Page 49 of Blood Ties
?Chapter Twenty-Five
Riley
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“SHIT,” I WHISPER, STARINGup at the basement ceiling.
I should be thinking of ways to escape. Remembering my dead friends and my parents and my life outside. But instead I’ve been lying on this lumpy mattress all day thinking about nothing but Kai, Kai, Kai.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. I’m supposed to be manipulating him. Using him. I’m not supposed to get attached.
A part of me still wants to kill him. But... God, it’s hard to cling to hatred when he’s the only good thing about my day. Every kindness I receive — food, clothes, a gentle touch — is directly from his hand, and it’s fucking with my head.
I drag my palm over my face. I hate myself for feeling like this. For being so weak. It has to be Stockholm Syndrome, or something. There has to be an explanation other than me being a completely brainless fool catching feelings for a man who helped kill my friends.
My friends. Thinking about them feels like pressing on a bruise, but I force my thoughts to stay there. I need to think of them instead of Kai. I need to make sure I don’t forget. I’m terrified of memories slipping away in the long hours down here — terrified that one day I’ll wake up and realize I’ve forgotten the sound of May’s laugh.
“My best friend,” I whisper to the silence of the basement.
I think about her smile, her eyes, her voice.
I never had a best friend before May. I spent most of my life floating from friend group to friend group. Never friendless, but never a part of anyone’s inside circle. It was part of what drove me to leave California for college. I wanted a fresh start, an escape from the person I’d always been: the quiet one, the good girl, the straight-A student who always did what she was supposed to do.
Despite all of my determination, I walked into the dorms freshman year absolutely terrified. May intimidated me so badly the first time I saw her. I couldn’t believe I was supposed to share a room with a girl like her — blonde and pretty and confident, all of the things I wasn’t. But then she smiled at me and said, “I can tell we’re going to be friends.” The next year proved her right, in a long stretch of late nights talking, and holding each other’s hair back, and the occasional shouting match over cleaning that somehow left us laughing afterward.
Sophomore year we moved into a shared apartment, and became fast friends with another unlikely duo in the place next door: Felix and Caleb.
Other friends came and went, but the four of us always stuck close together. We were talking about renting a house together for our senior year. I thought we were going to grow old together.
But now I’m the only one left.
I shut my eyes and let myself simmer in that pain. That sorrow, that anger, that loss... that’s why I’m doing all of this. I need to stay alive for my friends’ sake, and I need to stop feeling sympathy for the man who fucking butchered them.
While I’m stuck here waiting for Kai, I decide to make some rules.
Rule number one: no emotional attachment.
Lust is fine. Lust isgood— he’s a virgin, so it’s an obvious vulnerability I can use. And it’s fine for me to be attracted to him. It makes my life easier. But just because he’s hot doesn’t mean I care about him. I can compartmentalize. Ihaveto compartmentalize.
