Page 64 of The Heir
Ryker:I know, but he killed your family, Em, and I can’t just stand by and let him get away. No one is even looking into it.
I put my phone down, not answering his last text. I tried to breathe and calm down my anger, but I couldn’t, and my head spun. I’d thought about a question for a while. Why would anyone wantmyfamily dead? My dad was a doctor; my mother was a stay-at-home mom. They didn’t exactly make any hit list that I could think of. I was, finally, doing better, but every time I talked to Ryker, I had to relive all my nightmares all over again. My phone buzzed, and I answered it. Ryker’s voice was calm, but serious. Memories were trying to break through the surface as I blinked away tears.
“Are you okay?” Ryker asked seriously.
“I'm waiting for all this to just be some horrible dream that I can wake up from.”
“I just have to figure out the last piece of this puzzle. I am so close.” The picture Ryker had shown to me popped into my head. That man with black eyes haunted me.
“Ryker, this is too much for me right now,” I tried to push the picture of the man from my thoughts. I tried to stop the flashbacks, but they started again. After the crash, we landed upside down. My mother was thrown away from the car, so I never saw her, but I did see a large hole in the windshield, and like always, the memory of my father dying beside me made me want to scream.
I wiped a tear from my cheek.
“Ryker—Ryker, I can’t”
“Emma, I am sorry.”
“Why on earth would someone kill them? Tell me, Ryker. Why? Why would someone wantmyparents, and possiblyme, dead?”
“Everyone has enemies, Emma.”
“My parents didn’t have enemies. I don’t have any enemies. I don’t understand,” I cried into the phone.
“Neither do I, Emma; still, I am going to keep you safe.”
“I am scared, Ryker. I don’t want to know the truth, but then, sometimes, I do. Mary says I need to move on, move past all this, and it is so hard whenyoukeep searching and searching, and I can’t get away from the memories. I want to know, and I want you to tell me, but–” I was hopeful, hopeful that he would tell me everything was alright, that no one murdered my parents, that the man from my memories was just part of a bad dream, a fragment of my twisted imagination. But instead, I heard anger.
“How am I supposed to just move on!? Oh, I get it—how you are moving on toShad, huh!?”
“Excuse me?” I asked in complete and total shock. I just wanted to cry.
“Never mind, I'm sorry. I did not mean that. I'm just—frustrated is all. I should have been there that night with you guys–the night of the crash.”
Was I just supposed to take that? Let him yell at me one second and then apologize and tell me how guilty he felt the next?
“Part of me wishes you had been there so I wasn’t alone with the horror of it all, but that's selfish. If you had been there, you probably would be dead right now, too,” I breathed.
“Your dad asked me to go, and I didn’t.”
“So?”
“So—I feel like I could have prevented it. I got too laxed,” he growled.
I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Seriously, Ryker? Do you have super strength?”
“Okay, maybe I couldn't have prevented it. I'm sorry, Emma, that I wasn’t there for you. I miss them. I'm so sorry. I should have been the one who died; it should have only been me,” he choked.
“Ryker, no. No, I couldn’t live without you. No one wantsyoudead.”
“I have to go, Emma,” he whispered.
“Just say goodbye to your sick relative and come home. You are missing the Homecoming dance, and I am so annoyed that I have to go without you being there.”
“Are you still going withhim?”
“Yes.”
Silence—