Page 89 of SINS & Riley
Every flicker of her lips looks like the start of a confession, but she swallows it back, again and again.
And I thought I knew torture.
Finally, right before my last shred of sanity burns out, she speaks. “Did you kill Dante?”
Fuck, how do I even answer that? Lying comes to mind. But I don’t.
“I had to.”
She looks up. When her eyes meet mine, the anger she’s ready to hurl falls away like a jagged stone she can’t quite bring herself to throw. “How could you?” she asks. Hurt and curious, she’s demanding answers.
The same answers no one ever gave me when my sister was attacked or my father was ripped away.
So I give her the truth. “His death was inevitable, Riley. There was no avoiding it. No prolonging it. I made it quick. And as painless as I could.” My shoulders slump, defeated. “There was no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not this time.”
She angles away, but I can feel the battle raging inside her. Part of her understands, and part of her still wants to rip me apart. But what thrums in the air between us is quieter, and too real to be ignored.
I’m telling the truth, and she knows it.
For a long moment, we just breathe. Exist in each other’s orbits with no will to fight. Close enough for me to lean in and give her my heart.
“If I could bring Dante D’Angelo back to you, trade my existence for his, I would.”
“I hate you,” she murmurs.
“Love is fragile. Hate is brutal. Give me either, Pom, and I’ll burn down the world for you.”
Two weepy red eyes look up. “Why?”
“Because I would die for you, Pom.”
Silence.
She doesn’t leave.
And neither do I.
Then, in the softest whisper, she speaks. “I miss my sister.”
The words are soft, but they slice me open all the same. A whisper that spears straight through my chest.
Not defiance.
Just grief.
The truth is, I miss my sister too. My brothers. My blood. It feels like someone carved out half my heart, and though it still beats, it aches, and every breath becomes a chore.
She lifts her hands, helpless, shoulders collapsing inward. “I miss Kennedy so much it hurts. I keep pretending it doesn’t bother me—the whole never seeing her again—but it does. I don’t know if she’s okay. If she misses me, too. If she’s strapped in a big, fat gilded cage the same way I am.”
Okay, that one stung a little.
“And it’s killing me.” She sobs some more, and it guts me in ways bullets never have.
Before I know it, my hand slides into hers. Cold skin, damp with tears.
