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Riley gives me one of herwhat are you talking aboutlooks.
A tightening in my chest starts as I admit, “I was being teased by a kid a few years older than me.”
Her mouth falls open.
I shake my head. “Don’t worry, Diego helped me beat him up. Oh, my twin, Kennedy, jumped in, too. That was the last time another kid tried to tease me about anything.”
“I bet.”
“Tomorrow. Ten a.m. They’ll have Eve’s school records by the time we arrive tomorrow morning. We can speak with a school psychologist then, if you want.”
“H-How did you arrange all of this?”
“A few phone calls. Not a big deal.”
She pushes out a breath, and for the first time since we started this conversation, she looks slightly relieved.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” I insist, sounding slightly angry to my own ears. I don’t even know why her thanking me irritated me. But it does.
“I’m going to change.”
Without a backward glance, I head to the bathroom to shower and change for the night. By the time I return to the bedroom, Riley is laying in bed on her side. She looks at me in surprise.
That first night, I stubbornly slept on the floor, but it was hell on my back. Since then, I’ve opted to sleep on the couch, making sure to wake up before Eve gets up to take all of my pillows and shit back to the bedroom. She believes Riley and I are in a real marriage.
But that ends tonight.
“I’m not sleeping on the fucking couch anymore,” I declare as I move into the bedroom, close the door behind me, and then climb into bed, daring Riley to say anything.
She doesn’t.
A few minutes later, she turns out the lamp on the nightstand by her side of the bed. I do the same for the one on my side. It must be exhaustion because less than a handful of minutes later, Riley’s steady breathing alerts me that she’s asleep.
I sit up in bed, unable to fall asleep.
Instead, I watch her. The rhythmic rise and fall of her chest soothes something inside of me. She’s pulled her silk pressed hair up into a headscarf for the evening. It allows me to see her face unobstructed as she sleeps.
I don’t know how long I watch her. For what, I don’t have a fucking clue. She’s not doing anything. And I don’t even like this woman.
She lied to me.
She’s a con artist.
Though she might have had a good reason for why she did what she did, the fact remains that she entered my life under false pretenses. A zebra can’t change their stripes. Or however the fuck the saying goes.
People don’t change.
That’s not something I can ever forget.
CHAPTER29
Kyle
“You married her?” Diego asks, holding his arms out wide, a basketball in his left hand.
We’re at our gym in downtown Williamsport, playing a pickup game. It used to be a weekly thing of ours. In the last few months, we’re lucky if we make it happen once a month.
