Page 38 of Broken Player

“Ready to watch?” Ryan asked, looking up at me with bright eyes and a smile. I loved that she knew exactly what I needed right now. She didn’t make me talk about it, she didn’t ask questions. She knew I needed to forget, to distract myself with something good. I grabbed a handful of popcorn and tossed a couple kernels into my mouth, nodding at her.

She leaned back pressing play on the laptop she’d pulled in with us. As we settled in for the movie, she moved closer to me, resting her head on my chest and lacing her fingers with mine. My breath caught as every cell of my body was hyper aware of Ryan and how close she was to me right now. She looked up at me with such compassion in her eyes, I fell into them, lost in a sea of warmth and caring that no one else had ever shown me. Her gaze darkened and I knew she wanted me to kiss her, to lean down the couple of inches separating her lips from mine and show her exactly what she did to me.

But Ryan was my future. I didn’t want to just sleep with her, I wanted to wake up next to her. One night with her would never be enough and that was why I wouldn’t let myself kiss her now. Not when she was tying herself to someone else. Not until she admitted that she’d always been mine and that she would always be mine.

Instead, I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her closer, closing my eyes and enjoying a few minutes of peace before the world inevitably shit on me again. She wrapped her arm across my stomach and when I cracked open one eye a few minutes later, her eyes were closed and her breathing was steady. She’d been going through a lot lately, too, and I wondered if she was getting much sleep. I studied her face, every freckle, every dark eyelash fanned out on her soft cheek wanting desperately to trace every line with the tip of my finger. Instead, I closed my eyes and let myself succumb to exhaustion.

Waking up the next morning,heat enveloped my body. I looked down and Ryan had completely wrapped herself around me, our legs tangled together and she gripped my shirt tightly in her fist as if she were afraid I’d leave her while she slept. Her breathing was still slow and even, and despite the fact I spent the night on the floor, I felt surprisingly rested. I needed to get home, though, and deal with the fallout of last night.

I let myself have one more minute watching Ryan sleep, enjoying her closeness. She had always been the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen and I doubted that would ever change. If I could wake up every day like this, there would never be anything else in my life that could compare. But for now, I had shit to handle.

So I gently peeled Ryan’s clenched fingers off of my shirt and untangled my body from hers. I immediately missed her warmth as I watched her curl up under the blanket. I pulled it up over her and leaned down, ghosting a kiss over her forehead. It was all I’d let myself have for now. Crawling out of the tiny fort, I slid into my boots and lifted the window up as quietly as I could. I climbed out and started the walk back to my childhood home.

The last place I ever wanted to be.

The place I had to go if I was ever going to be free.

I trudged up the front porch, dread creeping into my body, a cold sweat breaking out across my forehead. This was it. All the planning I’d been doing for the past week would hopefully payoff today. The old screen door creaked as I swung it open, not bothering to be gentle or quiet. If Russell had a hangover and the loud noise pierced his skull that would be just fucking perfect.

Right on cue, he yelled out, “What the fuck, boy?” Ah, so hedidremember who I was afterall. My teeth grinded together as I clenched my jaw to keep from lashing out at him. I needed to stay focused. That was the only way I was going to rid my life of the man who reluctantly gave me life once and for all. Instead of answering, I marched through the house to the room I’d been staying in. Predictably, it was ransacked, no doubt as Russell searched for money to fuel his habits. At least I kept my wallet on me last night.

I grabbed the envelope that contained the key to my freedom and walked back to the kitchen. My heart was racing a million miles an hour. I’d never been good at standing up to or confronting my dad. He held some weird, sick power over me that I fucking hated him for. I tossed the thick envelope down in front of where he sat at the kitchen table.

He lifted his bloodshot eyes to me over the rim of his coffee mug. Whatever he had in there wasn’t coffee since there wasn’t any in the house. “I saw what you did to my room. You had noright to go through my stuff,” I gritted out. I didn’t know why I even bothered, but I was starting to boil over with anger and I needed to say my piece.

“No right?” he scoffed. “I have every right when you barge into my house and make yourself at home. I didn’t ask you to come here.”

“No, you didn’t. Joel did since you can’t manage to take care of the animals that you’re responsible for. So I stepped in.Again.And how the fuck did you get out of the zip ties?” My fists were clenched at my sides so tight that they were starting to go numb.

“Broke a beer bottle.” I looked at his wrist, spotting the dried blood where he’d missed and cut his skin instead.

His eyes turned calculating and then he smiled up at me as if he flipped a switch from the monster to an actual human being. I knew better than to be fooled. “Well, thanks for taking care of the feed. I appreciate it. You know, if you could just lend your old man a little bit more, I could really turn this place around,” he tried.

I threw my head back and laughed. Was he fucking serious? I had to hand it to him, he had balls. At the sound of my laughter, the monster was back and he was glaring at me, his livid expression almost funny.

“You must be out of your goddamn mind if you think I’ll give you one more cent to blow on alcohol and whatever drug you were high on last night,” I scoffed before shifting my tone into something more neutral. “You know, if you want money and to be free of this place, I may be willing to help.”

I watched as he perked up, the predictable fucker. “Help? How?”

I nodded toward the envelope that sat untouched in front of him. “Open it.”

He reached his shaky hand out, but I knew the shake wasn’t from nerves. The tremors would only get worse the longer hewent without feeding the beast that lived inside him. He pulled out the papers and scanned over them before his nostrils flared and he slammed his fist down on the table, shaking his mug so the liquid inside sloshed out. “No fucking way,” he shouted.

Shrugging, I studied the worn and faded room around me, not wanting to give him any sort of indication how badly I wanted this. “Fine, have it your way.”

I reached to pick up the papers and he snatched them out of my grip, his eyes narrowing. “How much?”

I grinned like the goddamn Cheshire Cat because I knew I had him. “Fair market value, minus the repairs needed and the amount I already paid for the feed and upkeep this week.” I wasn’t offering him a dime over what I thought was fair. And I knew he’d accept because he was completely consumed by his demons. Nothing was more powerful in his life.

Not one goddamn thing.

He sat in the chair stewing and I could practically see the steam rising off the top of his head, but finally he sagged in his chair. “Never wanted to be a rancher anyway. Fine, you’ve got a deal,” he reluctantly agreed and internally I pumped my fist in the goddamn air. I was about to be free of my nightmare.

“Sign here,” I pointed to the sticky arrows my attorney had placed in every spot a signature was needed and handed Russell the pen I’d stuck inside the envelope. I didn’t want even one second to allow him to hesitate. I watched as he scrawled shaky signature after shaky signature and after the last one, I blew out the breath I’d been holding.

I pulled a check out of my pocket and slid it across the table to him, his greedy eyes lighting up at the amount even if it was almost nothing to me. “You’ve got twenty four hours to get the fuck out of my house,” I said, reaching down and stacking the papers neatly in a pile before sliding them back into the envelope.

I didn’t wait to hear a response from him before walking back to my room to shower, change, and go into town. There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be spending any more of these last hours in this house with Russell. Our ties were officially severed.

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