.
Sydney 0.
? ? ?
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It’s after midnight, but we finally finish adding
icing to the fifth and final cake. He cleans the last of the ingredients off the counter while I secure
the Saran wrap around the cake pan and slide it
next to the other four pans.
Ridge: Do I finally get to meet the raging
alcoholic side of you tomorrow night?
Me: I’m thinking you just might.
He grins and flips off the kitchen light. I walk
to the living room to power off the TV. Warren
and Bridgette should come home sometime in the
next hour, so I leave the lamp on in the living
room.
Ridge: Will it be weird for you?
Me: Being drunk? Nope. I’m pretty good
at it.
Ridge: No. I mean Maggie.
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I look up at him where he’s standing in front of
his bedroom door, watching his phone, not mak-
ing eye contact with me. He looks nervous that
he even asked the question.
Me: Don’t worry about me, Ridge.
Ridge: Can’t help it. I feel like I’ve put you
in an awkward situation.
Me: You haven’t. I mean, don’t get me
wrong, it would help if you weren’t so at-
tractive, but I’m hoping Brennan looks a
lot like you. That way, when you’re shack-
ing up with Maggie tomorrow night, I can
have drunk, wild fun with your little
brother.
I hit send, then immediately gasp. What the
hell was I thinking? That wasn’t funny. It was
supposed to be funny, but it’s after midnight, and I’m never funny after midnight.
Shit.
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Ridge is still looking down at the screen on his
phone. His jaw twitches, and he shakes his head
slightly, then looks up at me as if I’ve just shot
him through the heart. He drops his arm and runs
his free hand through his hair, then turns to walk
to his room.
I. Suck.
I rush to him and put my hand on his shoulder,
urging him to turn back around. He rolls his
shoulder to brush my hand off but pauses, only
partially turning to face me with a guarded ex-
pression. I step around to his front so he’s forced
to look at me.
“I was kidding,” I say, slowly and very seri-
ously. “I’m sorry.”
His face is still tense and hard and even a little
disappointed, but he lifts his phone and begins
texting again.
Ridge: And therein lies the problem,
Sydney. You should be able to screw who-
ever you want to screw, and I shouldn’t
give a shit.
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I suck in a breath. At first, it pisses me off, but
then I focus in on the one word that reveals the
entire truth behind his statement.
Shouldn’t.
He didn’t say, “I don’t give a shit.” He said, “I
shouldn’t give a shit.”
I look up at him, and his face is so full of pain
it’s heart-breaking.
He doesn’t want to feel like this. I don’t want him to feel like this.
What the hell am I doing to him?
He runs both of his hands through his hair,
looks up at the ceiling, and squeezes his eyes
shut. He stands like this for a while, then exhales
and drops his hands to his hips, lowering his eyes
to the floor.
He feels so guilty he can’t even look at me.
Without making eye contact, he lifts an arm
and grabs my wrist, then pulls me toward him.
He crushes me to his chest, wraps one arm
around my back, and curves his other hand
against the back of my head. My arms are folded
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up and tucked between us while his cheek rests
against the top of my head. He sighs heavily.
I don’t pull away from him in order to text him
a flaw, because I don’t think he’s in need of one
right now. The way he’s holding me is different,
unlike all the times in the past few weeks when
we’ve had to separate ourselves in order to
breathe.
He’s holding me now as if I’m a part of
him—a wounded extension of his heart—and
he’s realizing just how much that extension needs
to be severed.
We stand like this for several minutes, and I
begin to get lost in the way he’s wrapped himself
around me. The way he’s holding me gives me a
glimpse of what things could be like between us.
I try to push those two little words into the back
of my head, the two words that always inch their
way forward when we’re together.
Maybe someday.
The sound of keys hitting a counter behind me
jerks me to attention. I pull back, and Ridge does
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the same as soon as he feels my body flinch
against his. He looks over my shoulder and to-
ward the kitchen, so I spin around. Warren has
just walked through the front door. His back is
toward us, and he’s slipping off his shoes.
