Good Morning Heartache (23 page)

Ryan was staring at her with
disbelief. “Why did you do that?”

She’d shared with him the
content of her first call with her mentor but hadn’t let him in on this part of
her plan.

“If I’m not out there
searching for her, I’m not leaving the house. Not until I’m sure she’s at least
alright. I certainly can’t drive four hours away.”

Ryan picked up the phone and
held it in front of her. “Call her back. I’ll stay here.”

“I have to be here. Riley
doesn’t know you at all. Besides, you’ll be back in New York on Monday.” A tear
broke free from her lashes.

“I don’t have to…” he
started.

Alexis wiped the tear from
her cheek and stood up. “Let’s just watch the game.”

Chapter 16

Riley looked despairingly at
the grocery clerk. “I don’t understand. It worked yesterday.”

The large man behind the
credit card machine didn’t look like he cared. “Well, it’s not working now. Do
you have cash? Another card?”

“Can’t you just give me the
food and start a tab for me? I’m going to inherit a lot of money in a few
months, and I’ll pay it all back then.”

The man’s dark eyes glared
at her. He reached over and picked up the phone that rested next to his
register. “I need a manager and security to register three,” he announced to
the entire store.

“You’ve got to be kidding
me! I just said that I’d pay for them.” Riley was turning a deep shade of pink.
How could this guy think so little of her? How could he treat her like any
other person? She was a Conner!

“Listen, sweetheart, we’re
not a bar. We don’t have tabs. You pay now, you get groceries now. You pay
later, you get groceries later.”

A man in dark blue pants and
a matching shirt that read “security” on the shoulders stopped at the end of
the register.

The fat cashier looked at
him and said, “Please escort this young lady out of the store.”

The guard moved toward her
and attempted to grab the bicep of her right arm, but she shrugged away from
him. “I’ll leave.” Riley pushed past him and headed to the doors at the front
of the store. The guard followed her until she was outside, then he stood at
the doors and watched her.

This was ridiculous! She bet
Alexis had something to do with this. She probably cancelled her card.

Riley stood in the dimly lit
parking lot and looked around for Jimmy’s Daewoo. This was not the paradise she
imagined, and though it had only been a couple of days, she thought that things
would be at least okay by now. They weren’t.

She looked down at the only
physical sign she was in a car accident, her swollen, black-and-blue wrist. It
hurt like hell, but she couldn’t see a doctor without Alexis finding her. She
had to live with the constant ache, and now she couldn’t even afford a small
bottle of generic Tylenol.

Jimmy had no money, and she
had to put down the deposit for their new apartment with a cash advance on her
credit card and buy furniture to make it livable, which amounted to an absolute
hellhole filled with junk. It was in the basement floor of some old brick
building downtown. It was tiny and expensive, and she’d seen a rat. Not in the
actual apartment, but close enough to the front door that it freaked her out.

Jimmy spent most of his days
practicing with his band in their tiny living room, and Riley felt invisible
most of the time. Both nights at least one of the band members crashed on their
futon, and they’d had no time alone together.

He’d promised that after
Riley got groceries, they would go out to dinner—his treat. He had to go do
something while she was in there. He didn’t say what but promised to be back in
half an hour.

Riley looked at her watch.
It had been forty-five minutes. She pulled out her phone. She thought it was
lucky that it still worked and that Alexis hadn’t used it triangulate her
position like she saw on
Castle
once.

Jimmy’s phone went
immediately to voicemail. It was probably dead. His phone was always dead.

Since she didn’t have any
groceries, she decided to start walking back to the hellhole. It wasn’t far,
and she figured Jimmy would see her on his way or figure out that she went
home. She gripped her purse close to her body as a smiling bum eyed her from
behind a grocery cart filled with garbage. She held her keys with a tight grip
with the longest one jutting out, creating a makeshift weapon in case she
needed it. It was the one thing her sister had taught her that she considered
useful, and she hadn’t needed the knowledge until two days ago.

