33
T The number one rule to my devious plan was never to get caught because the game was over as soon as I let her see my face and discover the man behind the mask. My world came close to crumbling when I almost bumped into her on the third floor of the science building. I had one class in that building. One class. I left that class and ran down the stairs simultaneously as she stood on the second-floor landing.
Our eyes met in the window's reflection, and before I could examine her reaction to seeing me, I fled back up the stairs and hid in the men’s bathroom until she was gone. I didn’t go anywhere without a ski mask stuffed in my bag in case I stumbled across her, but it seemed too obvious to step out into the hallway wearing a mask after running up here.
Because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that Riley Laws was Annika, I left before she reacted to my face. She might not recognize me because she’d never seen me if she was Riley. But if she were Annika, that would’ve been the best way to find out: by showing her my face.
I wasn’t ready to do that. It would ruin everything if I did, and since my feelings were growing and deepening toward Riley, so were my concerns about what Mikael would do to her if she turned out to be Annika.
Riley breathed a soft sigh beside me, and her eyeballs rolled behind her eyelids as I gazed into her pretty face, waiting for those green eyes to open. Instead, she exhaled and fell back to sleep. Like a stubborn mule, she kept her word and refused to remove her clothes until I removed my mask. So we’re lying in her bed together, fully clothed after I fucked her in the park.
I loosened myself from her tangled limbs, rolled out of bed, and shot a glance at the small camera erected above her curtain rail. The heart-shaped box rested on her chest of drawers, and I opened the lid to find that Shaun’s tooth was not inside.
He’ll think twice before he defied my orders and should consider himself lucky it was only a tooth I knocked out of him because I came close to snuffing out his every last breath. Unfortunately, my little tryst caught the attention of half the bros at the party, who ran up the stairs and physically held me back from beating the living shit out of Shaun.
I instructed him not to touch the girl I spotted on campus at orientation but to become friends with her to siphon out information. He disobeyed me. My instincts were on fire when I knew something had gone awry that he was acting fucking shifty on the subject of Riley Laws. And because I’ll never trust him and Callum again, I kicked them off the Kaiser payroll and permanently marked them with a red X in my mind.
The Kaisers were not emperors for nothing. Fuck us around and see how far you get.
Her purple glasses case, resting on the bedside table, caught my attention. Annika had good vision, and unless something happened to her sight in three years, she wouldn’t need glasses.
I glanced back at that gorgeous head snuggled down in the pillow, eyes closed tightly, mouth parted slightly, body moving up and down with each breath. While she was in Dreamland, I claimed the case, opened it up, and took out the glasses. Peering through the lens, it was obvious to me that they weren’t magnified or enhanced in any way. It looked as though I was staring through normal glass.
This sat strangely with me, so I folded them and slotted them back into the case. Then, I rose from the bed and quietly left her room with a heavy heart.
Fake glasses. What else was fake? Her hair color. Fair hair growing at her roots. Annika was blond. Annika was real, yet Riley Laws, with her fake glasses and fake hair color, was not real? Yes, she was real. She was lying before me, breathing softly, capturing my heart and head. The reason I get out of bed in the morning is to get just one look behind the mask of that woman lying there. Riley Laws.
As I returned to my Mustang parked down the road, my head was stuffed with recurring thoughts. Once inside, another thought about last night struck me: the police. That unmarked police vehicle with two plain-clothed cops inside snooping around campus at night was not unusual, except that Riley said they had followed her before.
I stripped the mask off and inspected my skin in the rear vision mirror, and due to the heat from the wool, my skin was covered in red, itchy patches. I’d worn it 12 hours straight, and I was getting fucking tired of the masked man bullshit. I couldn’t even kiss her. I couldn’t lick her neck, suck on her soft pink nipples, nibble her earlobes.
This fucking thing was killing me.
Just as I started my engine, a message came through from Ronan reminding me to call my mom for the hundredth fucking time. Mikky had been on my back as well, but I knew I had to get it out of the way so I wouldn’t have to call her for another month or two. I groaned as I swiped for her number and hoped she wouldn’t answer. It was early, just after 7 am, and she’ll likely be getting ready for work at Larsson.
She picked up. Damn.
“Gunner, I have a son after all,” he tormented me as I could hear the sounds of a refrigerator opening and closing, followed by pouring liquid.
