Untethered

8 | Wildfire

What if they did take this further? What if it didn't work out? Greta's face flashed through her mind. She shook her head. What if it did work? That was almost as scary. No. They definitely could not pursue this.

"You don't feel the same way." Seeing the shake of her head, he had correctly interpreted its meaning.

"Ryan... if we pursue this and it becomes something, and we fuck it all up, we could never go back. Think of your mom... my brother. I mean, we fight all the time." She shook her head again more firmly.

Ryan wanted to convince her, argue with her, but he could see the set look on her face, and knew it was a lost cause... for the moment, anyway.

"Alright, Em."

"You're just agreeing with me?" She eyed him suspiciously.

"For now." He shot her a small, crooked smirk, "You're clearly still not thinking straight after kissing me. Hey, watch it! Ow!" He grimaced as she punched his arm hard. Then, his face turned serious, and his eyes bored into hers like two jagged shards of emerald. "I am only agreeing to shelve this conversation for the moment, we will return to it... soon."

~*~*~

'We will return to it... soon.'

Ryan's words echoed around in Emma's skull until the inside of her head felt like the old pinball machine at the rundown bowling alley her grandpa used to take her to when she was a little girl. Ryan was still with her in the basement. He insisted on helping her finish, and they were almost done packing up the rest of the stuff. Her grandpa's old workshop was all that remained. It was small, so it wouldn't take long. Not that she noticed the time; her brain was such a muddled mess, she could barely remember what she'd done five minutes earlier.

Ryan had returned to his normal, irksome self, although, maybe a little less than usual. Instead of angry retorts, though, all he received in return was silence or an occasionally dirty look, if he was lucky. Emma thought she couldn't concentrate before, now all she could think about was feeling the brand of that infuriating man's lips on hers.

That's not all that has got you upset, that nasty little voice pointed out, He wants more... and you're chicken-shit.

"Oh, shut up!" She realized she had replied out loud to her inner taunting when she saw Ryan's head shoot out from the doorway of the little workshop, giving her a quizzical look. "I wasn't talking to you!" Growling, Emma pushed past him and started throwing things into boxes barely looking at what she was grabbing, or where she was throwing it. When she got to the assortment of hammers hanging behind the workbench, Ryan stepped up behind her and held her wrist.

"Ah, maybe you should let me take care of those."

"I can do it myself," she ground out angrily, trying to wrench her arm free.

"Maybe so, but I prefer not to get brained in the process," he said drily, taking the hammer she was currently wielding gently from her grasp. His closeness and his touch on her skin was so disconcerting, that she immediately released the tool in question-hammer, not Ryan, and moved as far away from him in the tiny little room as she could manage.

One touch from the man, and her heart was fluttering in her throat like she'd ingested a demented hummingbird. Closing her eyes, she tried to calm herself, her throat working at swallowing, like she could dislodge the creature, and force it back down into her chest where it belonged.

Eventually, they settled back into an uncomfortable rhythm, working in tense silence for a while longer. She was slowly working through a giant pile of boxes in the corner, taking each one down and going through it to see if there was anything worth keeping. Most of the boxes were either garbage or full of things that needed to be donated or stored.