I saw him again.

The boy I'd seen creepily staring at me in the library that night. The night that happened to be the last time I'd seen Ryder as well.

He was once again in that dark hooded sweatshirt and was wearing black shades this time as well. It was him--the boy from the library--and I don't know why seeing him again made a shiver crawl up my spine (not in a good way at all). He wasn't even staring at me this time, or at least that's what I thought since I couldn't make out his gaze under those dark shades. His face was slightly tipped forward and I wasn't so sure if he could see me sitting inside The Bakery and staring at him with all the distance between us.

"And you have no idea why she just left like that, sugar?" Macy asked me, making me look away from the street outside the cafe and back at her. I was sitting on my usual spot on one of the stools lining the counter.

"No." I shook my head when I saw her furrowing her brows worriedly. "I do try to call her every day. Last I heard about her was from her dad. He told me she's not feeling well, and I don't think I should keep calling him even though I'm worried."

Macy squeezed my shoulder before patting it. "She'll come around. I've seen you both together, sugar. You're best friends."

We were friends but I didn't think Brooke had ever considered me her best friend. Brooke was my roommate first and foremost. She was like an older sister to me, even. She cared about me. And if only I'd just...

"I know about the thing that happened with your boyfriend." She added in, lowering her voice. "Soren, wasn't it?"

I stared at her. That's also when my eyes darted to the glass window behind her and saw him again. The boy I'd seen staring at me in the library. Maybe, I told myself as I found him still in the same spot, it's just a coincidence.

"Brooke hooked up with him when you and he were still a thing." Macy looked sad.

I blinked and looked back at her. "That's...It wasn't a big deal." And then I frowned. "How do you even know about this?"

She shrugged and wiped the already clean counter with a kitchen towel. "College kids show up here a lot and it may surprise you, but they talk."

I didn't think anyone knew what had happened between Soren and me, other than the both of us. Well, no one else except Nico, Soren's roommate, and Ryder.

And Brooke.

I cleared my throat. "Really, Mace. It was just...I guess, I was hurt when I found out. But Soren and I weren't serious. I've never had a serious relationship and you know it."

"I suppose." She sighed again and pulled away from the counter. "Besides that boy had no idea what your favorite pastry was. I feel like that should've been our first red flag."

I managed a smile. "He hated the pastries here."

Macy placed a hand over her heart, looking so highly offended at that moment that I almost laughed. "You dodged a bullet there, sugar."

I smiled and shrugged, albeit a bit sadly. She smiled too and hers was gentle. "You're in a nice mood today. Not that you're ever not in a nice mood. Your friend there--" She nudged her chin at the empty space beside me so I gathered she was talking about Nico (who'd joined me but had left the moment he'd been done with his morning coffee). "--he kept saying something about not being able to handle the sun the first thing in the morning before he left."

I felt my cheeks heating up.

Macy laughed and clapped her hands together before pulling a stool at her side of the counter and sitting right across from me. "I've got like three and a half minutes left before I've got to go back and take orders. Tell me everything."

Since I thought she was asking me why I'd been smiling this morning when I'd entered The Bakery, I told her about the sunflowers. Nico hadn't stopped talking about it on our way here and I, quite frankly, hadn't stopped thinking about it. How could I when they were right there beside me, the first thing I'd seen right as I woke up?

"That is so sweet." Macy leaned forward and placed her hands on either side of my face, squishing my cheeks. I couldn't laugh that way. "Oh my, love, you've got yourself an admirer!"

I squeezed her wrists before pulling away. "I won't say that. I'm still a little creeped out because I still have no idea who it was."

I'd done a lot of thinking last night only to conclude that it couldn't possibly have been Michael. I was being stupid thinking it was him, just because I'd received a phone call from him days ago. Michael didn't give me red roses anymore. That, all of that, had been years ago. Whatever had been happening between us was finished. Done. He had a fiance who was my stepsister and I didn't live in that house anymore. Michael wasn't stupid enough to buy me sunflowers and input the delivery address as my parents' house. He didn't even know I liked sunflowers.

It wasn't him. Which left almost anybody else. That was still scary but not as scary as it had been when I'd been slowly convincing myself that Michael was behind it.

"I've got an answer for that," Macy said, grinning.

I grinned back, though a little nervously.

"Who's someone your know who knows the way to your heart inside out," she asked. "And who is the first boy you think of introducing to your parents?"

Well, that was just unfair. I obviously only thought of one person who'd also happened to be there at the family dinner my parents had hosted that Saturday night. I was thinking of Ryder because I hadn't actually ever stopped thinking about him ever since the last time I'd seen him.

"No one," I told her a little too fast.

Macy narrowed her eyes.

"It's not Soren obviously." I attempted a laugh but failed.