“I’m only going to say this once, and I need
you to listen,” Warren says. He still isn’t facing
us, but I’m the only one in the apartment who can
hear him, so I know he’s directing his comment
to me. “He will never leave her, Sydney.”
He walks to his bedroom without once looking
over his shoulder, leaving Ridge to believe he
never even saw us. The door to Warren’s bed-
room closes, and I turn back to face Ridge. His
eyes are still on Warren’s door. When they flick
back to mine, they’re full of so many things I
know he wishes he could say.
But he doesn’t. He just turns and walks into his
room, closing the door behind him.
I remain completely motionless as two huge
tears spill from my eyes, scarring their way down
my cheeks in a trail of shame.
Ridge
Brennan: Gotta love rain. Looks like I’ll be
there early. I’m coming alone, though.
The guys can’t make it.
Me: See you when you get here. Oh, and
before you leave tomorrow, make sure
you get all your shit out of Sydney’s
room.
Brennan: Will she be there? Do I finally
get to meet the girl who was brought to
this earth for us?
Me: Yeah, she’ll be here.
Brennan: I can’t believe I’ve never asked
this, but is she hot?
Oh, no.
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Me: Don’t even think about it. She’s been
through too much shit to be added to your
list of concubines.
Brennan: Territorial, are we?
I toss my phone onto the bed and don’t even
bother with a reply. If I make her too off-limits to
him, it’ll just make him try that much harder with
her.
When she made the joke last night about
screwing him, she was just trying to add humor
to the seriousness of the situation, but the way
her text made me feel terrified me.
It wasn’t the fact that she texted about hooking
up with someone. What terrified me was my
knee-jerk reaction. I wanted to throw my phone
against the wall and smash it into a million
pieces, then throw her against the wall and show her all the ways I could ensure that she never
thinks about another man again.
I didn’t like feeling that way. I probably
should encourage Brennan. Maybe it would be
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better for my relationship with Maggie if Sydney
actually started dating someone else.
Whoa.
The wave of jealousy that just rolled over me
felt more like a tsunami.
I walk out of my bedroom and head to the kit-
chen to help Sydney get things together for din-
ner before everyone gets here. I pause when I see
her bent over, rummaging through the contents of
the refrigerator. She’s wearing the blue dress
again.
I hate it when Warren is right. My eyes slowly
scroll from the dress, down her tanned legs, and
back up again. I exhale and contemplate asking
her to go change. I’m not sure I can deal with this
tonight. Especially when Maggie gets here.
Sydney straightens up, pulls away from the re-
frigerator, and turns toward the counter. I notice
she’s talking, but she isn’t talking to me. She
pulls a bowl out of the refrigerator, and her
mouth is still moving, so naturally, my eyes scan
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the rest of the apartment to see who it is she’s
talking to.
And that’s when both halves of my
heart—which were somehow still connected by a
small, invisible fiber—snap apart and separate
completely.
Maggie is standing in front of the bathroom
door, eyeing me hard. I can’t read her expression,
because it’s not one I’ve ever been exposed to
before. The half of my heart that belongs to her
immediately begins to panic.
Look innocent, Ridge. Look innocent. All you
did was look at her.
I smile. “There’s my girl,” I sign as I walk to
her. The fact that I’m somehow able to hide my
guilt seems to ease her concern. She smiles back
and wraps her arms around my neck when I reach
her. I slip my arms around her waist and kiss her
for the first time in two weeks.
God, I’ve missed her. She feels so good. So
familiar.
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She smells good, she tastes good, she is good.
I’ve missed her so damn much. I kiss her cheek
and her chin and her forehead, and I love that I’m
so relieved to have her here. For the past few
days, I began to fear that I wouldn’t have this re-
action the next time I saw her.
“I have to go really bad. Long drive.” She
winces and points to the door behind her, and I
give her another quick kiss. Once she’s inside the
bathroom, I slowly turn back around to gauge
Sydney’s reaction.
