Page 72 of Kept

“I don’t care!” She’s shouting now, her face red and her lips trembling. “Did you want to?”

My laugh is rusty and sarcastic, torn from my chest. “Like that matters.”

“It matters,” she whispers. “It matters, Ryder.”

“What, you want my sob story? You want to know about how little Ryder helped to pay his mother’s debts by fucking anyone and everyone? How they’d parade me around like a fucking trophy?”

Zella’s sob breaks the silence. “Ryder…”

“And when she couldn’t get any more from me,” I whisper, “she sold me to a bad man, and he squeezed out every last drop. There is nothing left of me to give you, Zella. All I am is empty on the inside, and filthy on the out. That is who I am.”

I crowd her again. “I shouldn’t even touch you,” I murmur, “but you’re so damn bright, little thief.”

My head jerks back when she throws herself at me, her arms wrapping around my waist. “That is not who you are, Ryder.”

Whatever is left of my shriveled heart cracks wide open. “So tell me,” I say heavily. “Who am I, if I’m not him?”

She doesn’t let me go as she talks into my chest, her lips over my heart like she’s trying to breathe some fucking life into it. “You saved me when you didn’t have to. You brought me here. You watched over me, in the forest, and when I hurt myself you carried me inside and helped me. You opened the window for me so I could sleep with fresh air against my face.”

My eyes close. “None of that means anything, princess.”

Her fingers grip my sides. “Well, it meant something to me. Or do my feelings mean nothing to you?”

When I stay silent, she pulls her head back to look into my face. “Tell me, Ryder. Tell me right now that this doesn’t mean anything to you, that my feelings don’t mean anything, and I’ll let it go.”

My hand reaches up, tracing over her cheek, barely brushing the skin. “I’m a liar by trade, princess. A liar, a thief and a whore. You can’t trust anything I say.”

“But I do,” she says firmly, her eyes on mine. “Lie to everyone else if it makes you feel better. But don’t lie to me.”

“I can’t be what you need.” I try to tell her, try to give her the unbroken truth, but she doesn’t listen, shaking her head.

“I spent my entire life with someone telling me what I needed,” she says quietly. “It’s my turn now. And I won’t let anyone else tell me what I need, Ryder, not even you. This is the time for me to make my own choices.”

“Shitty choices,” I mutter, and she pokes me in the chest.

“We’ll see,” she says softly. “But stop hiding from me, Ryder. Don’t say that you want me, and then tell me I don’t have the right to choose whether or not I want you.”

“Even when it’s for your own good?” I mutter, and she nods.

“Even then.”

Finally, she lets me go. I’ve reached my limit. Heavily, I hold the door open, and she rinses her cup out and mine, stacking them both to dry before ducking under my arm and into the hallway.

“Sometimes,” I murmur, and she stops, her back to me. “I feel so filthy that no amount of washing will clean it off. I don’t want that to touch you, princess.”

She stays silent for a moment. “I believe that we are more than the sum of the people who made us, Ryder. We’re every interaction, every relationship, a perfect patchwork of memories. No single person can shape who we are, not if we choose otherwise. So choose, Ryder. Choose Maverick, and Enzo. Choose the people who love you instead of the ones who wanted to destroy you.”

She swallows. “And maybe you could choose me, too.”

26 - Zella

Iwakeupalone.

Stirring, my eyes blink open to the clean white ceiling overhead. I turn my face to the side, but there’s no one there. Ryder escorted me to my room last night, refusing to engage further after our argument in the kitchen and nudging me into my bedroom with a clipped ‘goodnight’.

I did not, in fact, have a good night. I had a sleepless one, tossing and turning mixed with nightmares. I saw Ethan, reaching out for me with his hands on fire. Ryder, small and frightened in a dark room as people advanced on him. Dante, his smooth face twisted and tortured as if he could feel the fire crawling over him as his face melted into grotesque shapes.

My whole body aches as I try to roll out of bed, but I’m stopped by a sharp and sudden pain in my abdomen that makes my body hunch over. It lasts a few seconds, enough for me to realize exactly what this is. My eyes squeeze closed just as I feel the wetness between my legs.

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