Demanding Ransom (24 page)

After
dinner Ran offered to help with the dishes, but Sterling waved him off, saying
something about a housekeeper that would arrive before dawn to clean up the
aftermath. So instead we hid out in my room, waiting for the chatter downstairs
to die off as today turned into tomorrow. But by midnight, the extra couples
were still present and the party was still going. It felt like an extravagant
scene out of
The Great Gatsby
more
than a Friday evening dinner.

“How are
you?” Ran asks, sitting cross-legged in front of me on the bed.

“How am
I?” I play with the hem on my black yoga pants and roll it over and under my
fingers. “I’m fine.”

“She’s
not a good mom, Maggie.” The moonlight and the reflected white of the snow
outside filters through the upstairs window and skims across Ran’s face. His
strong features look more pronounced when the light hits the chiseled curves of
it and I find it hard not to stare at him, because as silly as it sounds, he
looks like a work of art.

“Great
job cracking the case on that one, Detective.”

“I’m not
joking. I never doubted you, but now that I’ve seen it for myself, I totally
agree. I hope that helps a little.”

I look
straight at him. “How is that supposed to help?”

“Because
now you have some outside confirmation that it’s
her
, not
you.
So you can
stop second guessing yourself.” Ran walks his fingers across the bed and pulls
my hand from its mindless pant-leg fiddling. He delicately rubs the back of it,
tracing over the ridge of knuckles with his index finger. “She didn’t leave
your family because she didn’t want to be your mother anymore, Maggie. Hell,
she doesn’t want to be
their
mother,
either.”

I arch
my head back and push out the air that’s been trapped inside my chest all
evening. The air that’s ironically been suffocating me, hardening my lungs, and
making it impossible to breathe. “And you know how that makes me feel?” I ask,
my voice erratic and uneven. “Seeing my mom just as uninterested in her current
family as she was in ours—do you know how that makes me feel?”

“No.”
His finger continues to glide across the back of my hand.

“It
makes me feel good. It makes me feel
good
,
Ran.”

He
doesn’t break his gaze and doesn’t offer me any sort of readable emotion on his
stoic face. “Okay.”

“Damn
it, Ran! It makes me feel good, and then it makes me feel absolutely horrible.”

“Right,
because it makes you feel guilty.”

I throw
my hands in the air and rip at the roots of my hair, completely disheveling the
ponytail that held it all securely there. “Yes. It makes me feel
incredibly
guilty. Just like with the
accident, just like with the cancer—knowing that my mom is just as
miserable now as she was back then makes me feel guilty, because it makes me
feel good. Because somehow, just like in those other scenarios, I’m getting
something out of it. Like I’m benefiting from someone else’s pain.”

“Stop.”
It’s just one word, yet it cuts at me more than anything he’s ever said.

I battle
with the water that laces around my eyes by blinking rapidly until I win and
they stay put. “I can’t.”

My gaze
is drawn to the shadows that slip across the wall and indicate the party
downstairs might finally be wrapping up. The way the headlights slide over the
furniture as a vehicle backs out of the driveway streaks white lines across my
room.

“Yes,
you can.” Ran’s tone is controlled.

I bite
down so hard on my cheek that I taste the tinge of blood that seeps out of it.
“I don’t know that I want to.” Shaking my head, I say, “It’s like I deserve it.
It’s like the guilt is my punishment.”

Ran
looks at me with worried eyes and then does the very last thing I’d expect when
he crosses his arms over his body, grasps the hem of his shirt, and swiftly
lifts it over his head. His upper half is exposed; his tattoos are dark against
the fair hue of his skin, the contrast only intensified from the window light.

Taking
my hand within his, Ran pulls out my index finger from my balled up fist and
runs it over his chest slowly—deliberately—like a pen inscribing a
word on a paper. My breath shakes out of me and I know my hand is trembling
because I feel the effects of it radiating up my arm to my elbow, pulling the
hairs up right along with it. But Ran just clamps down harder and doesn’t
remove his eyes from mine. It’s one of the most intense things I’ve ever done,
and at the same time, the most terrifying.

