Lo and Ryke glance up from the floor, spread out with bubble wrap and boxes. We’re packing up some things from his old room at his mother’s house. He’s moving from his flat in Philly to a new apartment—same city, just a place with more guest bedrooms and less paparazzi lurking outside.
Instead of buying all new things for the extra space, he’s trying to consolidate what he has here. Ryke planned the packing party during Sara Hale’s book club, so she’s not home. Lo doesn’t really want to meet her face-to-face, considering he’s the result of her failed marriage.
“Open it,” Ryke tells me, motioning towards the shoebox in my hands.
I flip the top and my spirits pop. Baseball cards. Hundreds of them. One of the guys looks kind of hunky…maybe…
I hold up a card with the hot young player. “You totally jerked off to this.”
Lo grins, even as he struggles wrapping an odd shaped lamp.
Ryke gives me a look. “You would,” he refutes. “And maybe I would too if I was attracted to men. But no, I traded those with kids from grade school, I didn’t jizz on them.” He turns to Lo. “Does she do this to you?”
“What?” he asks in amusement. “Try to find my porn?”
I freeze, eyes wide. “You have porn?” Oh my God, there may be p*rn at our house. Right now. I gasp. “Where?”
“At my dad’s place,” he explains. “From my teenage years.” Oh. That makes sense. He wouldn’t keep p*rn around me—even if I’ve done really well these past few weeks.
“So I’m the only one you like to embarrass?” Ryke asks me.
“You can’t get embarrassed,” I remind him, “and you told me to be comfortable talking about sex, so it’s your fault.” It’s true I’ve opened up around Ryke, and I think we can even call each other friends now.
“Fucking fantastic.” He grabs a roll of tape and tries to roll it over a box, but the dispenser shrieks in revolt. He grumbles a few curse words and throws it on the ground. “Lily, can you go find me another roll of tape? There should be one in the kitchen cabinet.”
“I’m on it.” I exit the bedroom and journey through the large house that has more unnecessary bedrooms than necessary ones. I find the kitchen and start opening as many cabinets as I can, avoiding the dishware and pots. A few drawers later, I find the miscellaneous area. I squat and discover tape behind a tub of bulbs.
Success.
I spin around, about to head back to Ryke’s room but something stops me. Something situated on the tea cart by the breakfast table. A small box is wedged in an overflowing basket of mail.
It’s brown, like any normal package, but this one is different. My heart lurches to my throat. Swallowing a lump, I approach the box, confirming my suspicion. Tiny X’s are typed all across the packaging.
My hands shake as I set the tape on the cart and inspect the label.
From: Kinkyme.net
It’s the same site that sent me the dildo, but I assumed the leak just mailed the package directly to my parent’s house. Wait. That’s not right. A note accompanied the sex toy, so the leak had to mail the box to their house first, place the message inside, and then send it to me.
This is Ryke’s house. We never come here. He knows this. He knows more about us than almost anyone. We let him in.
Lo was right from the beginning, wasn’t he?
Tears well. Ryke made this elaborate plot, infiltrating our lives, just to cause Lo more pain—to ruin his life because he destroyed his just by simply existing.
Why is it that the people you come to love are the ones that seem to hurt you the most?
I continue reading the box.
To: William Crane
A fake name to cover his tracks. I grip the box, hating everything and then nothing at all. A horrible pain shreds my chest. Lo won’t just be hurt by the news. He’ll be devastated. How can he handle another disappointment, another betrayal? Even imagining his reaction brings a flood of tears, dripping down my cheeks.
I have a sudden urge to rip open the box and see what’s inside. Before I search for a knife, the patter of shoes echoes, the sound growing towards me. And then the noise silences by the doorway—the kitchen doorway.
Sara Hale sets her purse and her book club’s hardback on the counter. Her golden-brown hair compliments her flower sundress. As soon as she makes eye contact with me, her glowing face tightens. And then her gaze drops to the box in my hands.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, not peeling from the box. “What is that?” Her lip spasms. “You need to leave right now.”
Each time she speaks, I can barely register the words. They zip right into my ear and out the other.
“Did you not hear me?” Her eyes sear with hate. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I don’t know what I did to her. “Get out of my house!”
“Mom, what the hell?” Ryke rushes down the stairs and into the kitchen, Lo right behind him. I’m too stunned to do much of anything.
“You brought her here!” Sara shrieks, and then her eyes ping to Lo who hurries to my side. “And him?”
Lo touches my shoulder, and he glances at the box in my hands. “Lo,” I say softly. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m so confused.
Ryke follows my gaze, and before Lo or I can do a thing, his brown eyes light with fire. He faces his mother. “What the f**k did you do?” His voice is hollow and cold.
“Get them out, Ryke,” she retorts, pointing towards the front door.