“Yeah, sorry I hadn’t called in a while, but ah…um, how are you?” I had to warm her up first before cutting to the chase and making it sound like I was calling because of a son’s duty to his mother.
“Fine. The club is doing well…but I miss you, Gunner, and wondered if you’d come down this way for the weekend so we could catch up in person.”
My entire body tensed at the thought of it. I hadn’t been to Larsson since Dad was murdered there, and returning to the place where my father’s blood had seeped into the earth and where the police wrongly arrested Mikael wasn’t something I was ready to do yet. The fantasy of burning the Larsson Police Department down was never far from my mind, but I’d never do it. Mom sold our house in Larsson after Mikky was arrested, but I wish she hadn’t because it would help the hired PI get a perspective of what happened that day.
“Um, yeah, I don’t know. I’m pretty busy with the workload from the new semester,” I answered non-committedly because there was no way in hell I’d go back there.
“Oh, I’m sure you could spare a weekend to see your mother,” she put the hard word on, the guilt trip. This was why I rarely called her because she made me feel bad about not visiting her and for being a shitty son.
I exhaled to cool my shit, wishing she hadn’t answered my call. “Do you know Mikky hired a PI?” My patience and phone battery were running out, so it was time to poke the bear with a stick to see how she’d react.
She breathed before answering, “Yes, he spoke to me.” I expected her to add to that, but she fell silent.
“There are so many things that don’t add up about Dad’s death, like obviously the Annika drama, but also timing and-”
“Did you know it was her birthday yesterday?” Her voice was strained, disguising her true feelings because it hurt her, just like it hurt me, but it fucked over Mikky the most.
Her words hovered in the air for a few seconds before landing with an enormous thud on my chest, and I glanced down the road to Hallen Hall, where the girl I suspected was our enemy lay asleep.
Silence fell because I couldn’t find the words to explain how much it hurt. Maybe there were no words in the entire human language that could articulate my feelings right now. “Gunner?” I jolted out of my daze. “Gunner? Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I just got distracted by something. I knew…that it was around the same time as Mikky’s, but I didn’t think…I mean, I don’t fucking care when that bitch…” I took a deep breath to fight against the pain swelling in my chest. “I don’t want to talk about her. ”
My patience had vanished in a puff of smoke, and I needed to finish this conversation. “The PI said that you went out the night of Dad’s murder. You didn’t say that to the police. Which story is correct?”
“I don’t like your tone,” she hissed back at me.
“Well, I don’t like a liar,” I hit back and instantly regretted it. I might be antisocial and sullen as fuck, but I would never dare to my mother this way.
There were two beats of silence where I could tell she considered scolding me for being rude, but she chose against it. “I went out to get takeout. I told you and Anni… her I would pick up dinner.”
“I don’t remember that. Why did you tell the police that you were home all night?” My tone was sharp and accusing, but I didn’t care. The sooner we found out who killed my dad, the better, and I didn’t give a fuck if I lost friends and family in the process.
“I told Annika,” she argued.
“Don’t fucking say her name,” I shouted, and I had to calm my shit because that was out of line. “Sorry, Mom, sorry, but…”
“I know, son. I know what she did to you and how hurt you were because you were so close. But I felt the betrayal as well. We all did,” she sighed as she cracked under the pain of reliving the past.
“Why didn’t you tell the police that you went out?” I asked again.
“I don’t know. I didn’t think of it. My head was spinning. The man…your father was the love of my life, and I just saw him shot…I was confused, and so, so shocked and grief-stricken.”
Two girls stepped out of Hallen Hall in gym gear, and I slid down in the seat so they couldn’t see me. Girls gossip, and they might mention to Riley that they saw Gunner Kaiser in Hallen Hall and ask if she had anything to do with him. There was only so long that I could keep up the disguise.
“Okay,” I said calmly. “I gotta go.”
“What? Gunner? What about your studies? Can we talk about school and your grades?” she insisted.
“No, my battery is running out. I’ll call you later,” I stated firmly.
“Sure,” she said softly, disappointed because she knew I had no intention of calling her back, not at least for another month or so.
I swiped off the phone call and breathed away the guilt and anger that speaking with my mom in Larsson always did to me before starting my engine and heading to my frat house to take a shower.