Page 92 of Let Me
I hope to God Rolland Virani won’t walk out of that hospital. If he doesn’t, he’ll be lucky.
I hate it for my mom.
But even she will be better off.
I hear a creak behind me and turn, angling my head toward the sound.
It’s Riley. Her mom is nowhere to be seen and I’m fucking glad.
She looks so tired. She changed, into a baggy t-shirt and sweatpants, her hair tumbling down around her shoulders, shadows beneath her eyes. But she’s so goddamn beautiful, it almost hurts to look at her. To know what I let her go through. To know what I put her through.
I get to my feet, and we cross the room to one another, Benji laughing quietly at my back. Laughing, because he probably knew this would happen all along. He stopped me in my basement, stopped me from doing something I might have regretted, and he was the one who saw it. Who saw she was hurting.
She folds herself into my arms and for once, I don’t feel anything but happiness at her touch. Not fear, or anxiety, or rage. Just…happiness.
“Are you okay?” I murmur against the top of her head. She’s so small in my arms. I let her go all those years ago, let her carry the weight of the world on her shoulders when I should have talked to her. I should have asked her questions. But when I realized she’d hidden something from me, I’d blamed her because I was full of shame myself. Blamed her because I hadn’t been home to stop Jack.
But it wasn’t Jack I needed to stop.
She pulls back from me, her beautiful green eyes shining as she looks up at me.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, swallowing. I hear the pain in her words. “I’m so sorry that I lied to you all this time. That I never told you...” She shakes her head, and I feel her trembling in my arms.
“Shh,” I say quietly, leaning down, pressing my brow to hers. “That’s over now. That’s not your fault. You have nothing to be sorry for. But I…I do. My biggest mistake, Riley…it was shutting you out.”
She takes a shaky breath, her eyes searching mine. “What do we do now?”
I take a long moment to answer, because I want to see how she’s feeling without my words. I want to know what it isshewants to do. Because this isn’t just about me or my brother or Rolland. This is about her.
“What do you want to do?” I ask her.
She presses closer against me.
I hear Benji groan in the background. “Look guys, I’m not really up for another threesome yet, but maybe in a few—”
Jealousy shoots through me and I turn around to glare at him. “That will never happen again.Never.Do you hear me?”
He smirks at me, the little shit.
But it’s Riley that gives a polite little cough, drawing my attention back to her. We’re still in each other’s arms, but she cocks her head, a smile playing on her lips, and she asks, so innocently, “Never?”
And that jealousy runs deeper, through my veins. My hands are hot, my breathing shallow. Because it fucking hurts, thinking of anyone else in her again and yet, I kind of like it.
I’m a sick fuck.
“Only if you behave,” I whisper against her ear.
She breathes a laugh, and so does Benji, and while I want to snap his fucking neck…I’d do anything for her.Anything.
“I think you’ve fucked me up,” I murmur against her skin.
“There’s no way back from this.” Her mouth finds my neck. She kisses me, gently. “And I don’t want to go back.”
I press my hands against her low back, so she feels what I’m feeling for her. She moans a little, in my ear.
“You never told me what you want.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asks me, grinding against me.