“Ransomed.”
He says the word as a whisper, and my finger follows along like it’s aiding in
his pronunciation of it.
“You know
when I got this?”

Feeling
his bare chest on my skin, even though it’s just under the surface of such a
small patch of it, makes me unbearably lightheaded. Ran keeps his hand coiled
around my finger, and if he weren’t doing so, I’d have the compulsion to press
my entire hand upon his chest. To press myself to him completely.

“I don’t
know,” I say with more nerves than I can contain. “When you got the others you
drew back in high school?”

“No,
Maggie. That’s not when.” Ran shakes his head and his dark hair falls across
his forehead. “I got it when I finally gave up the guilt I had for being glad
that my parents OD’d.”

My
finger slips from his hand and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve drawn it back,
or if he’s loosened his grip. “Oh.”

“I found
out they were dead when I was fifteen. Evidently, they were on some three-day
binge or something.” Ran threads his fingers behind his neck and wrings it back
and forth. “You know how I celebrated? I went to a party and got drunk and
hooked up with a random girl.”

“And was
that the night you…?” I start to ask.

“I
needed to escape from it, Maggie. Not just from the fact that they were dead,
but from the irrational way it made me feel to hear the news. I needed to find
something to replace all of the conflicting emotions.” He lifts his shirt from
its crumpled position on the comforter and slides it back over his head. “But
then all those escapes led to more guilt, because I was using one hurt to cover
up another. I started hating myself just as much as I hated them.”

The
depth in his eyes, the vulnerability in his voice—I’ve never seen
anything more beautiful in my life. I’d always thought that crying was
something you did over things that were sad. But the urge to burst into tears
right now over this beautiful man and his story tears at my insides, twisting
me, wrenching me. I want to weep—for him, for his past, and for what it’s
done to him. But not because it’s just sad, but because it’s turned him into
the breathtaking person that’s sitting right in front of me. I can’t breathe. I
can’t form a sentence. I can only sit, staring at him as he exposes every part
of himself to me.

“I hated
them,” Ran repeats, and I hear a sniff at the end of his sentence. Oh no, I
think he’s crying. I don’t know how I hadn’t seen it, how the water collecting
in his eyes wasn’t clearly visible, but the tear that slips down his cheek
pulls one down my own face. “I had so much hate. I had so much guilt. I always
thought healing was only about forgiving them, Maggie.” I reach my hand out to
his face and cup it on his cheek, brushing the lone tear with my thumb. He
leans into my palm and closes his eyes and I pull myself over the bed closer to
him, settling onto his lap slowly. Ran slinks his arms around my waist and
presses his chest against me. His heart doesn’t race, but keeps a steady,
controlled tempo. “Forgiving them was just part of it. But I had to learn to
accept that same forgiveness. We’re not meant to live this life clinging to
guilt because in some twisted way we think it’s our payment and punishment for
what we’ve done.”

Ran runs
his palm over the top of my head like he’s soothing me. He sighs into my hair.
“Forgiving them was the patch. Allowing myself to accept that same forgiveness
was my ransom.”

He stops
talking and just looks at me.

“I’m
scared, Ran,” I murmur into his chest.

“It’s
scary, Maggie. I told you I’m good at patching things up—I can help you
with your mom. But I can’t completely fix you—that’s going to come from
within. I can’t do that for you.”

“No,
that’s not what I’m scared of, as frightening as all that sounds.” I tilt my
chin up. I can’t get over how beautiful he is. “I’m scared of what I feel.” My
heart thunders in my ears. “I’m scared of you, Ran.”

“I’m not
trying to scare you.” He shakes his head. “I just want you to know who I am and
how I’ve gotten here. How I’m not bound by my guilt, my mistakes, or even their
mistakes anymore.”

