She walked to the bathroom attached to her room and was about to take it when she heard Ryker scream, “No!” so loud it had her running to help him.
“Ryker?” Kenzie called out as she shoved his bedroom door open. She didn’t know what to expect, but she certainly didn’t know what to make of him thrashing in his bed in the grips of a night terror.
“No! It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault.” His screams tapered off to a whisper as she sat on the side of the bed and brushed her fingers over his forehead and into his hair.
“Ryker it’s me, Kenzie. You need to wake up. Wake up, Ryker,” she said with each word growing louder and stronger. “Ryker!” she finally snapped in her best nurse voice. “Wake up. Now!”
Ryker’s eyes shot open and it was clear he was in that land between wakefulness and dream so she ran her hand gently over his hair again. “There’s my man. It’s time to wake up, Ryker.”
His eyes focused on her and she saw the clouds of the night terror fade. “Is everything okay?” he asked her as he sat up quickly to look her over.
She was in a T-shirt and nothing else and her hormones loved the way his broad shoulders and bare chest shone in the moonlight through his window.
“You were having a night terror,” Kenzie said as she kept running her hand calmingly through his hair. “Do you have them often?”
“Only every freaking night,” Ryker muttered as he looked away, ashamed.
“Lots of people have them, Ryker. It usually helps if you talk about them.”
Ryker sighed and she could feel the pain in the sound. Whatever his night terror was, hurt him and it wasn’t easy for him to admit. “I wanted to wait until after the reunion.”
“Why?” Kenzie asked. What did her reunion have to do with his night terrors? Her night terrors, sure.
“After I tell you, you won’t want anything to do with me.”
She hated the way he seemed so sure of that.
“Stop. You know that’s not true. It’s not like you killed anyone,” Kenzie said, trying to joke with him, but the look of absolute horror on his face said it was exactly what happened. Kenzie’s heart sped up, and at the same time it felt as if it had stopped. She reached out and took Ryker’s hand in hers. It was cold and sweaty. She knew something truly awful had happened. “What happened, Ryker?”
Ryker’s large body shuddered as he drew in a shaky breath. “I haven’t talked about it since the trial after my senior year of high school.”
Kenzie kept her mouth shut, but continued to gently rub his hand as his eyes fogged over and his memories took him back in time.
“Christabelle was this cute little blonde bubble of energy. We started dating during my senior year. She was the most popular girl in our class. But looking back, I don’t know if she was popular because of the fear she instilled in those she deemed inferior or because people wanted to be as beautiful and outgoing as she was. Boys loved her, and I was the lucky one she set her sights on. At first, everything was great. She was happy, she was passionate, she was always up for fun . . . what else could a seventeen-year-old boy want?” Ryker took a deep breath, but kept his gaze away from Kenzie’s.
“Three weeks after we started dating, I started noticing things. The mood swings, the anger, the drugs, the drinking. Christabelle could be the sweet homecoming queen one day and a ruthless bully the next. She was impulsive and narcissistic. She’d yell at me one day, then accuse me of not loving her the next. She would be so insecure that I felt sorry for her. If I hadn’t been blinded by the wild sex and finding the impulsive lack of restraint sexy, I would have seen the warning signs.” Ryker was looking out the window and Kenzie took in his pained profile. His lips were tight and his jaw clenched as he continued the story in an almost far-away voice.
“By the time we graduated three months later, I was tired of the emotional roller coaster of being Christabelle’s boyfriend. I was going to leave for college and I was thinking of ending our relationship even though I loved her more than life. That was the reason I hadn’t ended it earlier. She was my first love.
“There’s an old rock quarry up in the forest north of town. It was a popular hangout for high school kids and everyone would go up there to party. I was going to decide that night if I wanted to break up with her or try to make it work since she wasn’t going to college.
“Christabelle took the decision from me when she got wasted and took who-knows-what drugs. I caught her having sex with another guy an hour after we got there. Some of my cousins and my friend Granger were there. Granger pulled me back from beating the shit out of the boy she was screwing. Gavin and Trent grabbed me as I aimed the anger from my broken heart at Christabelle. I called her some names and told her we were done. Christabelle came after me then. She punched me over and over again, yelling that no one broke up with her and threatened to kill me if I didn’t beg her to take me back because it was my fault she cheated on me in the first place because I wasn’t a good enough boyfriend.”
Kenzie frowned as she recognized all the red flags, but even she knew she wouldn’t have seen those flags at seventeen either. Instead of pointing that out, she stayed quiet and let Ryker continue.
“Granger and Trent pulled her off me. I never laid a hand on her. I let her break my nose. I let her pummel my body, and I never touched her. Once she was off me, Gavin rushed me back to my pickup where I’d parked it near the edge of the quarry. With the tailgate down it wasn’t more than three feet from the edge so we could enjoy the view down to the rainwater forming on the pond in the quarry. We sat on the tailgate and Gavin, who was ever the doctor even as a teenager, tried to get my nose to stop bleeding.
“Granger and Trent were walking back when Christabelle shoved by them. She raced toward me yelling that I was abusive and she hated me. She yelled that all men were alike, nothing but abusive assholes. She was chugging a bottle of gin while she was ranting at me. I still remember her taking a long chug and hearing the gin bubble from the bottle and the sound of her swallowing. I told her she needed to slow down, but she just yelled at me more and leapt up into the back of the truck and shoved my chest. Gavin and I scooted back until we were sitting on that storage box as she paced in the truck bed while Granger and Trent were trying to get her to come down.
“I can hear her now, ‘You did this to me.’ Then she turned and smiled at me.”
Ryker shivered and Kenzie was filled with dread.
“’I’ll show you,’ she said, and she smiled this weird smile as if she’d won some kind of fight. Then she turned, ran off the back of the truck, and jumped.”
Kenzie put her hand over her mouth even though she knew it was coming.
“I was arrested for her murder because her parents said she’d never have done it except for my abuse. The autopsy confirmed abuse. She had a broken arm that her parents said I gave her. Scars from injuries they said were inflicted by me. Even with Gavin, Granger, Trent, and a handful of other eyewitnesses, the case went to a jury. My parents hired a top law firm who in turn hired a private investigator. During testimony, it came out that her parents had abused Christabelle since she was little, and she had been diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder. Christabelle’s own doctor testified that her parents were negligent and abusive in their care of her and that that night she suffered an acute psychotic episode that led to the suicide. He and every other doctor said I didn’t cause her death. The court agreed. I was found innocent and the case was sealed since I was a minor. So, you see, even if the court says I didn’t kill her, I did. I should have seen the warning signs and helped her, but I didn’t.”