“When your dad collapsed I called Eric and your mom. They called an ambulance and he was rushed to the hospital.”
“You’d already gone by then. I remember when my mom came into my room to wake me up and tell me about Dad, you were gone. We rushed to the hospital and I remember that Eric was in the room with him. He died before I got a chance to see him and say goodbye.” Although she had spent most of her life feeling like an outsider in her own family she had loved her parents, she just hadn’t been sure they loved her back. “What did Dad say to you?” she asked her brother.
Eric sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “He told me that he found you and Ryder in bed and that he didn’t want the two of you to be together. He knew he was dying and he made me promise that I would make sure Ryder stayed away from you.”
Abigail gasped as all the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.
Her father had broken them up the first time, and her brother had broken them up the second time.
Tears burned her eyes and she shook her head, trying to erase what she was very afraid was true.
“Tell me you didn’t,” she begged her brother.
“Abby,” he started, standing and moving toward her.
Abigail leaped out of her chair and backed away from him. “You broke us up the second time,” she accused him.
He sighed and then nodded. “When you got back together I had to make a choice, let you two stay together or honor the promise I made to our dying father. At first I thought if I just waited that your relationship would run its course, you’d break up on your own and I wouldn’t have to interfere.”
“That wouldn’t have happened, we were in love,” she said.
“I know.”
“So you told Ryder to leave me,” she accused. Anger was quickly replacing the devastation that had come with learning the people who were supposed to love her had played God with her life with no concern to what she would feel and what she wanted.
“I’m sorry, Abby, you’ll never know how sorry, I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want to not fulfill the promise I made to Dad before he died.”
She just shook her head, not even knowing what to say to that.
In all of this not a single person had cared about her.
No one.
Not her father who had ordered Ryder away from her, not her brother who had chosen their father over her, not her mother who must have known what was going on and chosen not to intervene, and not Ryder who was supposed to love her but had chosen her family over her.
This was too much.
She couldn’t deal with all of this on top of her abduction and knowing someone might be after her.
“Get out,” she said, walking over to the door and holding it open.
“Abby, please,” Ryder entreated, cautiously closing the gap between them.
“No, I don’t want to hear it, Ryder, I don’t even want to look at either of you right now.” She focused on the floor as she drew in a shuddering breath, she wouldn’t cry in front of these two even if her heart felt like it was shattering into a thousand pieces.
Again.
She knew better than to let Ryder back in and yet that was exactly what she had been doing the last few days. Seeking comfort and reassurance from his presence, letting him edge his way back into her heart.
She was an idiot.
She deserved every ounce of heartache she got and more.
“I didn’t want to leave you, Abby,” Ryder implored.
“And yet you did.”
“Because it was your dad’s dying wish.”
“And you care more about him and what he wanted than you do about me. You never loved me, Ryder. When you love someone you fight for them. I would have fought for you, if I’d known what my father was trying to do I wouldn’t have let anyone tear us apart, but you just walked away. You didn’t even say goodbye. Do you have any idea how much that hurt? How stupid I felt? And then I took you back, and you did it to me again and I felt like a fool. You loved my parents more than you loved me, and I’m not going to be stupid enough to fall for you a third time. Now leave.”
“We haven’t figured out who is after you yet,” Ryder reminded her.
“The security system will be installed by the end of the day, Tex will be monitoring it so he can tell one of you if something happens.”
Both Ryder and Eric made scoffing sounds at that.
“You are not going to be alone and that is final,” Ryder said in his don’t argue with me voice.
“Fine, whatever, if it makes you happy you can sit in your car in the driveway, but I don’t want to see you again, Ryder. Or you,” she added, nodding at her brother.
Reluctantly, Ryder gathered his bags and the two men left. Abigail slammed the door behind them, it was a little childish but she needed an outlet for the emotions which were smothering her.
Alone, she choked on a sob then ran to her bedroom, throwing herself on the bed. She wouldn’t cry, it wasn’t worth it, crying hadn’t changed her fate in Mexico, and it wouldn’t change anything now.
No tears.
Ever.
She wasn’t going to cry over men who weren’t worth it.
Her father, her brother, the man she had loved, none of them had thought very highly of her, they’d played with her and her emotions, left her alone, chosen their own needs over hers, and she was done with all of them.
In the end alone wasn’t so bad, at least it was safe, and after fourteen months of living in constant fear for her life there was a lot to be said for safe.
She’d survived Mexico on her own, she could certainly rebuild her life on her own too.
Chapter 8
June 21st
10:33 A.M.
Night was keeping watch over Abigail when Spider parked his car in front of her building.
This was it.
Make it or break it time.
Abigail deserved to know the truth, the whole truth, and he was ready to give it to her.
Well actually, he wasn’t, but he was doing it anyway.
It wasn’t fair to her to expect her to make a decision about their future if she didn’t have all the facts, so he intended to do just that.
“Hey,” he greeted his friend as he got out of the car. “Anything?”
“Nope, no signs of anything and Tex has her system up and running so if we get called away we’ll know she’s protected.”
“Yeah,” he agreed half-heartedly, knowing that he wouldn’t feel like she was well enough protected when they were called out no matter how good the security system was. That was a new sensation for him. He had always loved Abby, always thought about her when he was away, but before she had gone missing he had never really considered the possibility of the darkness of the world curling itself around her and pulling her over to its side.
“You know she’s probably just going to throw you out,” Night said, nodding at the bouquet of flowers he’d gone to buy.
“So I should just give up on her?”
“No,” Night said with a lingering look at Abigail’s apartment that said he thought it was already too late for both of them to fix their relationships with her. “I just want you to be prepared.”