Page 11 of Reveal

“Please, Auntie?”

“Yes. Sure.” Anything to get you to leave before I break down.

“Tell Joey that it’s okay for Mr. Ryker to see me,” she pleads and squeezes me tighter.

“Lu—”

“I don’t have a lot of friends, and he’s my friend and makes me happy and—”

“Fine. Yes.” I nod and then look up to Joey. “Please add Ryker to her visitors’ list.”

“Vaughn?” Joey asks, and I can see Ryker physically bristle at him for questioning me.

“I’m serious. Ryker can visit her.”

“Sure. Yep.” Irritation laces Joey’s every syllable. “You ready, Luce? We need to head out.”

We say our goodbyes—the awkwardness less so as we all try to shelter her from the obvious fight between Ryker and me.

CHAPTER TWO

Vaughn

The door closes behind them, leaving us bathed in a tense silence. But the minute I hear Joey’s car start, I speak.

“It’s best if you leave, Ryker.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I explain.” He reaches out to grab my hand.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” I shout at him as I yank my hand away and move to put distance between us. My glare holds his as he opens his mouth and shuts it, most likely trying to decide the best plan of attack. “You don’t get to say what you said and then come here and pretend like it never happened.”

It’s only been a day—the hurt so raw, so real—and when I look at him, I feel like it’s my heart beneath his foot where he stands.

“There’s an explanation.”

“No. There’s not.” Those three words sound like every emotion I have has been scraped up and used to utter them. “There will never be an explanation good enough to excuse what you said about me. To me. To him.” The first tear slips over and slides down my cheek, and I hate my body for betraying me. For showing him that he has in fact hurt me. “Please leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Vaughn. You’re going to listen to me, and you’re going to listen to me now.”

“There you go again, thinking I care about anything you say when you were offering me up to Carter. You don’t own me. You don’t have the right to say a goddamn thing to me, and I don’t owe you shit that I have to listen.”

“You were never supposed to hear any of it.” His voice is low, his own emotion raw in the sound of it.

“Am I supposed to apologize for that? The door was open. I simply walked in. It wasn’t some planned eavesdropping. Am I supposed to say I’m sorry that I did?” He shakes his head, but I continue before he cuts me off. “I can only imagine what else you would have said if I hadn’t interrupted you.”

“I was setting him up, Vaughn. I was recording the whole thing on my phone, and—”

“You were what?” I screech, my mind spinning over the fact that somewhere in some digital cloud my name is being linked together as Vee and Vaughn, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

“I was doing it to use against him,” he says. “To—”

“What about it being used against me?”

“That’s not—I wouldn’t—c’mon, Vaughn,” he struggles to explain. “I already deleted it.”

My laugh is low, unforgiving, and automatic, and as feasible as his explanation could be, I reject it immediately. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” I shake my head in disbelief. “You broke my trust. You outed me. You acted like what we had was all a lie to a person who I despise. You—”

“Fucked up.”