Between Loves (The Pendant Series Book 2) (7 page)

We finally arrived at the old rundown building but instead of going inside, I propped my body against the cold cement wall and gazed into Adrian’s eyes. I preferred to stay out here in the cold all night long with him rather than face off with Ray inside that damn bar.

“Why’d you run off tonight? Did I scare you away?”

I didn’t want Adrian to know that his very presence intimidated me and so I shook my head and feigned confidence. We sat there silently, the green-eyed god and the scared rabbit.

“I thought you were leaving on Friday.” He finally queried, “Headed to the city of Angels to be your boyfriend’s trophy.”

Adrian had a special talent for ripping me out of the here and now and watching me crash to the ground.

“Yeah well,” I struggled as I tried to assure him that I was in control of the situation between my boyfriend and me, “It looks like there has been a slight detour.”

Without warning, Adrian reached out and brushed his fingertips along the top of my hairline where the monstrous stitches were aligned. I attempted to flip my hair in front of my face to hide the eyesore but Adrian grabbed my wrist and held it firmly.

“Don’t,” he whispered, staring intently at my forehead as he assessed the damage.

Abruptly, the smile left his face and his green eyes darkened with anger. Chrissy had to be wrong about suspecting Adrian as the killer. One look at his face was inescapable proof that this man was not capable of hurting me. He was my protector.

I asked him, “That girl you knew, the one with the necklace, was she your girlfriend?”

Now it was my time to rip Adrian out of the present and send
him
crashing to the ground.

Two could play this game.

He hesitated a moment longer before answering. His eyes rested on my mother’s pendant as he spoke.

“Yes she was, but that was a long time ago. I gave her the necklace and she said she’d always keep it.”

He took the necklace in his hand as he often did when we were together. Turning it around in his palm, he examined it with such sadness in his eyes. I wanted to kiss it away. I wanted to tell him that I could help make the pain go away.

“Well, this necklace has been in my family forever, so it can’t be the same one,” I said, taking the pendant out of his hand and letting it fall back against my chest.

“I know.”

I challenged him, “She’s the reason you came back here, isn’t she? You said you came here for someone. Was it for her?”

I didn’t know where all of this courage was coming from but it just seemed like I needed to know the answers.

“She’s the reason I do everything, Sidney,” he answered, still lost in his mind, fixated on my necklace.

Feeling I was gaining the upper hand in the conversation, I took advantage and took a step closer.

“Then why are you here now?” I whispered seductively. This time it was my turn to get close to him and breathe my words in his face, intoxicating him as he did to me.

But he wasn’t easily intimidated, and instead of retreating from me, he took my hand and pulled me close.

Why do I insist on playing with fire?

Pressing his nose against my cheek he inhaled deeply. His mouth moved across my cheek to my ear.

“You ask too many questions, Sidney Sinclair,” he whispered in a throaty growl, taking back the control of this verbal rollercoaster. When it came to us, I was not as adept at this game. So, I folded. I closed my eyes and waited, his warm breath tickling my ear as it moved closer to my mouth. My lips parted, waiting for his to meet mine.

And then I heard someone call my name.

My eyes snapped open to the sound of his familiar voice. I turned my head and saw Ray standing in front of the bar, fists clenched, glaring at Adrian.

For an instant, I wanted to hide behind Adrian’s leather jacket. Instead I just froze, hoping he wouldn’t cause a scene. But that wasn’t our style. Although I’d always tried to avoid making one, drama was a constant when your boyfriend was Ray Ryker.

Ray headed straight over to us, his icy blue eyes focused solely on Adrian, who seconds before was about to kiss me.

He took a moment to glare at me with overwhelming anger and hurt so that for a moment, I almost wanted to apologize, especially when I saw the black eye from my cell phone toss. But then I remembered that it was
he
who was the cheater, not me. He was the one constantly leaving me alone and it was he that was continuing to lie to me about Lilly.

“What’s your problem, Ray?” I reacted, allowing all of my anger to resurface.

His response was a mixture of anger and self-pity. “I guess I finally get to see you for who you really are, Sid. I’ve loved you since I was fourteen years old and you throw me away like I’m a piece of trash. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to trust you.”

I was shocked. How dare he accuse me of such atrocities? I was the most loyal girlfriend he could ever ask for. I had stood by his side, silent for months, while he hurt me over and over again.

Then a torrent of cruel words rolled off his tongue, spilling sloppily out of his mouth as he allowed each one to lash my skin like the whips they were. Standing tall, I took the abuse. I would no longer give him that control.

“I can’t do this anymore, Ray. I’m sick of getting my heart broken over and over. We sit and talk and we try to work through our problems, but we can’t because the past lurks in every corner waiting for an opportunity to emerge again. Well, tonight it did emerge, Ray. It emerged when you decided to keep seeing Lilly.”

I pushed him hard in his chest as I said that final word.

I had never seen such anger in his eyes. He charged me like a wild bull, grabbed my neck, and slammed me hard against the cement as the side of my head crushed into the bar wall. It took only seconds before I felt the warm liquid ooze down the side of my face. I reached my arm up and touched my face, the blood was now pouring from the freshly opened stitches from my earlier wound.

“I hate you, Ray Ryker!” I screamed, and flailed my arms wildly, trying to make any contact with his body.

From that moment on everything was a
blur.

I saw Adrian’s black leather jacket as he came between us in an attempt to protect me, but Ray was like a wild animal, swinging his fists everywhere. He caught Adrian with a right hook and I watched as blood began to spill out of his perfect mouth. Adrian just stood there in disbelief.

“Damn you, Ray!” I screamed, lunging at him like a crazy woman.