"You like him."

"I don't like Soren." Well, at least not as more than a friend.

"No, I was talking about the one you're currently thinking of," Macy smirked. She actually smirked like she could see what was going on in my head. "You like him."

I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and gnawed on it worriedly. "I probably shouldn't." My voice lowered to a pathetic whisper.

"And why the hell not?"

"Because." I shrugged miserably. "He doesn't...like me. At all. I think I piss him off most of the time. He's just so devastatingly handsome with such pretty eyes and tattoos! Did I tell you he's got like, so many tattoos? But he's also very...intense sometimes, and I'm mostly just unlikeable."

Macy looked affronted.

"That is, I mean, he's not my type." I blurted out and my eyes widened in horror. "I meant, I'm not his type. Jesus. He's like, everybody's type."

But he'd also said some hurtful things to me the second last time I saw him, and didn't think I was worth an apology the last time I'd seen him, so I didn't think it mattered. I'd just been one easy means to cause a distraction, one that he'd happened to find easily.

Or maybe, and it was embarrassing that it hadn't crossed my mind before, he just felt pity for me when he'd seen me drunk and nearly bawling my eyes out outside Soren's apartment when I'd found out he was cheating on me, and so Ryder had decided to help me out at my parent's family dinner by being my fake boyfriend. The dinner he could've seen I was freaking out about. Maybe that was just it.

I was right. I wasn't likable at all. What was it that Raff had said? It was just my big brown eyes.

"Oh no, he broke your heart." Macy was frowning again. "What did he do? Tell me his name, sugar. I've already got beef to settle with that Soren boy. One more won't hurt."

I blinked and shook my head. "Nothing. Was just realizing something, is all."

And too late, I realized as I glanced outside from the glass windows, because I'd also missed that boy back from the library who'd been standing across the street. He was now gone too.

•••

It was somewhere near midnight and I was laying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking.

My thoughts were in no particular order and I'd long since given up on ordering them. I just let myself think. Sometimes there was a lot to think about. Also, my dorm room was silent and there was only the ticking clock and--fuckfuckfuck--the sounds of humping I could hear from my neighbor's dorm. It was slowly, very slowly, starting to get on my nerves and I couldn't sleep. I couldn't, for the life of me, understand why this wasn't against the campus housing policy or something. They made dorm round checks all the time. Why couldn't they do it just this one time and hear all the sounds my neighbor and her boyfriend were making and maybe just...just get them to find a soundproof room? Let me get some much-needed sleep that I'd been missing out on for days because of nightmares about gas-masked people?

I groaned softly and flopped on my stomach, grabbing my pillow, and pulling it over my head and my ears. The sounds went muffled but not enough to get me to fall asleep.

The ping of a text on my phone was however loud enough to startle me. It still took me one minute and twenty seconds to peek my head out from under the pillow, grimace at my dorm neighbors still going at it, and grab my phone from the side table where my sunflowers sat within the cool tap water. I was a little worried they were going to die soon. The sunflowers looked...less sunflowery than yesterday.

I switched on my phone and opened the text. It was from Ryder. My heart skipped a pathetic little beat.

Ryder: I'm outside.

Outside. I stared at the text until the letters wobbled between my eyes. He was outside. Was he outside my--

I scrambled up from my bed and unlocked my dorm door, but to my utter dismay, the hallway was empty. It was also right then that I woke the fuck up from the daze of that text and thought, what was really wrong with me? Was I really hoping to see him standing right outside my dorm?

I got back inside my room and looked at my phone again. There was a newer text waiting for me. Alice, it read. Just that. Nothing more.

I cleared my throat before moving towards the windows, pushing aside the curtain and peeking outside. The street was dark and empty outside save for a silhouette at the very corner near one back wall of the building. I pressed my nose flat against the cool glass surface and stared down at Ryder as he leaned against his motorcycle. He was frowning as he stared down at his phone, the light from it illuminating the sharp lines of his jaw.

Ryder was here, at this hour of the night, to see me. To see me? Or maybe he needed something from me? He hadn't needed anything from me the last time he'd come by to see me. Well, he did tell me and remind me that I was stupid. Also, he'd given me back the bracelet my real dad had gifted me once upon a time, and not just thrown it out of his car like I would expect him to do in any other circumstance.

Circumstance, I perked up and winced when I accidentally banged my left wrist on the corner of my desk. Maybe something had happened.

Making up my mind in no time further, I pulled on my sneakers and tried so badly to tame my wild hair back into a decent ponytail. It didn't work so I let them be for now, tucking them back behind my ears before leaving my room and locking it behind me. I quietly walked downstairs and wondered if there was a curfew I should be worrying about. Not that I think there was any. It was just that Alyssa's college had a curfew and she'd told me lots of stories about it.

