Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Fuck that.
Absolutely, hard, fuck that.
I made my way to Ryden, “Okay, I’ve had –”
“No,” he held up his hand to me, eyes bloodshot, tears frozen like icicles. “Not this time, Scarlett.”
I swallowed, paralyzed, staring between Ryden and his mother, the woman who abandoned her son for over a decade. She’d aged like bad wine since the last time I saw her; hair matted and discoloured, like a dried broom.
“Don’t you look ravishing, Clara,” I tutted.
“NO!” Ryden’s fists curled inward. “Scarlett, enough.”
My words, my fire, died in my throat. Never, ever, had Ryden talked to me this way. Never, ever, had Ryden expected this day to come.
Never, ever, had I either. Where did you run off to? Where did you go? Why would you leave him? You loved him, I thought you loved him? How could you do this? How could you come back?
Questions spiraled through my thoughts as an uneasy silence coated the air, thick like tar, twisting – constricting.
I wanted to hit her. I wanted to hurt her because I saw Ryden hurting, standing there like he was all those years ago, a spineless child, Corban used to call him.
Unworthy of love, his mother made him believe.
“Ryden,” she extended an arm out to him, as if trying to catch all her mistakes and crush them in the weight of her bony hand. “Dove…”
“NO,” he vibrated with anger, snapping out of his trance, “what the fuck! What the FUCK!?”
A hand gripped my shoulder, pulling me back. Everything in me was hot. I felt like I was going to pass out. I felt useless. I felt weak. I needed to do something. He won’t let me do anything.
“I…” Clara’s voice was hoarse, “I came to watch your final show. I saved up all my money to come here.”
His laugh was not that of a sane person. He won’t let me do anything. He won’t let me help him. Please, Ryden, let me help you.
“Oh, you saved up all your money, did you?” Ryden stomped up to his mother, same eyes, same bone structure, only hers were hollow and his were wrath.
“Where’d your money go? Use it all on expensive hotels for Corban? Trips? Beer? Booze? Drugs? Where’d it go, huh? Where’d it all fucking go, Clara?”
“I’m still your moth –”
“YOU ARE NOT MY FUCKING MOTHER, YOU LOST THE RIGHT TO CALL ME YOUR SON WHEN YOU ABANDONNED ME WITH A FUCKING NOTE AND MONEY IN A CHURCH DONATION ENVELOPE!”
Slowly… slow… beats.
My heart was so… so slow.
I felt like – I felt like I could pass out… watching him, veins bulging from his neck, tears an ever-flowing waterfall cascading down… down… onto Radio City’s backstage.
“Ryden, baby, you don’t understand –” her tears matched his. They were so similar. One begging for absolution, the other an apology.
“YOU LEFT ME!” He cried.
Cameras flashed, too many cameras, too many noises. Security shooed the horde of vultures. They just won’t listen, they just won’t listen –
“I have to do something,” I gritted my teeth, nails bleeding into my palm. “Morty, I have to do something.”
“Ms. Emory-Blake,” he whispered, fingers firm around my forearm, “this is not your fight.”
“He’s always my fight.”
“He needs to be the one to face this.”
I hated Morty, I fucking hated Morty in this moment but God, he was right. She was not my parent.
I didn’t have any of those anymore.
“How did you find me? Why didn’t you come to any of my shows? It’s been a decade, a fucking decade, where were you? No calls, no texts, nothing? No emails, we have fucking emails, did you know that, Clara? We have something called the Internet where you can reach out and –”
“If you can just listen to me, baby, please –”
“LISTEN TO YOU?” His whole body was shaking, a guttural cry coming out of his throat. “You left me, and you want, what? Money? Is that why you came back, dressed like… like –”
I knew what he was going to say.
But even after all these years, no part of Ryden ever wanted to let the disrespect get that far. I saw it in his eyes, the pain, the recognition of his mother, his protector gone rogue.
There was so much pain.
We were on the brink of collapse.
This…
…
There was no coming back from this.
Inside, a part of me died with him.
Inside, I knew this was the end of him.
“I… I needed you to find a new way, baby, to get out of that house. You had… you have, so much promise. I didn’t mean to…” she repeated it over and over, I didn’t mean to, as if that could take away all his damage, as if it could repair what once was.
“You left with Corban, you left, with that abusive piece of low life garbage, piece of shit!” He spit on the ground. “You could have been on the road with me,” he paused, eyes lowering, “you could’ve… lived this life with me.”
I stepped out of Morty’s grip but he pulled me back.
“Ryden –” I called, but he couldn’t hear me. Too lost in his own memories. Too lost in his contempt.
“We used to watch the stars together, Mom. Now I’m one of them and where…” Slowly, he lifted his eyes, “Where are you?”
I watched Clara’s shoulders wilt like a dead flower, regret a painted image on her face.
Ryden blinked back the tears, standing taller. “Where were YOU?”
“Baby,” she reached out to touch him but he flew back, as if burned, shaking his head.
“No, no,” and then he was moving towards me, grabbing his coat from Mallory, gripping my hand, “let’s go, Morty,” he told him.
“MOVE!” He told the reporters, the journalists. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!”
Tav motioned for the security detail, who carried a large piece of plywood, creating a wall between us and them.
“Ryden!” Clara’s voice got lost in the thick of commotion. “Please!”
