Page 67 of Let Me
I don’t take any time to respond. I turn around, weave through the kitchen that’s too fucking big to be a kitchen, head down the stairs and grab my keys from the marble plate by the door, suspended from the wall.
Why anyone needs a marble plate is beyond me, but the designers installed it. I’ve spent too much of my life letting people decide things for me by throwing money at them. It’s convenient, sure. I’m a sorry prick for complaining about the luxuries money can buy, that I can afford, that I’ll probably be able to afford for at least the foreseeable future.
But the thing about giving anyone else control over your life—even if you pay and demand them to take it—is that you wake up one day without any idea what the fuck is going on. You no longer run your life. Your life, and the people in it, run you.
As I think about this while I jog down the dark, empty street, looking for Riley, I wonder who is controlling her life. I realize I don’t know much about her anymore. I know the bad that’s in her, the darkness that’s probably as bleak as my own. I know the essence of her. But the external—her life circumstances, how her mom is doing, how school is going—I know none of that. I’ve spent the last three years hating her, loathing her very existence, but she was right.
Even if it kills me to admit it. Even if I don’t want to think about it because I don’t want to think aboutthem, she was right. She lost someone too.
Jack wasn’t just my brother. He was my mother’s son. He was someone’s best friend. And he was, despite what she might have done with me—and whoever was in that fucking video—someone Riley loved.
Fuck’s sake.
The thought is still like a punch to the gut for so many reasons, I really should hire a shrink to unpack them all. But I don’t have time for that. Not right now.
“Riley!” I call into the night. I can see, beyond the large expanse of my backyard, Lake Ontario gently lapping against the shore under the moonlight. But the street is empty, my nearest neighbor not close enough, and if Riley didn’t have a phone, she couldn’t have called a cab. The Villa isn’t far, but I imagine she doesn’t know how to get there from here. I live on a private street, away from the main roads.
I stand in the middle of the road, turning around, calling her name over and over like a lunatic.
For some reason, panic settles in my bones. It’s irrational. This is a safe neighborhood. The safest in Ontario, actually. Part of the reason I moved here. It’s not good for business to live in a crime-ridden town. The worst thing she might come across here is coyotes, and they generally don’t stray too close to the lake, at least not that I’ve seen.
Besides, she could take a coyote. Hell, Riley could take on the world.
“You haven’t found her?”
I see Benji’s form striding up the long driveway, jogging toward me, his brow furrowed. Why he’s become so concerned about her all of a sudden, I don’t understand. Just moments ago, we were filming her without her consent, and he had cooked up the plan. Now, he’s worried she might be hurt?
I spin around to face him.
“What’s going on.” I don’t phrase it as a question.
He shakes his head, runs a tan hand through his dark hair. “She couldn’t have gotten far,” he mutters.
“Answer me.” At this, he turns to me.
“Excuse me?” he asks, voice low.
“What the fuck is going on? You created this scheme to get Riley to—”
“Scheme,”he says, shaking his head and turning away from me, still scanning the empty street. “Don’t put the blame on me for that. I know you’ve wanted to fuck Riley over for the past three years, man.”
“So have you. You mourned Jack just like I did. What changed? Just now?”
He takes a breath and doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “You know I deal with some shady shit, right?” I’m surprised at how he says it, like he’s ashamed. I’ve never known Benji to be ashamed of anything, and definitely not since he got out of prison. And certainly not fromshady shit.
I don’t say anything, the bugs chirping around us and the rolling water of Lake Ontario the only sound.
“I saw her. When she lashed out at you.”
“Yeah,” I bite out. “You came between us.”
He rounds on me. “You had murder in your eyes.”
I shake my head. “I would never hurt her.”
He scoffs. “You did. Emotionally. That still counts. Sometimes it counts just as much.”
I put my hands on my head, blow out a breath. “You don’t sound like Benji right now.”