This really wasn’t what she
imagined when she thought about moving to the city. She took three showers a
day and begged Jimmy not to leave her alone, but when he wasn’t practicing, he
always had something to do or somewhere to be. He claimed it would be boring
for her to go. She had spent several hours alone with nothing to do in the
shabby little apartment, and every minute she hated it a little bit more. On
Saturday, his band had a gig at a local pub, but he told her she couldn’t go
because if he got caught bringing an underage girl in he’d be in big trouble.
He didn’t have a problem with it when they were in Franklin.

Tomorrow she’d insist on
tagging along. She’d rather be bored with him than without him. She turned down
the dark street where her new home sat and quickened her already fast pace.
She’d feel a little bit better once she got inside and locked the door.

Jimmy’s beat up car was
parked on the side of the road in front of their apartment. It took Riley by
surprise, but she figured that he had just stopped off to pick something up
before coming for her. He had no other reason to be there.

When she got to the door,
she turned the knob and pushed the door with the weight of her small body, but
the door didn’t move. Jimmy had locked the deadbolt, which made sense. The
owner, who lived upstairs, told her that they should always keep the door
locked.

Her key clicked into the
lock, and she turned the key and the knob simultaneously, but when she pushed
on the door, it stopped short again, opening only a few inches.

“Hey babe, what are you
doing here?” Jimmy’s breath was labored, and his skin was flushed, including
his bare chest. He held the door almost completely closed and covered most of
the opening with his body.

Riley looked into Jimmy’s
brown eyes; he was hiding something. “Let me in, Jimmy. I don’t want to stand
out here any longer. It’s freaking me out.”

“Jimmy!” a high voice from
inside called. “I can’t find my thong!”

Riley stood there blinking,
her mouth agape, hoping Jimmy would jump in and explain why there was a woman
in their apartment looking for her thong.

But he didn’t. He asked what
color it was.

Riley pushed past him and
into the small studio. A tall blonde stood in the kitchenette. The feature most
noticeable to Riley, besides the perky breasts that were probably twice the
size of hers, was that she wasn’t wearing any pants. She was completely nude
from the waist down.

“What the hell?” Riley
whispered to no one in particular.

“Don’t do this, Riley.”
Jimmy replied.

Her eyes widened in rage,
and then in sadness when he put his hands on her shoulders. “What am I not
supposed to do? This is my apartment. You left me at the grocery store to have
sex with someone else.”

“Found it!” came a squeal
from the other side of the room. Riley glanced over Jimmy’s shoulder to see the
woman stumbling into her underwear and jeans. The thong was pink, Riley noted
absently.

“I would have come to get
you if you just waited.”

“That’s
so
not the
point. The point is that you are having sex with someone else—here—in our
place.”

The blonde came over and
pulled Jimmy’s face to hers, kissing him deep and wet on the mouth. Riley had
to swallow the vomit that had risen just past her throat. Hot tears stung the
back of her eyes.

“Bye, Sonja. I’ll see you at
the show tomorrow night, right?”

“Absolutely, sweetheart.”
With that she walked out the door, closing it behind her with a wave, as if she
hadn’t just destroyed Riley’s life.

Riley took in several short
breaths to try and keep from crying, but she wasn’t surprised when a tear
rolled out of her eye anyway. “I thought you loved me,” she barely choked out.

“This isn’t about me not
loving you. It’s the opposite. You’re just such a sweet girl. So, I do some
things with other girls so I can treat you right.”

Riley raised a hand to her
face and wiped away the cool trail that the tears had left. “There are others?”

“Babe, that’s not the point.
The point is I love you.”

Riley couldn’t believe what
she was hearing. She could tell that his rhetoric was flawed, and she failed
that unit in English. She looked around the shabby apartment and immediately
realized that this wasn’t worth it. She considered grabbing her stuff, but
there wasn’t much that she wanted that couldn’t be replaced, so she turned and
headed to the door.

“Where are you going?” Jimmy
demanded.

“You’re a jerk.”

Jimmy grabbed her shoulder
hard and pulled her back. “Didn’t you hear me? I love you. I want you to stay.”