“No!” He faced her head on. You could hear a pin drop as he got close to her face, closer than he’d ever been, his fingers sewn to mine. “No, Mom.”
“No?” She whimpered, “No?”
“No.” My hand shook with his. My heart punctured by his wounds. “You’ve been nailed to that coffin since the day you let him in our house,” he seethed. “You buried yourself.”
He let out a strangled breath. “We’re done here,” then looked at me, eyes filled with shrapnel. “Let’s go.”
Another wall of plywood was formed around us, chatter of paparazzi following our trail.
I couldn’t look at Ryden.
He couldn’t look at me.
His star-studded moment was all gone, completely destroyed, a shattered mosaic of nothingness now that his past decided to resurface.
‘Do you think she’s right?’ He’d asked me not even a week ago. ‘That the dead can’t haunt us?’ So stupid of me to respond in confidence. So stupid of me to believe people were untouchable.
I wasn’t made of stone.
And if I, Scarlett Emory-Blake, was able to break…
Ryden was made of pure crystal.
***
I welcomed the cool air into my lungs, relishing in the blaring horns of cabs and coked out junkies living behind walls.
It was the back entrance of Radio City that hugged us, Morty waiting behind the door, me and Ryden sloped up against the brick in moonlight.
My eyes were a tightline laser to the sign across from me, printed on a white pick up truck: BIG DADDY FISH DINER.
Before I knew it, I was laughing. The hysteria, it finally got to me.
The realization that everything went to SHIT!
LIKE IT ALWAYS FUCKING DOES! Hit me so hard that my eyes never left Big Daddy Fish Diner and I craved to see the menu, craved to shovel a plate of crispy fries and haddock in my fucking –
Ryden’s hands were palming my cheeks, eyes cooked in red veins, shaking – he was shaking so much my brain started to rattle – and he held me, so tight, I thought I’d break him if I held back.
“Ryden…” I breathed, placing a gentle hand over his. “You played so well tonight.”
Protect. Shelter. Defend. Protect. Shelter. Defend.
“You think so?” His forehead rested against mine, his own tears dripping onto the bridge of my nose. “Do you think…” he swallowed, “do you think she thought so, too?”
My heart cracked into a million pieces, shattering like a broken window in a thunderstorm.
“Ryden –”
And his lips were on mine, the salty taste of tears mixed with perspiration coating my mouth. My back hit the brick as we fell into each other, the realization of the whole situation dawning on me before I could fight it.
My pelvis pushed him further away, forcing him back, but my fingers betrayed me, keeping him close.
“What –” I tried, but the air exited out my lungs, disappearing into his mouth.
His knuckles wrapped around my hair, as he placed one kiss on my lips, another on my jawline, then pulled away slowly.
“R – Ryden…” I stared at him, heart beating, so… fast… too fast, knowing he was going to break, we were going to break – this was not –
No, no, no, no, no –
This wasn’t a kiss of desperation or want or need.
We’d never –
He’d never break this barrier unless he was planning to –
He traced a lone finger over his swollen lip, eyes buried in a suffering I hadn’t seen in a decade.
“Ryden – Ryden,” I repeated in a desperate plea, but he was so…
So far away.
I grabbed onto his jacket, I grabbed onto his shirt, I grabbed onto him –
Him,
Him,
And he just…
Kept –
Walking.
“Please,” I begged, my own tears blinding me, “please don’t go off the rails, please don’t do this, please, Ryden, come back to me –”
My wasted cries for a wasted man.
“Please come home!” I yelled. “PLEASE, RYDEN, I can’t see you drown again –”
He turned to me then, eyes vacant of life. “I’ve never stopped drowning.”
The world blurred in and out –
In and out –
As I watched him walk farther, and farther, and farther.
I couldn’t –
I couldn’t feel my –
“I can’t, breathe,” I –
Morty, I think, he grabbed me tight.
He heard me yell.
“I’ll watch him,” he told me.
“No, no, no, no, no, MORTY, that’s my job!”
Then another set of arms, holding me back, bracelets on either side of his wrist – Tav – the scent of wood and fire, draping a blanket over me.
“That’s my job!” I yelled into the night.
“Shh, Red,” Tav pulled me close. “Let him sort his thoughts out. Lord knows he needs it.”
“He kissed me,” I said aloud. “He kissed me.”
“Okay?” Tav questioned. “Nothing new.”
“We’ve never…”
“I don’t need to hear ‘bout the teenage love story, Scarlett. We’ve got to figure out our next steps.”
“Next steps,” I muttered, “next steps what?”
Voices filtered out of the doorway, some new, some old.
“Where did she… where did she go?” I asked, pressing my fingers to my lips, floating over to the wall.
“She’s bein’ held by security right now. Pretty catatonic. Tried to hold her back the first time, you know, she was insistent.”
“Why, how could you let her in?”
“I don’t –” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Christ, Scarlett, I didn’t know the extent of the history.”
It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault. I wanted to say it. I did. But my eyes kept drifting to the spot where Ryden held me, where he kissed me…
Where he tucked whatever joy he had left –
And threw it off the cliff.
I sunk to the concrete.
“What’s wrong with her?” Mallory asked.
More hands. More faces. More people.
“He kissed me,” I whispered, eyes closing to the night.
I had dreamed about this moment for so long… but not like this.
Ryden, my protector, my other half, my Eagle –
He kissed me –
To say goodbye.