Page 61 of Let Me
“Nice house,” she murmurs, eyes on me.
I laugh under my breath. “More like an overpriced mausoleum.”
Her eyes snap to mine. She arches a brow. “Why’d you buy it then?”
I shrug, slide my hands in my pockets. “It’s secluded. By the water.”
She searches my eyes, like she’s looking for something. Like she’s wondering what I really wanted her here for. I hate to admit it, but I’m kind of wondering the same thing. I’m kind of wishing Benji wasn’t here. That there weren’t cameras in my basement. I’m starting to think this was stupid. That it’s always been stupid.
But then I see Jack again. The blood. The video. Her look of shock and fear. How she stumbled away from my dad, from Jack’s phone.
That’s when I remember why I’m doing this.
“Want a drink?” I ask her, because I sure fucking do.
She folds her lip between her teeth and nods.
I open the fridge, pull out two beers, close it with my elbow, and hand her one, across from the island.
She takes it, leans against the grey granite countertop. Her eyes roam over the black cabinets, the bay windows that overlook the pool in the backyard, lit by lamps that look like tiki torches.
The bottle dangles from her fingers, hovering between the counter and her lips. I force the memory of what she tastes like away. Of what she feels like. But I can’t stop staring at her, her straight nose that tilts up, just a little at the end. Her cheekbones, high and smooth. The slope of her small breasts, the way her tucked in shirt narrows around her waist.
She finally takes a drink, her lips over the mouth of the bottle. When she’s done, she looks toward me.
“I thought you said you wanted me over for dinner.”
I don’t say anything. I just stare at her. Did she really think it would be this easy? Did she really think I’d just ask her over for dinner and we’d talk about the fact my brother shot himself in the head because she fucked someone else and sent the video to him?
She didn’t even deny it that night. It had been sent before I found her at the party. Not from her number, of course. No, from a number that didn’t actually exist. But she was in the video. I would recognize those lips anywhere. And the guy’s hand moving over her body...
She actually thought I wanted her here for dinner. She actually thought there was something she could say to change what she burned between us.
I know Jack hadn’t left her alone since the breakup. I know he had called her nonstop. I saw it, in his phone. After we went through it, searching for anything else. Any indication that we could definitely pin this on Riley. And then we had destroyed it. The phone, everything in it. We couldn’t have the police know that my brother had put a gun to his head—my father’s—over a poor girl born to a junkie mother. At least, that’s the part my parents cared about. I just cared that Jack was fucking dead and no one was going to be held responsible.
She sighs, shakes her head. Sets the bottle down on the counter. She picks up her tattered black purse from the floor and threads it over her shoulder.
“I should go,” she mutters, straightening her shirt and looking down, at the floor. “I shouldn’t have come.”
She pushes herself away from the counter and starts to walk away, to head down the stairs. But she’s not leaving that easily. I need her to leave my family the fuck alone. She’s done enough damage.
I stop her, blocking her way to the stairwell with my hand on her arm. I take another pull from my beer.
Her eyes find mine. Her brow creases, and she finally looks worried. She finally starts to understand this isn’t dinner. This isn’t redemption. This isn’t even a ceasefire. It’s the end of the war.
“Caden...”
“You thought I’d let you get away with it?” I finish my drink, drag her along as I set it on the counter.
She frowns. “I didn’t. I never got away with it.” There’s a hollowness to her words. Something that makes me pause. Makes me think, once again, that this is a bad idea.
But only for a second.
“You couldn’t stop, could you? With the video. With Jack’s blood painting his floor red. You had to go a little further, get my father in your mouth, too.”
She tries to pull away from me. “Let me go.”
I yank her toward me, her back against mine. I pin her arms to her sides, so she can’t move. She breathes hard against me, her back heaving with every breath.
