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Authors: Kade Boehme,Allison Cassatta

We Found Love (18 page)

BOOK: We Found Love
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He slid his hands down to raise his shirt front and wiped his face of its messy emotions. When he turned his attention back to Riley, he loudly inhaled, exhaled. “I wish you’d help yourself too.”

Then, like a dramatic reading had ended, like the crowd was teetering on the edge of applause, like Hunter had dropped a mic, he walked out. Out and away he went, swallowed by the darkness until the opening and closing of the door signaled his exit.

Chapter 17

 

 

E
VERYTHING
TURNED
utterly frigid. From the space of one breath to the next, the air turned thick and cold and full of everything miserable about the world Riley had spent eighteen months growing into, becoming accustomed to, accepting of. Only now it was worse than it had ever been before, because what warmth had been there was stolen with the frail and quivering
I wish you’d help yourself too
.

Somehow his feet remained anchored to the tile where he’d followed Hunter through the winding, rocky path of memory lane. Though he stood there on seemingly solid legs, he started to sway. It wasn’t voluntary but because of the sinking feeling in his gut. Then his eyes burned. Tears trickled down his face. Then the world fell apart.

His knees hit the tiles with a hard
crack
, like all the energy he’d had was sucked out of his body when the air thickened. It didn’t matter that he was breaking rules and God only knew what time it was. He couldn’t move from that spot.

That was the hardest thing he’d ever experienced. Screw the kidnapping, and screw losing a friend. Maybe he’d been too broken to care about that other shit. Maybe he cared about Hunter
that
much.
Or maybe you realize you’re making him hurt all over again.

I wish you’d help yourself too.

Riley’s head hung, shoulders slack, face buried against his palms. Tears wound through the valleys of his tightly pressed fingers. They burned his hot cheeks. Could he help himself? Had he given up on himself? Or was he scared?

When the well of tears finally ran dry, he hauled himself off that floor and headed back down the hall toward his lonely room. He didn’t cling to the shadows, couldn’t process the idea of getting caught or possible consequences, and wasn’t that Hunter’s point? The fact Riley didn’t care about getting out of that place?

Oh, but he
did
care. Everything about Hartfield was equated to being in hell. In fact, Riley often wondered if he hadn’t actually died when he slit his wrist and this was the afterlife he’d been relegated to. But that didn’t explain Hunter. Hunter was heaven.

Head reeling, Riley padded into his room and sank down on the bed. His body still swayed, as if he were moving on kinetic energy alone. He hadn’t closed his gaping mouth since Hunter disappeared. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if he was actually breathing.

Your soul has left the building.

He rolled onto his back, head planted against his pillow. Exhaustion seeped through his bones and pulsed out to his limbs, turning his body into an anchor. Yet he couldn’t close his eyes. Sleep wasn’t an option. Not with the fresh hell of Hunter’s loss playing on repeat inside his skull. He focused his stare on a single discolored corkboard tile, and he let Hunter’s one wish play over and over again.

I wish you’d help yourself too.

I wish you’d help yourself too.

You need to help yourself too.

A dark shadow passed by the window in his door: Wally making the three a.m. rounds. That’s the only way Riley knew what time it was. His body’s internal clock had shut down. All of his energy went to staying awake so as not to relive Hunter’s story, or Andy’s story for that matter. Andy had talked about how good his life had been too, but something inside him was broken, and no one could fix it. Just like no one seemed to be able to fix Riley. Only Andy got tired of trying, and he gave up.

Just like you tried to do. Lifer.

“That’s not fair,” he cried out, rolling onto his side and wrapping up in his pillow as tight as he could. He burrowed his face into the fibers to muffle his pained screams. Maybe that was part of his problem. Maybe he just needed to scream it out and everything would be okay. They didn’t like screaming here. Maybe that was what he’d been missing. But the harder he screamed and the more raw his throat became, the more he realized screaming didn’t matter, either.

Talk.

“No. I can’t.”

Talk.

“It’s not that easy.”

Talk.

 

 

“C
HECKS
.”

Riley raised his head from the pillow. Two darkened dots as big as fists framed the impression of a nose. Four hours after the fact and he still had tears to cry, still didn’t have the strength to pull himself together, and still hadn’t slept.

“You okay, kid?” Jerry asked

Riley didn’t so much as move a muscle.

“Are you sick?”

Sick sounded about right, didn’t it?

“You need a nurse?”

Riley nodded. Though what the hell could a nurse do for him? A nurse sure as hell couldn’t fix him, couldn’t take all this bullshit away and make the world right. A nurse couldn’t give his childhood back and couldn’t give him a future outside the walls of Hartfield, now could they?

Footfalls, four of them, pounded into Riley’s room, not at a jog but with urgency, as if they had to hurry and save him when he knew good and damn well he couldn’t be saved.

“I found him like this,” Jerry said.

When the hell had Jerry left?

“Maybe I should call his doctor,” the nurse said.

“No,” Riley blurted, grabbing for her petite arm before she wheeled right out of there. When he realized he had his hand on a staff member and Jerry had gone into full-on bodyguard mode, Riley jerked his hand back. “I’m just sick,” he said. “I’ve been up all night, and I—”
Think fast.
“—I feel like I’m gonna hurl. Again.” He threw in the latter for good measure. Theatrics. Just like Hunter had said.

