Do I love Ryu?

I adored him on so many levels. He made me laugh. I admired his bravery and his panache. He did things to my body that left me sobbing with pleasure. But did I love him?

No… came that whispering voice in my head.

I realized that Ryu was waiting for me to agree with him. I also realized I was holding an enormous, purple dildo. Damn it, Iris, I thought as I stashed it in my suitcase, hurriedly covering it with the few remaining clothes still sitting next to me.

All of a sudden, I was packed. Which meant I'd lost “packing” as a diversionary tactic. So I zipped up my suitcase and walked it to the top of the staircase before coming back to kneel in front of Ryu.

“Ryu—” I pleaded, but he didn't let me start.

“No, Jane. I know you. I know you love me. Fine, it's not the same as what you felt for Jason. But you were children. Of course it's not the same. We're adults, living with all the compromises and bullshit and worries that adults have to deal with.”

I sat stunned at the mention of Jason.

“Ryu,” I said finally. “This isn't about Jason—”

“Is it about Anyan, then?”

“What the hell does Anyan have to do with anything?”

“Don't be stupid.”

I blinked at Ryu, having gone from stunned to shocked. He was so pissed off suddenly, and I didn't understand why. Was he jealous of the barghest? Who I'd seen, what, a handful of times in the past four months before this week? And the only reason I even saw him this week was because of Ryu and his irritating inability to keep business and pleasure separate.

I remembered Anyan saying something to that effect to Ryu, all those months ago, and I flushed. Was I just one more example of Ryu's boundary issues?

“Ryu, I don't know where any of this is coming from. I don't compare you to Jason, and I certainly don't compare you to Anyan. But you're asking so much from me, and you can't expect me to make decisions this big, this quickly.”

I watched as Ryu scrubbed a hand through his rich, chestnut hair. I ached to touch him, to erase everything that had just been said, to go back in time and start over from when we'd lain in bed, curled around each other, just a few hours ago.

“I'm only asking if you love me, Jane. That shouldn't be hard to answer.”

Fuck this, I thought, suddenly tired of diplomacy.

“Well it is difficult to answer. We don't see each other often, and when we do, everything is cushioned by the fact that we're on vacation, in some B and B, where nothing is real. I don't know that I know you, Ryu. And, to be honest, I doubt that you really know me any better.”

His face fell, and I sighed. “Look, I'm not saying I don't want to get to know you. Or that I don't think we have a future together. I just don't know. And I don't want to find out by giving up everything that is important to me on the off chance that we will work out. How would you feel if I asked you to move to Rockabill?”

He gave me a contemptuous look. “Jane, please…”

I nodded my head sharply. “Exactly. Why should a deal breaker for you be an acceptable compromise for me?”

“But we can't just continue like this, Jane.”

“Why can't we? Relationships take time. We've given ours four months.”

“Well, then I can't continue this way,” he replied mulishly, staring down at his hands.

Oh, shit, I thought, realizing this argument had, for him, become about pride.

This time, when he looked up at me, my heart froze. I knew the look on his face because I'd seen it before. Ryu was a gambling man, a poker player, and I recognized when he was about to put everything he had on the line.

“Jane,” he began, but I interrupted him.

“Ryu,” I begged. “Don't do this. Don't make me choose.”

But Ryu hadn't listened to anything I'd said. He thought I was a safe bet. He was so convinced he knew me, so convinced he held all the good cards.

“Honey, I know you want this. You're scared, and it's a big step. But it's right, and you know it.”

“Ryu—”

“No, Jane. I can't live like this. You can't live like this. We are either together, or we're not. That's all there is to it.”

“Please. Do not do this.”

“No, that's it. You either love me or you don't. It's that simple.”

“You're giving me an ultimatum. That's what we've come down to.”

“Yes,” Ryu said, but I knew he was lying. He didn't think it was an ultimatum. He thought he was just giving me an out, making this whole process easier for me. If he “made” me move to Boston, I didn't have to feel guilty about leaving my father or Rockabill or Nell and the others.