I’ve been as upfront and honest with Sydney as
I can possibly be about my feelings for Maggie,
but I know it’s not easy for her to see me with
Maggie. There’s just no way around it. Do I com-
promise my relationship with Maggie to spare
Sydney’s feelings? Or do I compromise Sydney’s
feelings to spare my relationship with Maggie?
Unfortunately, there’s no middle ground. No
right choice. My actions are becoming split dir-
ectly down the middle, just like my heart.
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I face her, and our eyes meet briefly. She refo-
cuses her attention down to the cake in front of
her and inserts candles. When she finishes, she
smiles and looks back up at me. She sees the con-
cern in my expression, so she pats her chest and
makes the “okay” sign with her hand.
She’s reassuring me that she’s fine. I practic-
ally have to pry myself away from her every
night, and then I maul my girlfriend right in front
of her—and she’s reassuring me?
Her patience and understanding with this
whole screwed-up situation should make me
happy, but they have the opposite effect. They
disappoint me, because they make me like her
that much more.
I can’t win for losing.
? ? ?
Oddly enough, Maggie and Sydney seem to be
having fun together in the kitchen, prepping in-
gredients for a pot of chili. I couldn’t hang, so I
retreated to my room and claimed I had a lot of
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work to catch up on. As good as Sydney is with
this, I’m not as skilled. It was awkward for me
every time Maggie would kiss me or sit on my
lap or trail her fingers seductively up my chest.
Which, come to think of it, was a bit odd. She’s
never really all that touchy-feely when we’re
hanging out, so she’s either feeling a tad bit ter-
ritorial, or she and Sydney have already been hit-
ting the Pine-Sol.
Maggie comes into the bedroom just as I’m
shutting the laptop. She kneels down on the edge
of the bed, leans forward, and inches her way to-
ward me. She’s looking up at me with a flirta-
tious smile, so I set the laptop aside and smile
back at her.
She crawls her way up my body until she’s
face-to-face with me, and then she sits back on
her heels, straddling me. She cocks an eyebrow
and tilts her head. “You were checking out her
ass.”
Shit.
I was hoping that moment had come and gone.
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I laugh and cup my hands around Maggie’s
backside and scoot her a little closer. I let go and
bring my hands back around in front of her and
answer her. “I walked out of my room to a rear
end pointed toward my bedroom door. I’m a guy.
Guys notice things like that, unfortunately.” I
kiss her mouth, then pull back.
She’s not smiling. “She’s really nice,” Maggie
signs. “And pretty. And funny. And talented.
And . . .”
The insecurity in her words makes me feel like
a jerk, so I grab her hands and still them. “She’s
not you,” I tell her. “No one can ever be you,
Maggie. Ever.”
She smiles halfheartedly and places her palms
on the sides of my face and slowly runs them
down to my neck. She leans forward and presses
her mouth to mine with so much force I can feel
the fear rolling off of her.
Fear that I put there.
I grab her face and kiss her with everything I
have, doing all I can to erase her worries. The last
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thing this girl needs is something else to stress
her out.
When she breaks apart from me, her features
are still full of every single negative emotion I’ve
spent the past five years helping her drown out.
“Ridge?” She pauses, then drops her eyes
while she blows out a long, controlled breath.
The nervousness in her demeanor twists around
my heart and squeezes it. She brings her eyes
carefully back to mine. “Did you tell her about
me? Does she know?” Her eyes search mine for
an answer to the question she should never even
feel the need to ask.
Does she not know me by now?
“No. God, no, Maggie. Why would I do that?
That’s always been your story to tell, not mine. I
would never do that.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and she tries to blink
them away. I let my head fall back against the
headboard. This girl still has no idea how far I’ll
go for her.
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I lift my head away from the headboard and
look her hard in the eyes. “To the ends of the
earth, Maggie,” I sign, repeating our phrase to
her.
She forces a sad smile. “And back.”