by Lewis, R. J.
Staring hard at his determination, I knew there was no arguing with the lazy bastard.
“Anyone you might suspect doing this?” I finally asked.
He thought about it. “I’m suspicious about everyone now. I’m paranoid. I’m tempted to just kill ‘em all and start from the ground up again.”
I sighed, ignoring his empty threat. “Why aren’t you just guarding all the cash houses then? That way this fucker can’t get in without being spotted.”
Boss shook his head. “Nah, can’t do that. I have too many of them and not enough men.”
“Then hire more!”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? They’ve been bleeding me dry! I don’t have an endless supply of money, Ryker. That’s why I need you to do this for me. I don’t trust anybody else. It’s just you now.”
Jesus. What choice did I have then?
“Anything else?” I lifelessly asked. “I gotta crash. I’m exhausted.”
“The driver was meant to hand you a bag of money to keep you going for the next couple months. I’ve already put you in a room at a motel. If you want some entertainment, I can send some good fucks your way. I got some real nice ladies now, and I bet you’re goin’ insane with need.”
I didn’t reply to that. I turned away from him and opened the door. “I’ll keep in touch.”
“I know you will,” he said as I stepped out. “And find me that bastard, Ryker!”
*
It didn’t take long for things to return to normal. I kept to myself, even around the men. I didn’t want to make small chat. I liked my isolation, and suddenly Boss wanted me out and about all the fucking time.
They made me read up on dates of the discovery of every cash house that’d been emptied. They threw some random names down on a piece of paper and I spent some days asking people questions. Nobody knew shit about anything. Not until I asked them questions about anybody coming into some money. Suddenly, people started dropping names like they were falling out of the sky. Apparently, there were a lot of suspicious people with a lot of suspicious money, which made the search even more exhausting.
“We also got a man named Marko that has just popped up on the radar,” one of the guys had said to me. “Out of nowhere he’s owning a brand new gym in a good part of Hedley, and the guy’s a fuckin’ fighter, you know? He shouldn’t have that kind of dough if he’s been fighting for money on the side.”
“Alright. Go around and do some sniffing.”
I did what I could to get the guys out of my way. I sent them on small, meaningless errands. When I wasn’t out doing something, I was inside my motel room, feeling comforted by the tiny space. I couldn’t deal with the cheap decorative, so I’d stuffed the pictures on the wall inside a cupboard in the bathroom and hid anything that sat on surfaces.
When it was plain and bare, my brain cleared up. It reminded me of a cell, and it was surprisingly comforting. It made me feel like I was in a familiar space, that nothing had changed overly much, and that I was still in control.
It couldn’t have been further from the truth, though.
I resisted touching alcohol. I shoved away any blunt thrown my way. And I got violent when somebody offered me coke. There was no way I was going to numb my reality again.
In the here and now, I wanted to feel every second of it.
Thirteen
Ryker
“I’m sending some pussy your way,” Boss said to me on the phone. “I’m tired of you dodging the girls. If I can’t have you chasin’ one, then I’m going to send one your way.”
When he laughed drunkenly, I hung up on him before he carried on. It wasn’t that I wasn’t itching to be with a woman. Fuck, I was so hungry for sex, I probably wouldn’t care who I got to take home. But I was trying to fight that urge. The girls weren’t anything special. Just a bunch of chicks willing to put out in their tight little jeans and low cut tops.
And that would have fucking riled me up before, wouldn’t it?
It didn’t do anything for me anymore. Even in prison, when the guys reminisced about fucking, they never cared about who it was. They didn’t have a face in their minds they wanted to see when they were slipping their dicks into the warmth of a woman. It was all about ass and titties for them.
I’d had a taste of chicks of every size and look. After a while, the shine wore off and you were getting the same tasting meal that just looked different. Sex felt the same with anybody. There wasn’t anything special about any particular person. You got to pump and come and that was all there was to it.
It was the year I was arrested that I realized how wrong I was. When you had a connection with somebody – a person you loved that filled the void inside of you – then sex really was different. It wasn’t pleasuring you on just a physical level, it was also satisfying you on an emotional one too.
I doubted I’d ever feel that way again. And if I didn’t, plain sex just to get a physical need fulfilled was essentially meaningless to me. Choosing to listen to Reaper’s constant advice, I was tired of living a meaningless life, and I needed to do something about it. So cutting that out was the answer for now.
On my fifth day of freedom, I spent the day watching a little bit of television. Then I did four rounds of two hundred push ups and one hundred chin ups before I got bored and hit the shower. It was when I finished and drying myself off that I heard a knock on the door.
I checked the time. It was mid-afternoon. Had Boss sent the girl my way so early? I wrapped the towel around my hips and walked to the door. I ran a hand through my hair and then whipped the door open. Saying the words “fuck off” were at the tip of my tongue until I saw who it was.
Immediately, those words died in my throat and I stared at the face in front of me in shock.
Allie.
