Page 91 of Let Me
And what I’ve done to her, after what happened…I don’t fucking deserve her.
Rolland—I can no longer think of him asmy father—is in the hospital. I haven’t gone to see him, and I won’t go to see him. If he dies, I won’t attend the funeral. He’s already dead to me as it is. I have no regrets over bringing that fucking baseball bat down over his head.
The police took our statements, and my own personal lawyer has already given me the rundown to keep me out of trouble, but with Benji and Riley giving testimony, I don’t think I’m going to have any issues.
We haven’t told anyone what he did to my brother or to Riley. She doesn’t want anyone else to know. And besides, I want to pay him back personally for both of those crimes. If he doesn’t die soon all on his own.
Riley’s mom is speaking with her somewhere else, in a bedroom, tucked away. I can’t quite look at her mom without feeling pissed off and resentful. She’s in a wheelchair, which I suppose means I should have some sort of respect for the woman, but I don’t.
She brought it upon herself.
Worse than that, she put Riley in a position to be Rolland’s pawn.
And Riley confessed all of it to me: how the video happened in the first place (this makes me hate her mother more, but it makes me want to slice the skin from my father’s bones), and the blackmail over the years about showing me the video. About how she didn’t want to hurt me.
Me.
I’ve spent all this time hating her, wishing her to hurt like I do. And she’s spent it all sparing my heart. And my dad has spent it getting away with murder, with sexual assault, and with drugging Riley.
Benji must notice I’m lost in my own world. Down the couch from me, he shifts in his seat and cocks his head. We haven’t slept in far too long.
“You okay, man?”
I don’t reply for a few seconds, my gaze on his. I’m not okay. Nothing about this isokay.I’ve spent the last three years trying to keep Riley out of my head, trying not to think about her, and when I did, I only wanted to hurt her. To punish her.
I had no fucking idea she was already hurting.
I had no fucking clue my father was already ruining her life.
I couldn’t know that Jack hadn’t taken his own life. He had always been volatile. And while he was never depressed, that I knew of, I could understand how that video could have sent him over the edge.
But no. It wasn’t him. It was never him.
It was Rolland.
I had thought he was fucking Riley, consensually, in exchange for money. That made me hate her more.
But it wasn’t that at all.
And I was too blinded by hatred to see it.
That kills me the most. I could have stopped this, way before now, I could have ended it.
“No. I’m not.” It’s an honest answer, and Benji doesn’t crack a smile or laugh. I almost feel sorry for him right now. He went to prison for assault, for bashing a dude’s head in that tried to hurt his ex. And here I’ve done the same to my own father and I likely won’t serve a single day of time. And more than that, my father has literally gotten away with murder these past three years.
Benji’s words come back to me though.
I went to prison for assault. I would do it again, too, if it meant reliving that night over. I’d do the same fucking thing.
I understand that now. I have a thousand regrets about how I handled everything with Riley. With my brother. In the aftermath of his death. But I have none about tonight, and I never will.
It hurts, still, knowing what I’m doing. Or at least, what I want to do, when it comes to Riley. It hurts, because I can only imagine what Jack would think. How he might despise me for it.
It hurts even more because I feel a strange, fucked-up sense of relief knowing hedidn’tknow about us.
But I would have told him. I would have made him understand. We could have lived through this.
But we didn’t get the chance. And Riley…my God, I don’t deserve her.
