When did this weekend go so wrong?
***
“You seriously not talking to us now?” I mutter as we drive back t
o Madison. “Ryan.”
“I am talking to you.” Impassionate. Empty. His hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel the only sign of emotion. Or maybe he’s just unhappy about this conversation. “What did you want to talk about?”
“For chrissakes.” Riddick who’s riding shotgun again slams his fist lightly into the window. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Ryan says nothing, his jaw tight. A vein leaps in his neck.
“Talk to us about today. This morning.” Already it feels like a thousand years have passed. Ryan sure looks like a different person. Like the person he was before. “About why you shut us out again.”
He huffs, frowns. “We already talked about that. Nothing happened.”
Except I entrusted him with something so important to me, and he’s acting like it was nothing.
“You fucked her,” Riddick says, speaking out my thoughts. “You don’t think that counts as something?”
My gaze meets Ryan’s in the rearview mirror, and for a moment he looks stricken. “It does,” he whispers.
I’m caught in the web of pain in his eyes.
“But that’s right. We don’t talk about the rest,” Riddick rants, breaking the spell. He’s on a roll. “About whatever freaked you out. What was it, did we get too close? Did you think we’d ask you for something you couldn’t give? Affection, maybe? Or did you think we’re after, I dunno, your money? The house?”
I like that he’s saying “we.”
“Fuck you,” Ryan says, his voice very low. His throat works. “Fuck you, Riddick.”
A cold mask slips over Riddick’s features, replacing the heat of his anger.
“As I recall, it was the other way around,” he says and leans his head back, closes his eyes. “Wake me up when we arrive.”
I slump back, too, in the backseat, and gaze outside. I feel like I’m bleeding inside my chest, that my trust is torn to shreds. I knew from the start this was a bad idea. That Ryan was a bad deal. Why couldn’t I let him go? Why did he have to show up at the hospital the other day and make me believe he’d changed?
I’m so frigging stupid. Nobody to blame but myself, and the fact I managed to convince Riddick to give Ryan a chance, the fact he was taken in, too, that he was duped like me, doesn’t comfort me at all.
This is turning out to be the longest one-hour drive of my life.
***
They drop me off first, and I hesitate with Fluff’s crate in my hands and my bag resting on the sidewalk beside me. Not sure this was the best idea, letting them go off without me. I hope they won’t come to blows again.
They never explained why they punched each other the other day in the first place. I mean… Ryan said they were fighting over me, but that can’t be true, right?
“This sucks,” I inform Fluff as I let myself into my apartment. “It really sucks.”
I feel beaten, in every sense. Achy. Exhausted. Unable to concentrate. I set my bag down right inside the door and drop on the couch.
What we did this morning might not affect asshole Ryan, but the evidence of what he did to me aches dully inside me. Like an imprint of his cock, a burn from the friction.
I wish I could erase the sensation, the ghostly feel of him in me. Scrub myself clean.
Start over.
The tears come. I thought they never would.