Chapter 20
Rory
Ryven sighs heavily next to me in his sleep, and I can’t help but look at him.
Not just look… study him. The way his chiseled jawline moves as he swallows.
The webbing around his eyes from years of hard decisions.
His stubble shadows his skin so perfectly; it makes me want to run my fingers along it.
Like I’m trying to remember who he used to be before the world tried to remove the parts of him I fell in love with.
“Are you checking me out?” he questions with his eyes closed.
“No,” I say quickly, resting my head on his pectoral.
His chest rises and falls as he laughs. “It felt like you were checking me out, Ro.”
“Your eyes were closed. How would you even know anything?” I huff and roll out of bed.
Ryven grabs me by the waist and tugs me to him, nuzzling my hair. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I push him off of me and exit from the bed.
“I need to get ready. I have to—” I stop mid-sentence when I step into the bathroom and see Thomas’ body on the ground.
“Well, shit. I forgot about him.” My stomach turns like my body is just now catching up to what happened to me. What am I going to do with his body?
Ryven comes up behind me and grabs me around the waist. “Don’t worry. I already have a plan.” He kisses my head and strolls toward the toilet. “No one will ever know he touched you.” His tone leaves no room for argument.
While he’s peeing, I avert my eyes and gaze at the mess I’ll have to clean once Thomas is out of here. Blood is everywhere—even on my favorite carpet he’s lying on.
I hear the zip of Ryven’s pants and glance at him as he begins rolling Thomas in my favorite rug. He lifts him over his shoulder. I stand there until he says, “Go hold the back door open for me, Ro.”
His voice pulls me from my silence, and I quickly move toward the back of my house.
He walks through the back door as I hold it open, hitting what's left of Thomas’s head on the side of the frame, and doesn’t even flinch. “Be careful, Jesus.”
He turns around, eyes blinking rapidly as he stares at me. “Seriously? He’s fucking dead.”
I wave him off. “I meant with my fucking door.”
He chuckles as he strolls toward the woods.
A moment later, he returns without a body.
“What did you do with him?”
He brushes into the house, and I follow after him. “Tell me, Ryven. What if he’s found out there? What if this comes back on me?”
He goes to my kitchen and begins washing his hands. “Don’t worry, Little Rabbit. I got you, babe. I told you I have a plan.”
I sigh, resigning myself to the fact he won’t tell me the plan, and head toward my bedroom. I need to clean up my bathroom anyway.
An hour later, I’m on my knees in the bathroom scrubbing my floor when Ryven returns.
“Damn, you’re sexy when you’re on your knees covered in blood.”
I look at him over my shoulder and scoff. “Well, you’re a bit of a weirdo, huh?”
He chuckles and joins me on the floor. Instead of kneeling or helping, he sits on his ass with his back against the bathroom vanity.
I raise my brow. “Aren’t you going to help me?”
He shakes his head and places his head on the wood. “Nope. I’ll pull my weight later tonight—in ways you’ll thank me for.” His smirk doesn’t reach his eyes.
I sigh. “Fine.”
“I do have something I need to talk to you about, though,” he explains.
“Oh yeah?” I ask absentmindedly.
“Our council leader is missing.”
This raises the hair on the back of my neck. Missing? That’s not something that just… happens. Does that mean we don’t have a representative for our district now? I stop scrubbing and gaze at him. “What does that mean for our district?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know how it will be affected as a whole, but I do know how I will be affected.”
I raise my brow.
“Cedric made me—” he pauses. “The go-between from the council and the cult. Now, I’ll receive all of the orders directly instead of being given assignments.”
I sit and relax against the side of the tub. “So now you’ll be our representative? I don’t understand. Doesn’t that mean you’ll know who they’re going to kill next? You could save them before it happens.”
He stares at me blankly, his jaw tightening. “Ro, I have no intention of being some hero. Not anymore. I have one mission in mind, and it isn’t to save a district member.”
All my hope of him being the kind human being I knew back in high school, goes out the window. “This is why we can’t fucking work.” Why we never will. I can’t believe for a second I almost believed he would change.
He ignores me and continues talking. “I don’t know why you think I’m some knight in shining armor. I’ve never claimed to be. I love the torture and the sacrifices as long as the people deserve it.”
I bite my lip. “Not all of the cult’s killings are justified, Ryven. That’s why I fight against them. That’s why you need to fight against the cult, too.”
“You think I haven’t been dismantling them from the inside?” His voice rises. “I’ve fought against them since day one. You act like I’m following along like any other member, just hoping I can bask in their fucking glory.”
“Isn’t that true? It’s been years, and you’re still there. I assumed after Joey died you would come back to reality. To the world we thought—” I stop mid-sentence. There’s no point in rehashing old wounds. He chose this life.
He closes his eyes tightly, and when he opens them again, his eyes burn with a mix of want and regret, the kind that never fully fades.
“You think I don’t want that life too, Ro?
If I could go back in time and never walk out the doors after graduation, I would do it in a heartbeat.
But that isn’t the hand we were dealt. This is.
” He motions around the room. “I understand you’re blinded by Joey’s death, and I feel it too, even though you don’t like to believe it.
I loved your fucking brother like my own.
I watched him die.” His voice cracks. “His death is hard on me, but I don’t let anyone see. ” He glances at the wall.
“It doesn’t seem like it has been difficult for you at all, Ryven.
Even though part of me wants to believe it.
You’re still working your way through the ranks.
You take their orders. How am I supposed to think that his death was hard for you?
You thrive because of his death. But me?
No, I’ve been doing right by him.” I pound my chest.
He shakes his head. “I hate that you think I’m a monster.
Honestly, I do. But I have a goal in mind, and it isn’t just killing a few cult members and calling it a day.
If I wanted revenge for just your brother’s death, it would’ve happened a long time ago.
But then where would I be? Where would the cult and the district be?
They would’ve killed me like your brother, and nothing would’ve changed. ”
“What is the game you’re playing?”
He leans his head back again. “I’m playing the long game, Ro. Always have been. You know this. I told you once before. You have the revenge you wish to get, and you fight for it every day. But while you are only doing a little change here and there, I’m preparing to turn our district upside down.”
We sit there, breathing and not speaking.
The only thing between us now is everything we never said—and everything we never will.