“Okay,” he starts, meeting my eyes again. “I get it. I don’t fucking like it, but I get it. But it’s late and it’s still raining. You’ll sleep in my bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No. You’ll sleep in your bed and I’ll sleep here.”
“Rina, I can’t fall asleep knowing you’re sleeping on my goddamn couch. It’s not right. Sleep in my bed. Please.”
“Don’t argue with me, Brecken. It’s that or I leave now.”
“So fucking stubborn.”
I laugh under my breath. “I’m a nurse. That just comes with the territory.”
He looks up, a crooked smile curling up the corner of his lips. “A beautiful angel. Isn’t that what they call you? Angels of mercy? So fitting and I didn’t even know it. Fine. I’ll sleep upstairs but I really don’t like it. In fact, I fucking hate it. It’s rubbing me all kinds of wrong.”
“You’ll get over it.”
His grin grows. “Not sure there is getting over you.”
With that, he leans in and plants a kiss on my lips. Simple. Sweet. Unexpected as hell, but damn. Even just this press of his lips and my body responds like he doused it in gasoline and lit a match.
“If I stay on this couch with you another second, I’m not going to be able to stop,” he breathes against me.
“Then I think it’s time you go upstairs.”
He doesn’t move.
“Go upstairs, Brecken.”
His forehead meets mine, his hand cupped around the back of my neck, holding me against him. He’s breathing hard, his eyes clenched shut, fighting his internal battle. Then without a word, he gets up and jogs up the stairs. My hand presses to my chest as I try to slow down my heart.
I’m in so much trouble and it’s only been a week.
12
rina
The first year after it happened, I walked the city streets, miles and miles in between classes, telling myself I was impervious. I wasn’t. By the time I got back to my new apartment—because I was done living in dorms or with my brother—I fell apart. I locked myself inside, checking doors, windows, and drawers so many times it made my head spin.
I did it even though I knew he wasn’t coming for me.
Even though I knew I was, in fact, safe.
But when someone robs you of your safety, your sense of freedom and security, it sets off a chain reaction inside your soul. I was no longer the girl I used to be. Suddenly life had a very different flavor, and I couldn’t stand it. It feels impossible to bounce back after a piece of you that you never realized was so vital to this life is stolen.
And six years later, I’m not sure I’ve been able to fully retrieve it.
I’ve agonized over this call. Debated the merits of having one of my brothers with me. Of having our lawyer present. Oliver being Oliver alerted the masses and I’ve had Carter, Luca, Landon, and Kaplan up my ass. Texts and phone calls all offering to be here with me. To help support me. Asking if I’m okay and what I need.
And what I realized last night in talking to Brecken is that what I need is to do this alone.
Brecken—I wonder if he knows I ran out on him yet. I wonder if he’s pissed or relieved though I doubt he’s surprised.
Rolling onto my side, I stare at my phone on my nightstand for a few very long minutes. With my heart racing and a shaky hand, I reach out and without debating any further, I pull up the number my parents texted me and hit send. Then I hold my breath, sitting up because I will not call him lying down, staring out the window at the small park on the other side of my backyard without taking in any of it.
The phone rings three times before a gravelly voice comes through barking, “Bishop.”
Who answers the phone using their last name?
“Mister Bishop, this is Rina Fritz.”
He’s quiet for a half beat before saying, “Yes, Rina. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
I nearly roll my eyes. Why else would I be calling him? “What is it you need with me?”
He clears his throat and for the first time, I think I hear nerves come from the man who tried to blame me for what his son did to me. I was a cocktease. A slut who went around behind his back. He was a lovesick kid, and I was the heartless harlot. I drove him to it. I’m the one who pulled the trigger and killed him—metaphorically speaking, but still.
“As you know, Harrison would have turned thirty tomorrow.”
I do know that. He turned twenty-four, two weeks before he took his own life.
“Yes.”
“Rina, are you aware that Harrison had drafted a will shortly before… shortly before he… before that night.”
My eyes widen, blinking repeatedly. I draw my knees up to my chest. “No. I had no idea.”
He sighs, but it’s not the sigh of a man who lost his son. It’s angry. It’s accusatory. “Well, he did. And in it he stipulated you as his next of kin.”
My jaw unhinges itself. “W-why would he do that?” I don’t mean to ask that aloud. I’m just stunned.
He created a will right before that night. Was he planning for it to end the way it did all along? I had always assumed the gun was to obtain my total submission and capitulation and that when the police closed in, he turned it on himself as an act of desperation.
“Men in love clearly do foolhardy things,” he bites out, all pleasantry and formality now gone. “In any event, on his thirtieth birthday, he was set to inherit a trust fund from his grandparents to the tune of a hundred million dollars.”
Bile surges up the back of my throat, my body trembling so hard it’s difficult to hold the phone. I close my eyes. “And now that money is set to go to me,” I surmise. I mean, why else would he have tried to find me.
“That’s correct.”
Jesus. I can’t…
“But. Can’t you just take it instead?”
“I have no claim over it at this point. No argument to make for it either. The trust is ironclad in the event a benefactor is named. Besides, I don’t want the money my son was meant to inherit, and I certainly don’t need it.”
Clamoring out of bed, I stagger to my bathroom, putting his father on mute as I turn on the faucet, splashing my face with cold water so I don’t throw up. Then I drop to the floor, curling up into a ball and turning off mute.
“I don’t want it,” I tell him. “Give it to someone else.”
“It’s not up to me, or believe me I would. You don’t deserve a cent of his money. You’re the reason he’s dead.”
“Screw you,” I snap. “You can play that your son was a fucking victim all you want, but we both know he wasn’t. You have no idea the things he did to me for six months and then that night. That fucking night! So save your venom for someone else.”
“Right,” he snarls sardonically. “Because everything he did was unprovoked? He loved you and you treated him like trash. You drove him to that night. To all of it. I’m just grateful his mother wasn’t around to see it. There’s more though.”
I shake my head, fighting tears. Sometimes it’s hard to remember he lost his son. His only child. I can chalk up his anger at me as misplaced guilt and grief and leave it at that.