Page 268 of Cross the Line
“What do you think will happen when he kills me and the police get the footage of you snatching me from the cameras at the office? You’ll go back to jail.”
Ryker’s hands grip the steering wheel tight, showing he doesn’t believe a single word he speaks next. “He’s not going to kill you.”
“Really? You believe that?” The clench of his jaw pops as hard as his white knuckles. “He already tried once. If it weren’t for Eli, he would’ve drowned me. If it weren’t for Eli, how many times would he have hurt you because of your sexuality?”
“People shouldn’t talk about things they don’t know,” he barks down at the steering wheel, covering it in his enraged spittle.
“I know Eli was your friend, and you let Presley hurt him.”
The sudden blanch of his face drags the lines of his mouth down, contorting it into a grimace. “It was a mistake, and I paid for it.”
“Did you?” I ask, glancing at the clock.
With the time we stopped before and how long we’ve been stationary now, I’ve bought myself at least ten, maybe fifteen minutes. In a lifetime of minutes, it doesn’t seem like much, but my life was snatched in seconds.Seconds.In that timeframe, ten minutes could be a lifetime.
A lifetime I get to spend with Jayden and Eli. An eternity of happiness.
“I—I didn’t know what he was going to do.” Tear-logged eyes find mine when Ryker rests his head on his hands, still gripping the steering wheel. “It was a mistake. Stupid… selfish, maybe? I was drunk and I was hurt, and when I went back to the party, they were all looking at me like I was a disease…”
Ryker’s deathly quiet for a beat, giving my brain the silence it needs to compute his words.
“When you went back to the party?” That same sick churn that roiled in my gut when Eli confided in me stirs frantically in the pit of my stomach now.
Ryker went back to the party.
“There was nowhere else for me to go.” He swallows hard, and it’s the first glimpse of contrition I’ve seen from him since that night at the bar. “Presley started talking to me, and we carried on drinking. He told me he was going to apologize to Eli… to bring him back to the party, so I gave him my room key.”
The final piece of the puzzle fits so sickeningly perfectly. The full picture is as soul-crushing as it is enraging. My nails dig deep into my thighs, muting the roar in my chest just enough that I don’t throw myself at the bastard looking at me for understanding and tear him to pieces with my teeth.
“I didn’t… I didn’t know… I…”
“I think you knew Presley was going to hurt Eli. I think you knew, and you enabled him to do it to ease your bruised ego. Presley doesn’t do apologies. Sociopaths don’t know the meaning of sorry.”
At least he doesn’t try to deny it.At least…
“I was drunk and?—”
“You sold your friend out!” The scream slushes the frozen blood in my veins. “Twice. You betrayed Eli twice, and now you’re doing it again.”
“He’s not my friend.”
“No, no, he’s not. Because a friend would intervene instead of recording it and then using it to their advantage.”
“You have no idea what your family did to me,” Ryker bellows, getting right in my face so that his spittle coats my cheek when he adds, “They ruined my life. Your family petitioned to get me dropped from the team because I was making the rest of the guys uncomfortable. Eli’s parents did the same. Every fucking family complained, threatened to get Coach sacked…”
Pulling away, he grabs his phone from his lap and shoves it in the front pocket of his hoodie before he continues up a narrow dirt path arched over with thick trees that eat up all the light.
“So, at which point did Presley give you your life back? At which point did you decide that out of everyone who’s wronged you, he was worth colluding with?”
“After I was dropped from the team because I’m gay, my parents washed their hands of me. I had just turned eighteen, and I was on my own. I was living in my car and working at a shitty bar on the crappy side of town.”
How my heart bleeds for him.
Ryker ruined his own life, and in the process, he almost ruined Eli, too. There isn’t a scripture in this universe that could convince me to be godly enough to forgive him. There certainly isn’t a single threat he could pose to me that would make me pretend to understand his twisted reasoning behind all of this mess.
“I was in jail and?—”
“You used Eli as your get out of jail free card.” The physical and emotional pain he suffered—the tears he cried, the hurt he bled—was nothing more than a bartering chip to him.
