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“No. Ayla.” Ryland looks up sharply, shaking his head. For the first time since I’ve known him, he looks like he’s at a loss for words—not just choosing to withhold them. He tugs his chair a little closer to the bed, dropping his chin to meet my gaze. “It wasn’t for me. It was for you.”
“For me?”
He nods. “It was always for you. That’s the only reason I tried to convince Marcus to back off. I… I thought about you all the fucking time. I still do. But I thought you would be safer, that you’d have a better life, if we weren’t in it.”
I blink at him, then slowly sit up on the bed, tucking my legs under myself. This is the most openly Ryland has talked to me in… well, maybe ever. I want to pepper him with questions, but I’m afraid if I do, the pendulum will swing back the other way again, and he’ll go silent.
And it turns out he doesn’t need the questions anyway. Unprompted, he continues.
“Marcus and I fought about it all the damn time, but I pushed him to believe me. To believe that I was right. For more than two years, we kept our distance, but we all watched you. We all kept tabs on you.” He lets out a soft laugh. “I don’t think any of us could help ourselves. But at least you never knew we were there. Until that night you almost got mugged, and… everything broke.”
I nod, remembering the way the three of them emerged from the shadows as if they’d once been a part of the darkness themselves. The way they melted back into the night afterward. If I hadn’t seen Marcus’s distinctive eye, if I hadn’t called out to stop him, I might never have known who stepped forward to help me.
That’s not true, a little voice whispers in my head. You knew anyway. Some part of you always knew.
Ryland shakes his head, running a hand through the short strands of his almost-black hair. “Even after that night, I told Marcus it wasn’t too late. We could still walk away from you—sever ties completely this time, pretend you didn’t exist, let you go for good—but I should’ve known how fucking wrong I was.”
“You didn’t sever ties,” I say quietly, speaking the obvious.
Ryland’s eyes flicker as they meet mine. “No. You’re like a fucking drug, Ayla. We spent two and a half years hovering on the periphery of your life, but the moment we stepped into it that night, the moment we got close… it was like a barrier came down that was impossible to put back up. It was the first fix. And we kept coming back for more.”
I make a soft noise, plucking at the sheet beneath me as his words sink in.
Like a drug.
I’ve thought the same thing about these three men and their effect on me. The way they seem to immolate reason and self-control. Self-preservation, even. When it comes to them, I can never seem to help myself.
Honestly, I’m not sure it’s better or worse to know that I seem to have the same effect on them. In a party of addicts, does anyone ever say stop?
“Is this why you didn’t want to be in my life?” I ask, gesturing around me to encompass not just this safe house, or whatever he called it, but the other house I was taken to. The one where I was held captive.
He clenches his jaw, anger burning in his eyes. “Yes.”
“Did you know that Carson would—”
“No.” He cuts me off before I can finish, the word heavy and emphatic. “Believe me, if we had known, we would’ve done more to try to protect you. Marcus having you stay at his place was supposed to be an unnecessary precaution. We didn’t know Carson would use you to try to get to us.”
He stands, his broad form looming over me on the bed as he gazes down at me. “I should’ve fought harder. I should’ve made Marcus and Theo see.”
“See what?”
“We should never have been in your life, Ayla. If we hadn’t been, none of this would’ve happened. You don’t belong in the middle of this, and I fucking hate that we dragged you into it. It’s not fucking fair. This isn’t your world, this isn’t your fight, and yet you almost died because of it.” He lets out a shuddering breath. “None of us expect to live long. But you should. You have to.”
Something in his voice strikes a chord deep inside me.
He means it. He’s not speaking metaphorically or exaggeratedly.
He truly doesn’t expect to be alive for long.
Memories of each of my brushes with death filter through my mind, and I rise up onto my knees, reaching out to him with my good arm and grasping his hand.
I bring his fingers up to brush against the scar on my upper chest, shivering a little at the feel of his touch on my damaged skin. Ryland has barely ever touched me before, and my body blazes with awareness of that fact.
I let his blunt fingertips linger on my scar, allowing him to absorb the feel of it. Then I release his hand and turn my arm over, letting him see the scar on my forearm. Letting him have that piece of me.
“I never expected to live past fifteen. I tried not to,” I say softly. “I’m on borrowed time already. And I don’t think anything you do or don’t do will change that.”
Ryland catches my wrist in his large hand, staring down at it. I can feel emotions radiating from him, but I can’t read his closed-off expression well enough to know if Marcus already mentioned this to him or not. But regardless of whether he knew about my suicide attempt before now, his gaze burns with conviction when he meets my gaze again.
