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Smack.
I smack Ryder across the face with so much force his head tilts to the side.
The hallway plunges into silence as everyone turns to stare.
“Fuck you,” I snap. Then I glare at Reece and Blaise, whose lips are parted in shock. “Fuck all three of you.”
“Been there, done that,” Ryder replies as he rubs his cheek.
I curl my fingers into fists. “Screw you, Ryder. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but our friendship is over.” Tears are trying to pour out of my eyes, but I suck them back.
“You say that like we were actually friends.” His cheek is starting to turn red, and I hate how a sliver of me feels bad for hitting him. “But we weren’t. We were just trying to get something from you, and now that we have, we no longer need you.”
I want to hit him again.
I want to shove him.
I want to scream.
Instead, I whirl around and powerwalk into the bathroom, making it just in time before the tears start to fall.
I’m sobbing on the gross tile floor when Jessa enters the bathroom. She takes one look at me, drops her bag, crouches down, and wraps her arms around me.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers as she hugs me. “I’m so sorry they did this to you.”
But they didn’t.
They couldn’t.
They would never.
None of those words ever leave my lips as I continue to cry until I have no tears left inside me.
Until I have nothing left inside me.
SIXTEEN
RYDER
Sometimes I believe I was destined to be the darkness in mine, Reece, Blaise, and Allura’s lives. Even when we were kids, I felt like I was the one who had to fight off the bullies, protect the three of them from danger, be the tough one, the cruel one, the one who never breaks down.
I never minded, either. It made me feel like I had a purpose.
Then the day came when we had to break Allura and, like usual, the responsibility fell on me.
I broke that day right along with Allura, and I don’t think I’ll ever be whole again. I can only hope that she will. That’s all I want. Well, that and for her to be safe, which is the entire point of all this.
The entire point of my life, really.
It’s all I can think about as I sit on her bed, listening to the showering running in the bathroom—that I need to make sure she stays safe. It’s imperative now that a hit has been put out on her.
Another one, although she isn’t aware of the first one. It wasn’t a hit on her life, though.
It feels like forever when I learned about it, but the rage I felt is a blazing memory inside my brain, scalding hot and eliciting the most potent kind of anger—
“Ryder?” Allura’s soft voice tugs me out of my thoughts.
The shower is no longer running, and the bathroom door is cracked open.