“What the f**k did you do?!” he screams, his hands on his head. His chest rises and falls.
“Sweetie, let’s talk about this later.” She reaches out to touch his arm, but Ryke jerks back, throwing his hands in the air.
“What the f**k is going on?” he says. “What the f**k did you do?” He shakes his head repeatedly, and it’s then, that I know for certain, who the real leak is.
Ryke had nothing to do with the scandal. Lo’s brother is just as innocent as the rest of us.
“I don’t want to talk in front of them,” Sara says.
“Did you tell the press that Lily’s a sex addict?” Ryke asks, his eyes reddening as he suppresses more volatile emotions. He’s about to explode.
I always wanted to see Ryke Meadows flinch, but not from something like this.
“Ryke—”
“Did you f**king tell them?!” he yells, clutching the granite counter.
“Yes,” she suddenly says, touching her chest as though a weight has been lifted off. All this time, we assumed that the blackmailer was a man. Yet, here she stands.
Lo is rigid beside me, and if the perpetrator was anyone else, he’d most likely be sending the person to hell with his words. I think we’re both more concerned for Ryke in this moment.
The painful silence stretches. Ryke stands still, unmoving, and his tears gather and threaten to fall.
“Ryke, honey,” Sara says, “you have to understand that Jonathan—”
“Stop,” Ryke says, his voice breaking. “I get why you did it. You ruined a girl’s life because you wanted to be free of him. You wanted people to know that you were cheated on. You couldn’t say a word about his infidelity because of the divorce contract. But if the media found out inadvertently, you’d still keep Jonathan’s money and everyone would know about Loren’s real mother. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She doesn’t say a thing.
Ryke shakes his head again, his voice shaking even more. “So you tormented Lily to hurt Loren, to retaliate against Jonathan f**king Hale, to stick it to his son, and I guess you strung Lily along for a while because Jonathan was squirming. You liked that. You took pleasure in his stress. And then when you leaked the news to the press, your book club friends and everyone else realized that you were cheated on. Right? You weren’t the gold digger after all. That’s great, Mom. Congratulations. You succeeded.”
“Ryke—”
“You know what else you did?” He blinks and tears fall. “You lost your only son.” He goes to turn around, and Sara grabs his arm.
“Wait, honey—”
Ryke untangles from her hold but stops and faces her again. “What? What could you possibly say that could justify terrorizing a girl for months?”
“You were never supposed to meet him,” she says under her breath, her cheeks slick with her own tears. She points at Lo. “He’s not your family.”
“He’s my brother!” Ryke yells. “He would never hurt me the way you just have.” He takes a staggered breath, tugs at his shirt and holds back a scream. “You don’t get what you did, Mom. Do you even know what you did to me? Do you f**king understand?”
Sara’s chin quivers as she cries. “Please, stop. Don’t go.” She touches his arm.
“You’ve made me choose between you and Dad my whole f**king life. You can’t stop me from having a relationship with Lo. You can’t make that decision for me.”
“I’m your mom.”
“And you lied to me!” Ryke shouts, pain enveloping his face. “You ruined someone’s life for a f**king feud, and you were willing to sacrifice me doing it.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “If I thought you’d react like this, I would have never—”
“I don’t believe you,” he says flatly. “If you knew me at all, you’d realize that I’d hate you for what you’ve done. I can forgive you for a lot of things. But this…” He lets out a weak laugh like he’s stuck inside a nightmare. “What the fuck, Mom?” He takes a deep breath. “I’m gone in an hour. I have a few more boxes.”
She can’t stop crying. Sara hugs the counter, expecting Ryke to come into her arms, to comfort her and say everything’s okay.
But he can barely look at her without his breath shortening.
“Just answer me one thing,” Ryke says. “How did you find out that she was a sex addict? I never told you that.” He didn’t? I thought maybe that’s how she learned.
Sara sniffs and gestures to his pocket. “Your cell…your texts…”
Oh God.
Ryke pinches his eyes.
She read his texts. I’m sure there are many mentioning my addiction, or hinting about it. Ryke always asked how therapy went. He was the first person to tell Lo and me that aversion therapy is sadistic and to stop seeing Dr. Evans. And before that, he most likely texted back and forth with Lo about my progress with Allison.
Lo kisses my hand a couple times, and he wipes my tears with his thumb. I let go of his palm because I think we both know that I’m not the one crumbling right now. I don’t even need to nudge Lo. He’s beside his brother within the second.
“So you found their numbers from my cell?” Ryke asks, trying to suppress more tears, his eyes bloodshot.
“I just…” She cries into her hand.
“You what?” Ryke says. “You wanted me to stop hanging out with Lo? You wanted Jonathan’s son to suffer because Lo took me from you? That’s…fucked up, Mom. That’s real f**ked up.”