“Whoa, whoa,” I heard a man’s voice say as Dave’s hairy tattooed arm came between me and Ray in an attempt to break up the fighting.

But I wasn’t backing down and neither was Ray. Our fight was a long time coming and we both felt betrayed. We were fighting not only because our feelings were hurt but also for our self-respect.

Soon I felt Chrissy’s soft hands grab my arm as she pulled me out of the chaos.

“Sidney. What in the hell are you doing?”

Snapping out of the moment, I froze and scanned the area.

We were now in the middle of the street and a small crowd had gathered outside of the bar to watch the commotion. Out of breath, I whipped my head around looking for Adrian, but didn’t see him anywhere. Chrissy grabbed a napkin from her purse and placed it on my forehead.

“Here, honey. Keep the pressure on that. We’re going to need to get you to the hospital to have that cut reclosed.”

“No. I need to find Adrian,” I yelled.

Ray shouted back, “Oh yeah, worry about your new boyfriend—who cares about me, right?”

At that point, he attempted to push past Dave and come at me again.

It was apparent that he had drunk way too much alcohol. I’d known Ray since we were kids and I had never seen him like this. Now people began to take their phones out and snap pictures of the home town rock star as he dueled with his girlfriend in the middle of the street.

Unable to get to me, Ray turned his anger on a new target as he pushed Dave and yelled at him to get out of his way, but Dave was the only thing protecting me from my ex, the lunatic, since Adrian seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Chrissy ran out and put herself between Ray and Dave in an attempt to calm them down.

“Stop it!” I yelled at them. But no one was listening to me. It was total chaos.

I searched through the mass of people who had now come over to help break up the fight, but I still didn’t see Adrian anywhere. Chrissy was in Ray’s face and Ray wasn’t backing down. Dave was ready to fight and I was beginning to believe that all of this was
my
fault.

I screamed inwardly,
I should have never come here tonight.

Not knowing what else to do, I began to sob and scream some more for them to stop before the cops came. But it was too late. I looked to the left just in time to see two police cruisers screeching up to the bar with their lights and sirens in full force and watched several officers emerge from the vehicles.

“Oh God,” I moaned, and ran over the crowd. “The cops are here. Everybody calm down,” I pleaded.

But Ray was out of control.

He punched the wall in an angry fit as he yelled, “Arrest me then. I’ll make bail tonight and then I’m outta this shithole town. Forget you, Sid. I can’t believe I‘ve wasted these last few years on you.”

I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing. He wasted his time on me? He was out of his mind.

A tall officer with strawberry blond hair walked directly up to Ray. It was Detective Albright, the investigating officer handling Nouri’s murder case.

Just great.

“Turn around and put your hands against the wall, Mr. Ryker.” Ray obliged him. Detective Albright patted him down before placing the steel cuffs on his wrists. Ray turned his head and glared at me.

“Remember, this is your fault, Sid.”

“Don’t forget to charge him with domestic assault. He just put his hands on his girlfriend. She needs a medic,” Chrissy shouted.

I pushed her and shook my head, begging her to shut her mouth.

Detective Albright turned Ray away and led him to the squad car as he read him his Miranda rights. Impulsively, I stepped in their path. The detective opened his mouth, ready to object, but I held up my hand.

“Please sir, I would like one word with him before he goes.” The detective reluctantly agreed.

I stood there a long time, staring at Ray as words failed me. I was in shock at how things had unraveled so fast and left us in this sad, emotional place.

“You’ve completely disrespected me in every way possible,” he growled. There was so much hate and disdain in his voice that I could almost taste it. There was no question that I
felt
it.

“I didn't mean it, Ray. I take back everything I said.”

Unfortunately, I was a glutton for punishment, a co-dependent waste of a human being.

I reached up and grabbed his face to kiss him but he resisted and turned his head to the side.

Astonished, I stepped back. His blue eyes turned black as they smoldered with fury.

“You don’t get to take those words back, Sid. Your accusations were like arrows, each one piercing my heart. Now it’s broken and there’s nothing you can do to fix it.”

I refrained from rolling my eyes as he pleaded his case of poetic justice. It reminded me of all the times we’d gotten into arguments. Instead of talking them out like a normal person, Ray would run to his notebook and spin his words of anger into another song, one that told
his
side of things and always portrayed me as some emotionless bitch. I hated him for doing that, and again the earlier feelings of my initial anger resurfaced.

I leaned over to him and whispered in his ear. “A broken heart can be mended. But you’ve ripped my heart out and crushed it. You’ve done irreparable damage to me and I will never forgive you.”

There I had finally said it.

I was now comfortable leaving this conversation and walking away from Ray. But Ray wanted to continue our bloody battle of words.

“Your sadness is like a disease infecting everyone around you,” he spat.

I shot back, “And your love is like a cancer, invading every inch of my body and sucking the life right out of me.”

I couldn't help the tears that slid down my cheeks as I spewed the venomous words from my mouth.

Ray stood with his hands cuffed behind his back, staring at my face.

He mocked me, “More sad tears, is that all you have to offer?”

I straightened my spine and stood tall. I had a right hook that I could have so easily given him. But I knew the bruises would heal and I wanted to inflict a pain that would last forever. The pain of losing me.

“My tears will dry once you’ve gone. They always do. Just like the clouds disappear and the sky turns to sunshine once the storm passes. My life will get better once you’re out of it. Just let me go, Ray. Undo this spell you have on me so I can be happy.”

But as straight as I stood, Ray always knew how to stand taller. He puffed out his chest and peered down his nose at me as a condescending smile spread across his face. “I was never holding on.”