“I can give you Phenergan,” she said. “Do you feel well enough for your daily activities?”

Activities. Ha!
By “activities,” she meant breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the myriad groups, and time wasted in the common room. Oh, and the stupid one-on-one he’d get with Dr. Landers later in the day.

Help yourself.

“No, I don’t, but I, um….” He rubbed the nape of his neck and licked his dry lips. “I still wanna see Dr. Landers. If that’s cool.”

“Of course. You lie down, and we’ll bring you the Phenergan, and I’ll have Jerry bring you crackers and soda for the nausea.”

“Thank you,” he said softly, realizing for the first time how hoarse he sounded.

The nurse and Jerry both eyed him like he really had lost his mind.

What? Hadn’t they heard him say thank you before?

He lay back on the bed like he’d been instructed to. Truthfully, the moment he thought about being out there and
possibly
running into Hunter, even for a second, made the room spin a little. If they locked eyes, would either be able to look away? Would Hunter’s chilling tale play out all over again when Riley hid away in his own head again? Yeah, fuck that. Not right now. He would’ve killed to see Hunter, but not like that.

Jerry returned with the nurse and the drugs, and the soda and crackers as promised. They made sure Riley took the pills and ate a few crackers. Riley complied. And when they were satisfied, they left him in that cold, lonely room to stare at the tiles and think about the way his life had worked out.

At some point, his body gave in to the exhaustion and he crashed hard, so hard he didn’t remember dreaming anything and hadn’t known he’d actually been asleep until Jerry poked his head in and asked, “How ya doin’, kid?”

Riley grumbled.

“It’s time for your appointment with Dr. Landers. You still okay to do that?”

“Yeah. Sure.”
Can a guy wake up first?

The hinges of the door creaked, meaning Jerry had opened it wider so anyone passing by could witness the state of hell Riley had found himself in. Fucking embarrassing, and he hated that shit worst of anything about that place. Privacy didn’t exist.

He swung his legs off his bed and slipped his feet into his shoes, stood, and tested his legs. The room didn’t spin, and his vision didn’t go fuzzy, both good signs that he was physically okay to do this. Emotionally….

Mmm. Maybe.

Like a man walking the last mile of his life, Jerry guided Riley down the halls and through doors that required keys and pass codes. He’d walked this trek plenty of times in eighteen—wait, no. Was it nineteen months now? Today it felt different. He really was a man walking the last mile of his life, the life he hated so badly but had clung to because it was familiar to him. Today he planned to admit he needed help.
The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Jerry tapping on a door got Riley’s attention again. Buzzer. The lock clicked. The door sprang. Jerry held it open, and Riley walked into the room.

“Mr. Connors,” Dr. Landers said with a lilt, as if he was surprised to see Riley. Which didn’t make sense considering this was their normal time. “I heard you were sick.”

Oh. That.
“Um….” Riley rubbed his left hand over the scar on his right wrist. “Yeah, I guess the drugs and soda worked.”

“Good to hear. Have a seat.”

Riley sat down in the floral chair as Dr. Landers wheeled the leather one out from behind his desk. He sat down and took out his pad and pen. “How has it been in a private—”

“I need help,” Riley blurted, cutting the doctor off before the psychobabble started flowing good. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but something’s wrong, and I need to fix it.”

The urgency in his voice surprised Riley almost as much as hearing himself verbally wave the white flag to his biggest enemy. Dr. Landers didn’t exactly smile, but his satisfaction wasn’t lost on Riley, and didn’t that just bug the shit out of Riley?

“C’mon, Doc, say something. Don’t sit there looking at me like you finally beat my ass into submission. It didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Then what did it?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He couldn’t exactly admit to the private interlude in the forbidden wing with Hunter, now could he?
Think, Riley.

“I’m sick of this place. I’m sick of the walls and the people and the—”

“That’s not the kind of attitude that heals, Riley.”

Sighing, Riley slumped down in his chair. Defeat hit him like a punch to the face. Everything from the cheeks up started to throb. His wrist burned from the nervous rubbing.

“Can you please just help me?” he all but begged.

“Tell me why you tried killing yourself,” the doctor said point-blank. No beating around the bush here. “What led up to you taking a razor blade to your wrist? I’ve been asking you this question since you got here, Riley. I can’t help you until you can answer it.”

Could he? He’d never tried before. Actually, he’d pushed it so far back in his memory bank he wasn’t sure he could remember. Was it the fact he’d been pretty much living on the streets and crashing at random people’s houses since the last foster family kicked him out? Or was it the bullying at the boys home that turned him into a rage-filled psychotic? No. None of that impacted Riley quite like….

“My mother let them do this to me.”

“What?” Dr. Landers leaned forward, brow arched with curiosity.

Riley had meant exactly what he’d said. Had his mother not turned him over to the state instead of raising him and healing him like a loving, caring mother should have, none of this shit would’ve happened to him. He might’ve even grown up into… something.

“When the cops rescued me from John and Mimi, they took me to a hospital. She was there when I woke up. The doctors said something to her, and she nodded at them. Then she cried and she left me with them. I never saw her again.” Tears choked his voice. More spilled from the corners of his eyes. “Nobody wanted me.”

Chapter 18

BOOK: We Found Love
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