Page 68 of Devilish Ink

He gave me a fixed look.

I rolled my eyes. “You just startled me.”

“That was something more than just startled, Ry.”

“I’m not used to anyone else being here when I’m working the late shift,” I told him. “And since Rachel and Mason broke the bed upstairs it’s been pretty quiet up there, too.”

I closed my drawing pad and busied myself with cleaning up my workstation, an easy excuse to not meet his still worried gaze.

“Ry,” Rian tried once more with a hand at my elbow, easily brushed away by my reaching for the trash bin.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Alright?” I dropped my pencils into a mug with a picture of the needle end of a tattoo gun with the words “just the tip” on it. “How could I not be alright? You’re back. You’rebetter.”

Partial truth was always a safe retreat for the liar.

The happiness I felt looking at my best friend was true. His skin had a healthy glow back. His eyes were clear and sharp. I didn’t notice any fidgeting of his fingers, any chewing at the inside of his mouth. He didn’t stop mid-sentence to stare off into the distance.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen Rian this…normal. This calm.

He was clean. He could see with clear eyes. So I was alright because he was alright. And he hadn’t been alright in a very long time.

I drew Rian into a hug and squeezed him hard, my face nestled against his chest.

“I was so scared for you, Rian,” I said. “When I heard you were…sick. I—I can’t lose you.”

Rian squeezed me before he pulled away, holding me at arm’s length. His eyes bounced between mine. He might as well havetaken out a flashlight to shine at me, into one eye and then the other.

“You know I feel the same way about you,” he said, his voice soft and earnest. “If I lost you…”

I thought about how I’d disappeared into Lee. How I’d barely spent time with anyone else. Guilt threaded through me when I realised I’d even stopped dropping by the rehab centre to visit Rian. He must have noticed.

Perhaps that’s why I hadn’t told him about Lee. Because I hadn’t figured out how to make time for both of them. Not yet.

It doesn’t matter anyway, a voice inside me said.Rian’s back. It’s time to leave. You had a break from your life.

But that’s all Lee was: a reprieve.

Our life here, no matter how sweet, couldn’t last. What he and I had here couldn’t be real.

But the face from my nightmares was…

“You’re not going to lose me,” I said, forcing a smile, but even I could hear the lies in the hollowness of my voice.

Rian hesitated one last time. Did he remember when I fled Dublin? Or had it been hidden behind a haze of cocaine?

Was his gaze clear enough now to see through my half-truths? Was he seeing the haunted darkness in my eyes?

Rian’s fingers tightened on my arms. I could hear him clearly:I’m here for you. If I wasn’t at some point, I am now.

“Would you tell me?” he asked, still searching my face, still prodding for the truth. “Would you tell me if you weren’t alright?”

I didn’t trust my own voice. Rian would have to believe a nod. Another forced smile.

He let me go, reluctantly, it seemed. But I made it through. I’d slipped through the cracks one more time. Was it relief I felt? Or disappointment?

“Ready to go?” he asked, nodding toward the door.

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