Page 27 of Pay the Price

It was me. He didn’t like me, didn’t care about me. All of his concern about my future was for him — how it would look to his friends and the business press, which still reported on his tragic widowerhood and the loss of his son, the fact that he was raising his two daughters alone (of course none of the articles ever mentioned Joan and Lenny and the rest of the household staff who kept things running).

Plus, what would I do if he admitted it? If he came out and admitted that he’d kidnapped me to teach me a lesson (I could already hear him in my head:I thought some time in a less thanideal living environment would help you appreciate the one you’ve had)?

I wasn’t sure our relationship would ever recover. For all intents and purposes, I’d be an orphan.

“You need to talk to him,” Ruth said. “He’ll tell you he didn’t do it.”

“That doesn’t mean it’ll be true,” I said.

She glared at me. “This is stupid. You’re being stupid.”

In another universe, one where Blake hadn’t died, where our mom hadn’t died, Ruth would walk out. We’d spend a couple of weeks not talking, licking our wounds (well, mostly I would be licking my wounds since Ruth would be the one slinging all the insults).

But the weight of our aloneness loomed between us. We didn’t have anyone else.

“Maybe,” I conceded, “but I have to do this on my own time.”

“When will that be?” she asked.

It was helping me to be at Cassie’s. I was focusing on myself — working, going to the gym, processing what had happened, not just the kidnapping but Blake's murder at the hands of the Beasts, and maybe even my mom’s death too.

Cassie was taking care of me even though I hadn’t asked: keeping Sarai away while I got my bearings, cooking for me, bringing me baked goods and coffee and flowers for my room.

She hadn’t even judged me when I’d confessed to the late-night visits from Otis. She’d just told him to use the door, then shook her head when I told her I thought Otis preferred sneaking in through the window.

I was healing, getting stronger.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Soon. How are you?”

I was more than ready to change the subject.

“Fine,” Ruth said, still sulking.

“You’re not seeing that guy anymore are you?” I asked. “The one from the Blades?”

She glared at me. “No, you kind of blew that when you barged into my room while we were fucking.”

I’d gone into all the reasons it was a bad idea for a fifteen-year-old girl to have sex with a twenty-something member of the local MC after I’d caught Ruth in bed with one of them, but I had no idea if the warning had stuck. For all of Ruth’s discipline when it came to school, all of her eagerness to please our dad with big plans for her future, she had a wild streak everywhere else.

She’d had that in common with Blake too.

They didn’t like rules, and their apparent adherence to them had always been more about the appearance of following them than the actual following of them.

I’d never mastered the deceit to be able to fake it, which had left me struggling to follow the seemingly endless set of rules set out by my father, school, the world. Then I wondered why I was so exhausted, why Blake and Ruth made it look so easy when the truth was, they weren’t really following the rules at all.

They just looked like they were.

Still, it shocked me to hear the wordfuckingcome from my little sister’s mouth in the actual context of, well, fucking.

“I’m not going to apologize for sending some guy almost twice your age running from your bed, Ruth.”

“Well, you should,” she said.

“You’ll thank me later,” I said.

“Doubt it.”

I fought my frustration. Was this what it was like being a parent?

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