Standing right in front of me, looking the same and yet completely different at the same time.
It’d been raining out and her blue summer dress was damp. Her dark hair was tangled and shorter than I remembered, just barely reaching her shoulders. Those blue eyes – unchanging and beautifully pronounced like it had always been – looked directly into my own.
Fuckin’ hell, she was beautiful. Nothing like the awkward girl I’d fallen in love with. And this is what I threw away, I thought to myself right then and there.
“H-Hi,” she stuttered out, swallowing hard.
I didn’t respond. She shivered from the cold – or maybe it was me – and tucked her hair behind her ear nervously. She was holding her purse in her other hand, and she was gripping that fucker hard.
My heart raced as all kinds of emotions took over. I didn’t think about our past. I didn’t think about why I hated her. I didn’t think of how she’d broken my heart and stomped the fuck out of it. Instead, I just felt. And what I felt was nerves and love and fucking terror all at once.
You’re fucking letting her get drenched, dickhead. Open the fucking door.
I opened the door the entire way and stepped back. She stared into the room, hesitating for a brief moment before she walked in. I watched her stop in the centre of the room and look around. There was nothing for her to really see. The room was neat and tidy and completely fucking bare.
When the door slammed shut, she jumped and looked back at me.
And now it was just this. Her and me in a room after three years of zero contact. Her, nervous and scared, breathing harder and harder as the seconds passed. Me, controlling my urge to kiss the shit out of her while I breathed harder and harder as more seconds passed.
“What are you doing here, Allie?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she answered quietly, looking down at the carpet. “I’m… I want to know how you are.”
“How’d you even find me?”
“Everyone talks, Ryker.”
Ryker. I shut my eyes for a second, feeling pleasure run through me at her saying my name. That’s all she fucking had to do to make me feel like this.
“Well, I’m fine,”
I then said in a harder tone.
“Good. That’s good.” She ran a hand through her wet hair, and my eyes glanced down her body. I used to know what every inch of it looked like, but it was completely different now. Allie was a stranger to me.
“You’ve grown,” I simply managed out before clearing my throat and awkwardly rubbing the back of my neck. This was not how I ever envisioned our first encounter to be like after everything.
“You too. You… You’ve definitely changed,” she remarked, glancing down my body for a split second before she looked back at my face. “The beard… that’s really different.”
Why was she telling me this?
Why the fuck was she even here?
This was the woman that I’d spent three years getting over.
“I got tired of shaving my face,” I told her on a shrug. This was the most pointless conversation of my life, but as long as she was talking more pointless shit, then the more I’d hear her voice.
We didn’t say anything for another few moments. She was still shaking – so it was me then – and trying to smile. I didn’t care about pretending shit. I just stared at her unabashedly. I had nothing to lose by doing it, and it made her even more uncomfortable.
Quietly, I said, “I know about Heath –”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” she cut in, blinking hard and looking away. She swallowed hard again, fighting to keep her emotions at bay. “I’m not here to talk about him.”
“What are you here to talk about?”
“I’ve been thinking about our conversation for three years now. You never let me see you again –”
“I didn’t want to see you again. I wouldn’t have been able to…”
Her misty blue eyes met mine. “To what?”
I exhaled. “I wouldn’t have been able to move on from you if you’d kept coming back, Allie.”
She didn’t reply, but her guilt was apparent. I didn’t want her to feel guilty. The last thing she deserved was to feel shit about herself after everything that happened. It took a long time for me to realize that none of this was her fault. They were the consequences of my actions. I had created the domino effect that ultimately took her down the path she did.
“I’m sorry,” she then said, blinking back tears. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Ryker –”
“Don’t you dare apologize to me,” I cut in. “I was foolish. I was so filled with anger. I said some stupid shit to you, and I’d take them back if I could. I’m not going to bother you. I’m not going to force you to be with me. Hell, I don’t want to be with you. At the time, though, I was so fuckin’ infatuated with you. You were my hope in a really dark place in my life, and I expected too much. I understand I hurt you, and it all looks bad on my part. But I had my reasons for everything I ever did.”
She considered my words as she walked to the bed and took a seat on the edge of it. All I thought about right then and there was the scent of her on my sheets after she was long gone. I was tempted to tell her to get off. How was I meant to not want her when my things were going to smell of her?
“I hurt you,” she muttered. “I understand why you said all that. I don’t blame you for it.”
Allie Wallace, the epitome of understanding. She didn’t need to extend that generosity to me. I was an asshole.
“I hurt you a lot worse,” I told her. “I was a fucking jerk to you. A dumb kid that didn’t even want you to begin with.”
Shit, that slipped out.
Her face shot up and she looked at me in surprise. I clenched my jaw and wanted to whack my face against the wall for dropping that fucking bombshell.
“I know you didn’t,” she replied shakily. “I always knew you didn’t feel much for me.”
She was going to make me talk about the past, wasn’t she? This was the reason why she was here. She wanted to understand things. I ran a hand over my face in exasperation. She deserved to know, didn’t she? She had to and then maybe she’d hate me for other reasons instead of what they were now.
