“He must have pretty high standards.” Gray had been her replacement for Riley—at least until it was no longer expedient. Then she’d screwed him over too. If she’d succeeded, I would be lying somewhere in a heap of spare parts; Gray would be dead.
“I found her half starved, hiding in a closet from some assholes who were trying to—” He stopped, shook his head. “She’s a friend. I couldn’t leave her there.”
I remembered a windowless room, ropes digging into my wrists and ankles, chaining me to a chair. Sari’s thug looming over me, his ass resting on my knees, his breath puffing against my cheek, his grubby fingers on my skin. “She’s not my friend.”
“You don’t get it.”
It was the unspoken assumption between us, that his life had been hard where mine was soft, and that made him strong where I was weak. It made me less than. I was tired of the whole thing. No, I’d passed tired a few miles back. I was done.
“I get it,” I said. “Fine. She’s your friend. You had to help her. So why not let me help you do it? Why not tell me? I could have found a place for her, found some credit—”
“Your father’s credit?” he asked sourly. “I think I’ve taken enough of that.”
The mention of my father brought the whole nightmare to life again. And Riley didn’t even know, because we were wasting our time on this. But fighting was easier than saying it out loud.
Fighting was the easiest thing of all.
“I’m not my father,” I said. “I could have helped.”
“So now you know. Help.”
I didn’t have an answer for that one.
He snorted. “Right.”
“Okay, you win. You’re awesome. I’m heartless. She’s an angel. Does that cover it?”
“I’m not throwing her out.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“There’s nothing to be jealous about,” he said.
“Got it.”
“See, this is why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d be like this.”
“Like this?”
“But I told you,” he said. “It’s nothing.”
“And I told you, got it.”
“She’s just a—”
“Riley. Read my lips. Not. Jealous.”
I wasn’t. It was a surprise to me too. Yes, Riley was trustworthy, and no, I didn’t really think anything was going on with Sari—certain as I was she would have preferred it otherwise—but when I was an org, that kind of cold reasoning had traditionally been beside the point. But relationships had been different when I was an org. Even when it was someone who’d barely mattered, there’d been a need, a charge beneath the surface when we were together, a vacuum when we were apart. Reasoning was beside the point. The point was the fever, needing the weight of his arms around you, needing flesh, needing to crawl inside him, to lose everything, even yourself—especially yourself—in the joining of body to body, skin to skin.
It was different now, because I was different now. The body was a body, and, for all practical purposes, it was a rental. It didn’t come equipped with needs. I wanted, but that was different. That was in my head, and that was rational, which was why I could think coolly and calmly through the reality of who Riley was and what he would and wouldn’t do. Sari fell into the latter category. I didn’t need to worry about his intentions; I worried about hers.
“It didn’t occur to you that Wynn sent her?”
“It did. He didn’t.”
“Because she said so.”
“Yeah.”
“And she’s never lied about Wynn before.”
Years ago, when Riley was a kid, he’d stolen something from Wynn, and Wynn’s people had struck back, coming after the thief—and settling for the next best thing, Jude. Bashing him into the ground while Riley hid. Which meant, as far as Riley was concerned, it was his fault that Jude had spent most of his life in a wheelchair, dependent on Riley, begging for scraps. But it was also Wynn’s, and Riley had held on to that until he couldn’t hold on anymore. That’s when he went after Wynn with a gun. And shot the wrong guy.
Wynn was never going to forgive the person who murdered his brother. Which made him a threat—and last time I saw him, Sari was his weapon of choice.
“I’m not letting him stay at my place,” Riley pointed out.
“She might.”
“Why, because you can’t trust a city girl? But you can trust me?”
“You’re not like her.”
“I’m exactly like her.”
I shook my head.
“You don’t want to see it,” he said.
“You come from the same place,” I said. “But you’re not the same. Not anymore, at least.”
“Right, because now I’ve got you, and you’ve got your daddy’s credit. Happily ever after.”
He didn’t know anything.
But whose fault was that? The fight went out of me. “I’m sorry,” I said, because that’s what you say, even when you’re not. “Can we stop?”
He paused. “I should’ve told you.”
I shrugged.
“She’s safe,” he added.
I hugged him. Stiffly, awkwardly, but it was better in his arms than out of them.
“I need you safe,” I said.
“I am.”
“I need you.”
He laughed and gave me a quick kiss. “You’re Lia Kahn, remember? You don’t need anyone.”
It was a long time before we were ready to talk again. The night was cold, as usual. Riley held me, and waited for me to be ready to explain why I’d come, and why I’d towed my sister along. I could see her through the narrow window, curled up on the couch, head under a pillow. Sari was burrowed into a sleeping bag on the floor. I was tempted to stay outside with Riley, holding his hand in mine, staring up at the dim red glow of the midnight sky.
Riley stroked my hair. “You can tell me,” he said. And finally, I did, all of it—everything I’d found on my father’s ViM, everything my father had said, everything he hadn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Riley said.
“That’s horrible,” he said.
“Tell me what I can do,” he said.
And he wrapped his arms around me, and I leaned my head on his chest and imagined he was breathing.
“At least now you know what kind of man he is,” he said. Was I supposed to be grateful that he stopped himself from saying the actual words “I told you so?” “You don’t have to defend him anymore, or listen to him. Now you know he’s nothing to you.”
He didn’t get it. He was right that I would never know what it was like in the city. But it worked both ways. He didn’t have a father. And so—I felt horrible for thinking it, spoiled and ungrateful and unfair, but it was true—he didn’t know how it felt to lose one.
I stood up. “Let’s go to bed.”
Riley shut down, and I let him think I would too. But I stayed awake. Listened to the unfamiliar hiss of breathing, in and out, in and out. Held myself still beneath the weight of Riley’s arm, as his body molded itself around mine. Tree branches scraped the window, and I watched their shadows play on the wall, seeking animals—monsters—in the flickering dark. A lizard, devouring a snake. A dancing bear with bloody jaws. A ghost.
Zo’s eyes fluttered beneath her lids. I hoped she wasn’t dreaming about our father. I missed dreaming. But I didn’t miss nightmares.
I stayed awake, and I tried to think of what I should have said to my father. The accusations I should have lodged against him, the graphic descriptions of burning and crushing and breaking, the tears of betrayal that, thanks to him, I couldn’t shed. But there was nothing. No words. In my head, in the dark, I faced him again and again, and every time there was only silence. There was only me turning away, walking out the door, closing it in his face. I didn’t want to yell at him, or listen to more of his explanations, let him find the elusive, magic excuse that would change everything.