He was so sure he knew me. That he knew my desires, my ambitions, what made me content and what made me proud. What made me Jane.

I sat staring into his eyes. There was a woman there, reflected back at me, whom I didn't even begin to recognize. And I suddenly realized that he knew nothing.

That said, I was as surprised as he was when I got up and left.

Surprised, and heartbroken, and entirely certain I was doing the right thing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

So you broke up with Ryu?” Iris asked, her beautiful blue eyes huge.

“No, not really. Kind of. I don't know. I walked out.”

“You walked out?”

“I did, indeed. I believe I did what is known as ‘hotfooting' it. Or ‘scarpered,' as they say in Britain. I made like a refrigerator and ran… Rob Roys are delicious, did you know that?”

“Yes, you told me that. Two Rob Roys ago.”

“Bullshit. I've had only one. This is my second.”

“No, that's your third. You, Jane True, are schnockered.”

“That is so not true, succubus. I am merely… well lubricated.”

“You know what happens when you say that word around me. So be good. And tell me what happened, for Pete's sake.”

I sighed, then took a very large gulp of my second Rob Roy. Or was it my third? Sarah had taken one look at my disheveled appearance and she'd gone straight for the Sty's secret stash. She and Marcus were Scotch drinkers, and they kept a little collection of very good stuff hidden behind the bar for special friends. She'd pulled out a bottle of Balvenie Signature, as she already knew I liked bourbon, and whipped me up a Rob Roy. After one sip, I knew Rob was my new best friend.

If you asked me to move to Boston, things might be different, I told the charming Mr. Roy, even as my lovely Scotch concoction whispered to me that it might be a good idea to start my story at how I got home, because it was pretty durn funny. So I told Iris about how the pizza-delivery guy had just been getting out of his car when I walked out of Ryu's front door. He'd agreed, once I promised to pay for the pizza and give him an extra twenty, to drive me down Commonwealth Avenue to where I remembered seeing an Enterprise Rent-A-Car. That said, the delivery guy wasn't quite so keen when Ryu came chasing us down the street after he figured out I hadn't just carried my suitcase downstairs to pout.

Unfortunately, the rental car company had been closed. I'd called Julian for a ride to a hotel, but he'd shown up with Caleb, and they'd insisted on driving me back, all the way to Maine.

“I told them, ‘He's going to be soooo pissed at you when he finds out you drove me home.' But they didn't care.”

In fact, Caleb had responded to my warning by saying, “Fuck it,” his mahogany baritone making the obscenity sound strangely dignified.

“Yeah, fuck it!” Julian had chortled, like a little kid. My fellow halfling had gotten an enormous kick out of sticking it to the man. Or vampire. Whatever.

“And so they drove me home,” I concluded. “And even though I haven't slept in, like, forty-eight hours, I still couldn't fucking sleep. So I called you, and you took me out to get drunk. Because you, Iris, are a good friend.” I sighed and leaned back in my seat. In reality, the tiny part of me that was still curiously sober couldn't believe I'd walked out on Ryu.

“So is it, like, over over?” Iris asked.

“Pshaw. No. I do really care for him. But he had to know that I'm not a pushover. Okay, fine, you can physically push me over, as that fucking incubus demonstrated. But I'm not about to be bullied into moving to Boston.”

“Nor should you be, Jane,” Iris said emphatically, and I raised my now-half-empty—or was it half-full?—glass to toast with her.

“So what, exactly, did he do? Was it just the ultimatum that pissed you off?”

At Iris's question, I stopped and really tried to break down what it was about Ryu's demands that had bothered me so much. Obviously there was the drama-queen aspect of landing that ultimatum on me, especially after everything we'd just been through. Everything I had been through. You didn't demand someone make major life changes when they'd been beaten to a pulp the night before. And why did I have to move? That would be one stonkingly big compromise on my part.