"I don't need sleep. I need to get this done so I can go home."
Her words rake across my raw emotions and I feel something dark and possessive snake around my chest. I don't think she got the point when I told her she belongs to me that I'm not letting her go. Home is here now, wherever I am, and trying to run from me will only anger me. It won't get her what she wants, which is freedom.
I set the laptop on the desk and grab her arm, tugging her toward the bed where she should be sleeping. Maybe I'm delirious because of lack of sleep, or maybe my temper has just finally snapped and I'm losing it, but I'm not feeling like putting up with her attitude anymore. I give her a push and she lands on the bed, scoffing and glaring at me.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she demands.
Then I turn and pick up the laptop again and move toward the door where I turn to face her. "You're not going home," I say.
She stares at me. "What?"
"You're not going home—not now, not ever." Even as the words leave my mouth and I watch them slap her across her cheek, I feel bad. I know how damaging this will be for her motivation and I know I'm out of control while I say it, but I won't repent. Riley won't leave me. I won't let her.
The color drains from her face. "You can't be serious."
"You heard me. You belong to me, and I'm not sending you 'home'. So get used to this." Now there's a lump forming, threatening to suffocate me slowly while I stand here watching her wilt. This isn't the way I thought this would go. I wanted it to look more like a gentle invitation for her to stay and my bitter monster is taking over, demanding things because I'm unable to control myself.
I'm not a man when this comes over me. I'm a beast, an ugly, dark, hideous, angry monster that takes what it wants and leaves no prisoners.
"So, what, I'm your prisoner forever? Is that the plan?"
"You belong to me now," I repeat, and I won't apologize for that. At least that statement doesn't make me feel anything but whole.
Riley launches off the bed and comes at me with her fists bared. "I don't belong to anyone. Especially not you." She takes a swing, but I lean back and she stumbles a few steps, bracing herself against the wall.
I watch her for a moment, this time actually thinking through what I should say before spouting things off because my conscience is at his breaking point. "It's out of my hands." My sentence is short and jarring. "Sal was never going to let you go, anyway."
"And you're a monster," she says under her breath, and the tone is so sharp, it cuts me.
I've been called worse… I've done worse. But hearing it from her mouth and seeing the disgust in her eyes feels like I've betrayed my best friend or murdered my own father. It's a sickeningfeeling in my gut that I can't handle, so I back out of the room and pull the door shut, then grab the key from the spot where it hangs above the door and lock it.
I hear Riley's feet slap on the floor and she tries the handle while I stand there staring, watching it jiggle before she starts pounding.
"Rafe!" she shouts. "Open this door. Rafe!" She bangs on the door, yelling my name, and I keep walking until I reach the kitchen where I put the laptop down. I stand in the kitchen with my palms flat on the countertop, breathing like I just ran ten blocks with Enzo’s crew on my heels. The laptop sits closed beside me, mocking me, and Riley’s voice leaks through the walls—muffled now, hoarse, furious—but it’s the kind of furious that cracks at the edges. She’s crying.
I did that. I made her cry.
My pulse finally slows enough that I can hear the refrigerator hum. Two-thirteen in the morning. I should be asleep. I need to be asleep. Tomorrow—today—I have to drive two hours to the compound, sit across from Uncle Sal, and somehow convince the old man that the banker we kidnapped is worth more alive and breathing our air than buried in a landfill off the Turnpike. And I just told her she’s never leaving. Out loud. Like a goddamn lunatic.
I drag a hand down my face. My neck still throbs from the couch. I’m thirty-eight years old and I’m sleeping on a piece of furniture built for a child because I handed her the only bed like some courtly asshole who thinks distance equals honor.
Honor.
That’s rich.
Her shouting finally stops, but the sudden silence is worse.
I push off the counter and walk back down the hallway before I can talk myself out of it, and I stop in front of the bedroom door and listen to see if I can hear what she's doing.
But all I hear are soft, wet hitches of breath. She’s right on the other side, probably pressed against the wood like she can burn a hole through it by sheer will. I picture her forehead resting where my chest would be if the door weren’t between us. The image punches me low in the gut.
I did this. I opened my mouth and let the worst part of me speak when I should've kept my big mouth shut.
My fingers find the key still in my pocket. I turn it over twice, metal warming against my skin. I could unlock it right now, walk in, and—what? I don’t apologize often. I'm the sort of man who gives orders, and people obey or they disappear. Except she isn’t people.
She's someone I've let in and shared real memories with. Someone I want to make new memories with. And I've broken something inside her I wish I could unbreak.
I rest my forehead against the door. The wood is cool. I wonder if she can feel the pressure on the other side.