Regardless of what I did, she’d leave. No truth was going to make her stay. Things were too damaged anyway. I’d never look at her the same way I did before, and acknowledging that when she was around confirmed my decision to never chase her again.
“Give me a second to change,” I told her. I quickly threw the towel off behind her still body and slipped into a pair of briefs. I didn’t bother sparing anymore seconds dressing when the only clothes I had were dirty.
Not wanting to sit next to her, I grabbed the armchair in the corner of the room and dragged it in front of her. I kept it a safe distance away from where she sat, and when I was satisfied I wasn’t going to be close enough to feel her breathe, I took a seat.
Resting my elbows down on my knees, I leaned forward and solemnly said, “Whatever you want to know, ask the questions now. Because I’m not gonna do it after this day. I’m going to keep the past in the past. That’s how I cope and move on. You got one chance.”
Allie didn’t even think. The first question tumbled out of her mouth not even a second later. “Why did you want me in the beginning?”
Great, the hardest fucking question of all to answer. How was I going to do this delicately? I wasn’t sure it could be done. I thought for a moment when she said, “Don’t sugar coat it, Ryker. Just… Just tell me.”
Yeah, she could still read me, couldn’t she? I stared into her eyes for a moment, and as the silence wore on, I felt a tightening in my heart.
“I found your father in an alleyway on my way back from a party one night,” I finally said. I turned away from her when I saw her mouth drop from shock. I couldn’t look at her as I said this. “He was calling for help, and just as I started talking to him, I got my head smashed against the wall. I woke up to Boss – the man leading the Syndicate – threatening to kill me because I saw something I wasn’t meant to. Boss said he owed him money.”
“Why would he owe people like that any kind of money? My father never took drugs.”
“Boss is a loan shark too. He’ll do anything to make an extra buck. Your father fell on hard times and asked for a loan. I’m not sure what the conditions of his loan were. I just know he got into a lot of debt and because he gave Boss the ring around, he eventually had a target on his back.”
“What does that have anything to do with you?”
“Boss told me they were going to kill him. They were going to have him swinging off a fucking tree branch or whatever the hell it was he said, and he was going to have a suicide note written to cover up the murder. It was his way of keeping everybody else that owed him money in line. He’d bring it up to them every single time they were made to pay. It worked for the most part. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.”
“Please, Ryker, don’t be lying to me about this,” she begged.
I shook my head solemnly. “I’m through with lies, Allie.”
Allie put her hand to her mouth. She shook at this revelation and tears fell from her eyes as the disbelief and shock continued to grow. I kept myself detached from this. I didn’t want to console her. Consoling her meant acting like I cared for her, and I didn’t want to be some chump doing that after everything.
“He said he’d kill your mother next, and I convinced him not to in order to spare my life,” I went on, taking take deep breaths in between. “I said I’d check to see if she had any money hidden anywhere. I promised him I’d get close to you in order to get close to finding out the truth of where it went.”
“Everything… Everything was a lie,” she muttered to herself as she looked away from me. More fresh tears fell from her eyes. “All this time I wondered why I was so special to you, and this was the answer all along.”
I didn’t reply. She was probably tearing me to shreds inside. I deserved it. While Allie may have been understanding at just about everything, she had limits too. This was for sure one of those things.
“What happened next?” she asked in a hollow voice.
/> “I worked for him, and he took a real liking to me. In terms of the money, I found out your dad had been fired from his boilermaker job months prior. He’d been using the money to float you guys while he applied for jobs. He hoped to find one so he could pay Boss back in increments, but it never happened. Jobs got harder to come by.”
Allie fell apart.
She wept for a while, crying out to her dad through every breath. She wished he was here. She wished she’d known all along what had happened. She wished for so many things, and I could do nothing but watch her wish for all the things that would never come true.
Then she finally calmed down and stared despondently at me. “You never cared about me, did you?” she let out quietly. “It was never real.”
I shook my head slowly. “Not from the start. But I did fall in love with you, Allie. I remember when it happened too. I’d been doing some business with Boss and I’d been out all day and night. I was tired and fucking hungry. I got back to the apartment and I found you asleep in my bed. You’d waited eight hours for me even when I told you I’d be gone for only three of them. After feeling like I was just a fucking puppet, you turned to me and you stared at me with these tender eyes, like what you saw was worth something to you. I never felt worth anything to anybody. You told me to shower while you fixed me up something to eat, and then you just wrapped your arms around me all night, stroking my hair. Things changed after that night. I don’t know why, really. It just did.”
If she was relieved by that answer, she didn’t show it. She just continued to stare at me, searching for answers in my expressionless face.
“Did you ever cheat on me?” she questioned.
I nodded. “At the start.”
“Even after you took my virginity?”
I nodded and swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you let me go then? Why… Why didn’t you just toss me aside when you got your answers?”