“Screw you, Jimmy.” She
tried to pull her shoulder out of his grasp, but he tightened his fingers
around her. Riley winced. “Let me go!”

“Where are you going to go?
You don’t have anyone but me,” his voice was like gravel, and he pushed her.

Her body slammed against the
door, and she fell to the floor, catching her weight on her sore arm. Riley let
out a whimper. Tears flowed out of her eyes in a steady stream.

“Go then. I’ll see you in an
hour.”

Riley scrambled off the
floor and swung open the door as quickly as she could. When she got outside,
she slammed the door behind her, so hard the locks rattled. She ran as fast as
she could in flip flops, for as long as she could. When she stopped, she didn’t
recognize anything around her.

He was right; she didn’t
have anybody. There was no place for her to go, and even if there had been, she
didn’t have a way to get there. She didn’t have any money, so she couldn’t go
to a hotel. She was stuck.

Ryan lay on the chaise
lounge in Alexis’s room and watched Alexis curled up under the bright white
sheets on her bed. Her breathing had slowed, and she had fallen asleep for the
first time in over 36 hours. He’d stayed up with her all that time, but he
still couldn’t sleep. He felt like he had to watch over and protect her.

He hadn’t left her since the
day her sister left. She had done well at staying distracted, but every couple
of hours, she would break down crying or go into a frenzy about going to find
Riley. She completely blamed herself for what happened and what might have happened,
and she was already punishing herself for it.

With the exception of filing
a police report, neither of them had left the house. He didn’t mind. The weird
thing was, if this missing sister thing wasn’t hanging over their heads, they
would probably be enjoying their time together. Stranger still, he would
probably be kind of sad when she finally kicked him out. At least he figured
that’s what would happen after a few days. He didn’t have great hope that Riley
would come home before Alexis got sick of him. He should be back in New York
come Monday; though, if she wanted him to stay longer, he would.

Alexis’s phone lit up next
to her pillow, and Ryan was quick to jump up from the chaise and answer it. He
wanted her to sleep as much as she could while she would let herself. He made
the person on the other end wait until he tiptoed out into the hallway and
closed the bedroom door before he gave a greeting.

“Who is this?” demanded the
voice on the other end of the line. It was female and young.

“Ryan Webb. I’m a friend of
Alexis’s. She’s sleeping right now. Can I take a message?”

A sob came through the
speaker, “Is there any way you can wake my sister up? I really need her.”

“Riley? Is that you?” Ryan’s
pulse quickened.

“Yeah,” she cried. “I need a
ride.”

 He peeked into the room at
the sleeping figure, chestnut hair spread wildly on the pillow. He knew he
should wake her, but he didn’t want to. This would just disconcert her. He
couldn’t do that to the peaceful figure. “Where are you?”

“The South Station in
Boston. I’m really scared. The people here are weird.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I
can. Find a security guard or something and stick close to him. Don’t leave,
Riley. I can get to you faster if you stay in one spot.”

She took a heavy, hesitant
breath. “Okay,” she finally agreed. “My phone is almost dead. I don’t have
anything to charge it with.”

“Turn it off,” he commanded
gently. “Only turn it back on if you really need it. I’ll find you.”

“Okay.”

Ryan hung up the phone and
placed it back on Alexis’s pillow. He found a pad of paper and a pen in the
small desk near the door.

I’ll be back in a little
bit.
It was all he wrote; he didn’t want to get her hopes up. Not yet.

The drive to the bus station
seemed quick to him. His eyes scanned the Great Room of the terminal, and he
eventually caught sight of Riley sitting alone at a table in a corner. Her eyes
were darting around the room, and she looked suspicious of everyone. Either she
hadn’t spotted Ryan right away or she didn’t recognize him from their brief
meeting earlier in the week.

His heart broke for her. She
looked a lot like her sister, and he couldn’t help but be filled with
compassion for her. He slowly approached her, and it was obvious when she
noticed him. Her eyes got wide, staring at him, and she gripped her purse close
to her body.