“That’s
what scares me.
Who you are.
You’re
this incredible, unimaginable person that’s had more crap in their life than
any one human deserves, and I’m terrified by you.” I pull back to reach his
eyes, to try to share a piece of myself by allowing him to see my
vulnerability, to stare it straight in the eye. “I’m terrified by you, because
you’ve somehow figured it out and you’re living the life I want to
live—one where you don’t feel the need to punish yourself anymore. I’m
terrified by you, Ran.” I swallow so hard I’m sure he hears it. “I’m terrified
by you because I think I’m falling for you.” I swallow once more. “And that
scares the hell out of me.”

“Maggie,”
Ran utters, his brow pulled taut, almost like he’s in agony.

“I am, Ran,”
I say again while I still have courage, before I realize just what I’m doing
and try to slink back into my shell again like I always do. “I haven’t allowed
myself to love for so long. And it scares me because you’re not safe. Nothing
about you feels safe, Ran. Everything about you is terrifying, because you’re
turning me into the girl I’ve been running from for these past ten years.”

“But
I’ve
been searching for that girl for
all those years, too.” Ran lifts me off of his lap and presses me backward onto
the bed, slowly, gently, with his hand at the low curve of my back as my head
meets the mattress. “You have to stop running from her, Maggie. I need her just
as much as you do.”

“I’m
done running. From her, from you, from it all.” Something flickers in Ran’s
eyes and he uses his weight to push me down so I’m completely underneath him,
his elbows propped on either side of my body. The fabric of the comforter is
cold against my skin. Ran’s fingers twist in my hair to slip the knot out of my
ponytail, and he brushes his thumbs on either side of my cheeks. “I’m falling
for you, Ran.”

“I’m
right there with you,” he says, and when he lowers his mouth just over mine,
all sensation in my body intensifies. I wait for him to lessen the gap and
finally kiss me—to finally do what I’ve daydreamed about since the moment
we met—but he scoots down and skims his warm lips across my jaw, trailing
lightly down my neck, and over to my collar bone. My lips ache and I have to
pin them between my teeth to provide some kind of relief. My body alternates
between a fevered flush and deep chills and it’s an incredibly dizzying
feeling, but one that I never want to go away.

“Maggie,”
he mumbles across my neck.

I tug at
his hair and bury his head into my hair that spills around my shoulders, and
his mouth pushes harder against my jaw. Why won’t he just kiss me? After all
that I know he’s done in his past, how is he able to exercise so much restraint
when it comes to me?

I decide
to take things into my own hands and begin pressing my lips to his cheek,
starting just above his jaw by his earlobe, inching closer to his mouth each
time I draw back and reposition my mouth on his skin. Ran backs off of me,
raising up to look into my eyes. I can’t get over how blue they are. Even in
the dark shade of the room, they’re so clear. His thick lashes drape across
them and his mouth is that same mouth I remember from our first encounter. I’d
wondered what it would feel like on my own back then, but then it was just a
mouth—a perfectly shaped one—but it was all physical. Now I’ve
heard what those lips are capable of saying, what that mouth is capable of
confessing, and it’s like I need to feel it on my own to make everything
complete.

I sweep
my lips back across that same path again and bring my mouth close to the
curvature of his ear and whisper quietly, “I want you to kiss me.” My heart is
about to rip through my chest and I’m sure Ran can feel it throbbing through my
shirt and hear it rattling out in my breathing. It would be so easy to just do
it, to plant my mouth on his and press into him with a kiss. But the only thing
that makes it easy is our close proximity to one another, because actually
doing
it—actually summoning the
courage to kiss Ran—feels impossible, like it’s both the scariest, and
most exhilarating, thing I’ve ever contemplated doing.

“Maggie.”
I see him close his eyes and feel him angle his ear closer to my mouth so my
lips skim across it. Ran runs a hand over my shoulder to my jaw, and takes it
in his palm. “I want to kiss you more than anything right now.”

“I’m
asking you to.” I pull back and implore him with hungry eyes, practically
begging for it, to the point where I feel like I should be embarrassed. Like
maybe there’s something wrong with me because kissing shouldn’t be this much of
a battle. Especially for two people who have done much more than that in our
pasts.