Alyssa, I thought and came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the hallway, eyes widening. Why was I thinking about Alyssa? Because if I was thinking about Alyssa then it'd take me seconds to find myself thinking about Mich--

"Shut up. Shut up." I growled under my breath and stomped my way downstairs.

Ryder was here. Ryder was here to see me even though he'd told me I was stupid and that I wasted his time a lot.

Only when I was walking past the dormitory gates and nearing Ryder and his motorcycle that I realized my mistake.

Although to be fair, Ryder noticed it first.

"You forgot to wear a jacket." Were his first words to me as he put his phone away and looked up at me. "Again."

I glanced down at myself and my colorful pajamas. I had indeed forgotten a jacket during the rush.

"I didn't think it'd take long," I replied sheepishly, even though that wasn't the case at all. I didn't even know what I was hoping at this point.

I stared at him, because I'd really been thinking about him for days now, and he looked...well, a little less on edge and on the verge of alarm, and more worn down. But not in a bad way. Because God, those dark tousled waves falling over his forehead and that black leather jacket he wore, hiding all those tattoos, should've been illegal.

I pursed my lips and forced myself to look away.

Ryder's eyes were on me, blue and silver and way too intense for such a late hour of the night. I just didn't think it was fair that when I was trying to still hope for an apology, all he had to do was look at me, look at me like that, and everything in my head just went blank.

"I...I mean, I just thought--" I was in the middle of sputtering when I noticed it. Something was moving, maybe even peeking out of one of his leather jacket pockets.

My eyes widened. I froze when I probably should've taken a step back. Or two. "There's s-something moving in your pocket."

He blinked, finally breaking away from that unnerving staring session as he looked down, and took his godforsaken time before carefully pulling it out of his pocket.

It being the tiniest, most incredibly fluffiest kitten I had ever seen.

"Oh my God." My eyes widened even more, which shouldn't have been possible right then. "Oh no, Jesus."

"What." He was eyeing me with a somewhat narrowed, calculating gaze.

I looked away from him back to the black kitten in his hands and everything, everything inside me melted into a puddle of goo when she blinked up at me with those big brown eyes.

"Oh my God," I repeated, though this time I was mostly cooing. And how could I not? I didn't realize what I was doing until I was standing right in front of Ryder, fingers brushing against the kitten's soft small ears, and when she purred--she actually purred and I felt it--I couldn't keep the delighted grin off my lips.

"She's so adorable." I froze when she--he--it--turned her head towards me and nuzzled my fingers. "Oh my God. Is it a he or a she?" When I looked up at Ryder expectantly only to find him already staring at me, I realized there were practically inches left between us and surprisingly enough, he hadn't yet pulled away from me like he usually did when I was close.

"She, apparently." His brows furrowed just the tiniest.

A laugh bubbled out of me when she licked one of my fingers with a somewhat suspicious lick before squirming a little in Ryder's hands, almost as if she wanted me to hold her.

I looked up at him with hopeful eyes. "Can I hold her? Please?"

His eyes widened just the tiniest of fractions before he was dropping the kitten into my outstretched hands. I curled my fingers gently around her fur and oh my God, she was so soft.

"Aw." I could not believe I was holding such an adorable little kitten in my hands in the middle of the night outside my campus dormitory building. A night that had started out awful seemed to be changing for the better. "Where did you find her? Was she lost?" My lips curved downwards at the sudden thought. "Did you find her on your way here?"

I saw him taking a step back from the corner of my eye.

"I bought her." He told me in a tone that seemed to be mostly just stating a simple fact. "For you."

I snapped my gaze up to his and blinked in surprise. "What?" I registered belatedly that my voice had gone a little, well, scared. I had no idea why.

Ryder noticed it as well since he frowned. "Because you didn't contact me once after you received the flowers I bought for you. You didn't tell me if I was forgiven or not."

I froze, highly taken aback, and even the tiny kitten went incredibly still in my hands.

"You..." I stared at him. Flowers, I thought. I'd received flowers. "That was you. You bought me those sunflowers?"

"Yes." He was still frowning, and those blue eyes of his looked dark and angry. "Why, is there anyone else who owes you an apology?" And it was the genuine question that had me baffled. Absolutely baffled.

I could've only just stared at him like a moron at that moment.

He stared back. "Alice."

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what I could've said because no one had ever bought me things, let alone pretty sunflower bouquets or a fluffy black kitten, when they'd felt like they needed to apologize to me. It had always just been a simple sorry.

I thought that's how apologies really went normally.

I opened my mouth, felt the emotionally painful lump in my throat, and shook my head. "I...I don't understand."

His eyebrows pulled together in a partial, somewhat threatening look. "What is there to not understand?"

