Page 79 of Laila Manning
“And if you asked him to leave the crew to dispel some of your fears in exchange?” I asked and then thought better of it, “Canhe leave the crew? Is it like a blood in, blood out thing?”
She snorted and shrugged her shoulders, “I don’t think Ryker would kill him for leaving if he wanted to. But I also don’t think he’d ever willingly leave the very thing that saved him when he was a teenager, lost, scared and all alone.”
“What a pickle.” I mused, leaning back onto the couch as she chuckled her agreement from next to me.
We sat there in silence for a while before I ended the serenity of it all with word vomit. “I saw someone at the gala.”
She looked over at me but didn’t say anything right away, giving me that supportive silence my therapist always used when she wanted me to expand on a thought without shaping it with her own words.
So, I went on. “Out of all of them,” I swallowed, and she tightened her hold on my arm. “He was the worst.” I don’t know why I felt the need to tell her, but there was a part of our relationship, a bond made in the hellhole of that place, that made me feel like she would understand.
“Is that why you fell into a panic attack?” She asked, so she must have heard something about that night.
“He didn’t know who I was.” I laid my head back against the couch and chuckled humorlessly. “I guess I’m hard to recognize in an evening gown and not tied down to a table so he could torture me—.” The words dried up in my throat like sand, and I closed my eyes to quell the anger and panic burning in my gut. “I’ve never felt rage like that before.” Her sad blue eyes met mine when I opened them back up, I said, “I didn’t even recognize myself. I don’t know what kind ofscene I would have caused if Elora hadn’t rescued me from the entire situation.”
She questioned something I wasn’t even willing to think about yet. “What were you thinking of doing?”
I hesitated, then admitted the truth. “Exposing him. Telling everyone the depths of his depravity and decaying soul. Destroying him, like he destroyed me.” As soon as that fantasy popped into my head like a bubble, my excitement deflated. “I could never go through with it though, because in order to expose him, I’d have to expose myself.” I clenched my teeth at the pure impossibility of the entire situation. “And I wouldn’t survive that.”
“What if—” She paused and sat forward on the couch and looked at me over her shoulder. “What if he silently paid for what he did? What if the world never knew, but you knew that justice was served?”
I regarded her, trying to understand what she was saying as darkness took root behind her usually bright blue eyes. “I don’t understand.”
She swallowed and looked at the floor, so I leaned forward to sit even with her as she carefully plotted her response. “Frankie was my friend at one point.” She spoke of the guy responsible for her kidnapping, and while I didn’t know all the details of the ordeal, I knew he betrayed her. “We hooked up on occasion, but it was casual. So, when I got with Jed and told Frankie I wasn’t interested in that kind of relationship with him anymore, I thought he’d be okay with it. But he wasn’t.” She played with the tiny gold bracelet on her wrist as she talked. “I’d never felt betrayal like that before in my life. I thought it was going to cost me everything, and I’d have no way to even the score.”
“But you did.” I whispered, remembering the way she left me behind that car during the gunfight to enact her own revenge on her kidnapper.
“I didn’t plan it.” She shook her head and looked at me with haunted eyes, “I don’t even remember making the decision to pick up the gun or to pull the trigger.”
“Do you regret it?” I asked the impossible question, “Would you go back and change it if you could?”
“Yes.” She nodded softly, “I can’t get the image of him as I shot him out of my head. Some nights it wakes me up, and I’m right back in that dark parking lot all over again.”
“Do you feel like revenge could have felt differently if he’d have died in the shootout or something, not at your hand?” I questioned, imagining my own demon facing the end of a gun, but I couldn’t tell who was holding it and pulling the trigger.
She tilted her head to the side sadly, “Are you asking for me, or yourself?”
“I don’t know anymore.” I admitted in defeat.
“All I can tell you is it gives me peace knowing he can’t hurt me again.” She acknowledged. “But I don’t know what that means for me or my soul.”
“I think my soul died sometime around my twentieth birthday.”
I stayed at Carly’s for a while more, relaxing in the silence of her understanding and healing something in the ease of it. But I couldn’t hide anymore, even though she was intent on locking herself inside all day to avoid Jed.
I wasn’t going to get involved in their relationship differences, because if I had to put my guess in, I’d say Carly just needed some time to get her head wrapped around the idea of bringing a baby into the world. She didn’t seem completely opposed to the idea , especially with her reaction to her negative test. They just had to move toward the common ground together on their own.
Plus, it’s not like I had any fucking experience worth throwing in to help them figure it out.
And never would.
So, I’d busy myself in other ways.
More pleasurable ways, if I was lucky.
I hadn’t seen Zeke since he slid out of my bed sometime in the morning before the sun came up to go do something dark and spooky for the crew.
I contemplated calling him. Or texting him something witty. Sexy? Seductive?
