He lets out a deep breath. “I love you, you know that.” He touches my leg in comfort.
My body tightens. “You didn’t answer my question.” Yes or no. Will you stand up for me?
“I don’t know, Lo,” he says. “I want to. I want to so f**king badly, but it’s not as easy as wishing for that kind of peace. I hate him for things he did to me, for the things he does to you.”
I sit up and wipe my face with the bottom of my shirt. “Jesus Christ,” I laugh shortly. “You don’t get it. I deserved every word he said to me. You didn’t know me in prep school, Ryke. I was a f**king shit. I was terrible.”
He glares. “Don’t ever f**king tell me that you deserved it. No one deserves to be beat down every f**king day.”
I feel like I did. Still do sometimes. I exhale, my eyes flickering up to his as I say, “He’s never touched me.” It’s the truth. I know the whole world may never believe me, but I need the people closest to me to.
Ryke holds my face between both of his hands, his brown eyes boring into mine, flecked with hazel. “Stop defending him. Not to me, okay?”
He’ll never love my father the way I do. It’s impossible to even try to convince him. He just doesn’t see the good that’s hidden beneath all the bad. Or maybe, he just thinks the bad parts outweigh all the good.
I draw back, the tension loose between us. But there’s still something left that we have to confront. I’m not leaving this desert with more things left unturned.
I gesture to the red welt on his cheek. “That bruise right there, that’s for f**king my girlfriend’s little sister by the way.”
His lips part in horror.
59
2 years : 02 months
October
LOREN HALE
“Tabloids caught you making out just outside of Devils Tower.” I dig in my pocket for my new cell that I bought after the old one was destroyed in the riot. Then I scroll through Celebrity Crush, finding the picture of Daisy on my brother’s shoulders, both of them kissing. I throw my cell at him, and he catches it in his hands. “The photograph is on every gossip site.”
Off his shocked expression, I’m guessing he never saw the headlines. The longer he looks at the picture, the more his face settles on rage, his eyes glazing with this darkness. Then he chucks the phone back. It hits me in the jaw before thudding to the ground.
I pick it up and dust off the casing. “Pissed you got caught?”
He stays quiet. Not again.
I internally growl in frustration. “Please talk to me,” I snap, “because I need to understand what’s going on or I may just punch you again.”
He shakes his head, his shirt covered in red dirt like mine. Bruises begin to form on his jaw. “It just happened.” His voice is husky and lowered, like that’s all he’s ever going to give me.
It just happened. I blink a couple times. “It just happened?” I’m so tired of hearing that. “That’s a really shitty thing to tell me.” He runs his hand through his hair, red dust billowing. “You f**k Lily’s little sister, and you say, oh it just f**king happened? What’d you fall on her? Did you add her to your tally of girls? Is it a one-night stand kind of thing?” My chest thrums in worry, in fear that all of this could be true. He’s never said otherwise.
“That’s not what I f**king meant.” He grimaces and rubs his face with his hands quickly, like maybe he’ll wake up and this issue will just be buried with everything else.
I won’t let him. “Then what did you mean?” I ask.
He looks at me. “It’s serious.”
“So serious that you shared it with everyone.”
“Because I knew you were going to jump down my f**king throat!” He springs to his feet with this fury, and I rise to mine, my ribs expanding with each heavy breath.
“If you cared about her, then you wouldn’t be sneaking around like you’re doing something wrong!” What am I supposed to think? He’s an older guy. She’s a younger girl. And if he liked her at all beyond just sex, he’d be with her. For real.
“Fuck you!” Ryke shouts, veins protruding in his arms and neck. “You’ve made this impossible, Lo!”
“She’s EIGHTEEN!” I yell, nearing him. And even though his nose flares in anger, he forces himself to step back. “She’s like my little sister. It wasn’t supposed to be possible! But you didn’t care. You still banged her.” I trusted him. I accepted him into my life, and if he hurts her at all, it’s partially my fault.
He cracks his knuckles, probably to stop himself from forming fists.
“Your c**k finally got the best of you, didn’t it?” I ask. “She turned eighteen and you could finally stick it in—”
“No, it wasn’t f**king like that!” His muscles flex and knuckles whiten, hands balled into fists.
“I should leave you alone in this desert,” I tell him. “I am kicking myself right now, for every time I let you near her, for every time I let you be alone with her—”
“You don’t know what you’re f**king talking about.” He huffs in aggravation, but he never explains himself. I wait a second, expecting him to clarify. I can’t read your f**king mind, Ryke.
“I don’t know what I’m f**king talking about?” All I have to go on is what I see. And not all of it is good. Most of it is just inappropriate, starting from when she was fifteen. “How long, Ryke? Tell me that, how f**king long have you liked her more than just a friend, and let’s see if it’s all in my head?”
“I don’t know.” His hard gaze falls to the red dirt.
“I’m going to ask you again,” I say, a tremor in my voice. “How long—”
“Stop,” he grits.
I take another step towards him. “No, how long—”
“FOR YEARS!” he screams, blood rushing to his face, red and pissed and tormented. I don’t want to believe him. Even if I have for so long. Even if I’ve seen it right in front of me. “Is that what you want to hear?! Years, Lo.”
I wished that it wasn’t true. That he didn’t drag Daisy into our family. That girl deserves to be free from this shit. “You’re lying?” I say.
“I’m not,” he says, tears welling in his eyes. “I have been so f**king attracted to that girl. And I never planned on doing a f**king thing about it. I never was going to try. And I tried…I tried so f**king hard not thinking about her like that.” The honesty pours out of him. “It was wrong. I knew it was f**king wrong. I suppressed everything as much as I could.”
He liked her from the start. “Then why not stay away from her?” I ask. “Why not put a hundred f**king feet between you and Daisy? You flirted with her every day, Ryke. You became her friend.” It sounds like a motive to end up with her, like he was just waiting around until she became the right age.
“I convinced myself that nothing would ever happen, so I thought it was okay to push further.”
“You’re a f**king idiot!” I shout. Seriously. The moment he decided to be a part of her life, it was over. “She was so hot,” I say, “that you couldn’t say no after she became legal—”
“No,” he interjects, stepping forward with purpose and rage. “It wasn’t like that.”