I was scared. I didn't think I actually really wanted to hold the kitten anymore.

"You," I started carefully. "You owed me an apology. So now I owe you...something? In return?"

The look in his eyes somewhat mellowed, or maybe that was just a trick of the night. He glanced down at the kitten and then fixed his gaze back on me. "I owed you an apology and that's it."

The kitten mewled and I softly caressed her fur.

"Oh," I said faintly.

"Yes." He stated and took another step back.

I frowned at him, although I was pretty sure it looked not even a little bit intimidating since I was hugging an adorable little fur ball. "But you bought me hundreds of sunflowers."

"I did." He crossed his arms.

"And a kitten."

A small tilt of his head as he regarded said kitten in my hands. "Seems to be it."

I shook my head and shuddered a little as a gentle cool breeze blew our way. Strangely enough, it made me take a step towards him, possibly because I might've been searching for warmth, and Ryder noticed it. It didn't go unnoticed by him and my cheeks heated up.

"You could've just..." I searched pathetically for words because I still couldn't believe anything that he'd currently said to me, and a part of me was telling me that I may just be dreaming. "What I'm saying is, you could've just said you were sorry and I would've forgiven you." I really, really would've. I didn't even know how desperately I'd been hoping for an apology, to know he wasn't like the bad people in my life, until now that I had it.

Ryder looked away then and it was strange because I felt at loss. "Yes. I do know that."

"You could've also just given me one flower," I added softly, then mentally backtracked in panic. "Or maybe just two. So many of them weren't necessary because...you know." Because no one's ever done this for me before.

I watched as Ryder raked his hands through his hair, turned around, and paced back to his motorcycle, jaw working. "They were necessary."

"No, of course, they weren't." I furrowed my brows as I followed him.

"They were." He turned back around so fast that I, along with my black little kitten, nearly almost slammed into him. I'd barely gained my balance when he leaned close, and I caught a faint whiff of cologne and smoke and warm heat. "I think you do remember how badly I messed up when I did try to do the whole apology thing."

I blinked, surprised. "Oh." So he had meant to apologize the last time we'd met!

"I called you stupid instead of simply apologizing." He looked disgusted and my mouth quirked up into a smile. A happy, disbelieving smile. I couldn't quite believe what was happening, to be honest.

"But you bought me so many pretty sunflowers and this." I held up the kitten in front of the both of us and she wiggled. I laughed.

Ryder looked at her, then at me. I couldn't decipher the look on his face right then. It was mostly just bewildered and blank. "Rafael stated that I should've bought you that whole flower shop."

I gaped at him. "Ryder."

"What?" His gaze darkened and I didn't think he was realizing how close we were standing because I'm pretty sure right now was the time he would've usually pulled away.

"You can't just..." I swallowed, my gaze traitorously befriending my rogue thoughts and falling to his lips before my eyes widened. "Um."

"Yes?" His voice lowered, deep and so close, and my grip on the poor kitten was so close to slackening any second now. I think he saw it or sensed it somehow because then his hands were engulfing mine, warm and rough, and fingers brushing across my wrists.

I trembled. "You can't."

The softest of tugs and I folded like a rosebud. He leaned close, face tilting towards my ear, warm breath fanning across my cheek. My breath hitched. "I do think I can, querida."

I was seconds away from doing something stupid yet equally as satisfying, but then Ryder pulled away, albeit a bit too slow with that intense gaze on me all the while, and I was at a loss. Again.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, I cursed in my head.

The heavy, tense silence was broken when the kitten in my hands let out a loud meow, wriggling until I had to let her down. She sniffed somewhat haughtily before nudging one of my ankles and moving towards Ryder's motorcycle.

I exhaled shakily and looked over at him, wishing and wanting to step closer but knowing he'd only pull away. It was a tad bit...agonizing.

"I...think," I said and paused. "She wants to go for a walk."

Ryder stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked over at the kitten who was currently trying to make her way up to his motorcycle. My heart warmed even though it was still kind of running laps right then.

"I suppose." He agreed and stared back at me, gaze quiet and assessing. When I was seconds away from telling him to please stop looking at me like that, he unconsciously rolled back his shoulders, almost as if trying to brush off something, and spoke, "But we do need to fix something first."

It took me too long to realize what he meant by that because I was still somewhat stuck in the trance he'd pulled me under, and Ryder was just so good at managing to fuck with my head.

"What?" My voice came out strained and then I watched him and my eyes widened. "Oh."

He was taking off his jacket for me. Because I was starting to tremble with cold in my flimsy pajamas.

And we were going on a late-night ride on his scary-looking motorcycle.

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see, I told you guys ryder isn't an asshole :) much :)) he's just a confused scary bby :)))