Page 53 of Riff

“Colter is going with you?” I asked, brows raising as Riff walked over to his wardrobe to grab a t-shirt, then layered a Henley over it.

I never thought to ask if someone else would be going with them, since it sounded like the two almost always went alone on these trips.

“Yeah. Slash wants him to experience it,” Riff said, but something about his words were ringing just slightly false to me.

But that had to be paranoia on my part. Riff never lied to me. Even when he had to give me uncomfortable truths, he was always willing to do so.

“He won’t be as good of a road trip buddy as you, but we’re stuck with him,” he said, giving me a smile.

While I inwardly, for reasons I didn’t even begin to understand, bristled at the word ‘buddy.’

“You’ll be safe, right?” I asked.

“Always,” he assured me. “Haven’t been in any serious trouble yet.”

“I feel like I should be concerned that a shootout doesn’t qualify as ‘serious trouble,’” I said, getting a little chuckle out of him.

“Don’t worry about me, V. I’ll be back before you even know I’m gone,” he said, but my heart squeezed. Because I was already missing him. And he was right here still.

“Take pictures for me,” I demanded.

“And grab postcards,” he agreed, reaching for me one more time, this time gently grabbing the back of my neck, and pulling me into his chest, then leaning down to press a kiss to the top of my head.

He let go before I could really sink into it.

Then I was watching his back as he walked away from me.

He didn’t look back.

And some silly, romantic part of me wanted to believe it was because if he did, he wouldn’t be able to leave.

But he did.

Leave.

And I did, immediately, miss him.

This was going to be the longest ten days of my life.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Riff

“Motherfuckers,” I growled, kicking the door at my side of the empty goddamn house, watching the wood splinter but finding no satisfaction in the destruction.

From the looks of things, the house had been empty for a long time. Possibly even since the day I took Vienna from them and ran.

The dishes in the sink were growing five different kinds of mold, fuzzy black, yellow, and gray spreading up out of the stainless steel, a science experiment let go too far.

On the living room table, there were remnants of the men cleaning their wounds from where they’d been shot.

But everything had a thin coat of dust on it.

I mean, the place was a fucking sty even before it was abandoned. Clothes were piled sky-high in heaps on the floor, the garbages were overflowing, the fridge was full of old takeaway steadily rotting, and the black mold climbing across the showers and walls in the bathroom had clearly been there much longer than the few months since I took Vienna.

“Took our money and ran,” Raff said, nudging a shoe out of his way as we walked back toward the front room of the house.

Slash was going to be fucking furious.

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