The Ritual

He was in the middle of knocking the water out of his hair, but he pauses. A smile tugs at his lips, and then he starts laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I sit up.

“You’re done with school, Blake,” he announces.

“Excuse me?” I argue.

“You left. You think people weren’t going to realize you weren’t there?”

I never really thought about it to be honest. When you’re running for your life, your college classes don’t really matter anymore. “So, what? I just can’t not go back. Ryat, I need a degree.” And my parents will kill me. Maybe that’s another reason my father was so mad at me for leaving town.

“Don’t worry, I covered it.” He dismisses it.

Arching a brow, I slowly repeat his words. “You covered it?” He nods. “What the hell does that mean?” I’m going to need him to clarify exactly what he’s done.

“Told everyone that we took a week off for our honeymoon.” He shrugs. “We were newlyweds. It made sense.”

“What?” I gape at him. “What about the other two weeks?”

“I paid someone to step in for you. They will be covering for you the rest of the year,” he explains casually. As if it’s no big deal for someone else to go to school for me.

“Ryat …” I growl his name but pause, circling around to what he said earlier. Did he say we? “You skipped that first week too?”

“I’ve skipped every day.”

I gasp. “Ryat! Why the fuck would you do that?”

“You expected me to go on with my life? Sit in fucking classes while you were on the run and in danger?” he asks with a rough laugh.

I snort. “I was fine.”

His eyes go large at the lie, any sense of playfulness now gone. “Are you fucking serious right now?”

Instead of telling another one, I cross my arms over my exposed chest.

“That man was going to kill you,” he growls.

“Because of you,” I spit out.

He stiffens, his eyes darkening. “Excuse me?”

How dare he make such an important decision for me? But I’m really not sure why I’m surprised. I mean, look how we got here. “He told me you owed him. That he was going to ship me back in pieces—to you. So, I was only in danger because of you.” This isn’t news to him. Ryat just made Ashley confess that a man named Derek—I’m guessing that’s the guy—was sent to watch me. But I hadn’t told him what the guy said to me.

“He said that shit to you, and you’re just now telling me?” he shouts, his face turning red.

I shrug carelessly. “You never asked. You were too busy drugging me and dragging me back. Oh, and then I had to be tested. Because you know, the Lords said it was time to put even more strain on our marriage—”

He reaches over and picks up a lamp, throwing it across the room. It shatters, hitting a wall, cutting me off. Silence falls between us; the only sound is the faint bass of the music from the club below us, and my shoulders fall while I sit in the bed naked.

Turning around, he places his hands on the dresser and leans over it. I watch the way his back muscles ripple—covered in scratch marks—while trying to calm his breathing.

“I know it wasn’t your fault,” I say softly. It was Matt’s. Everything started because of him. “You saved me—”

“It was, though,” he interrupts me and turns around. “How do you think I found you?”

I frown. “I … don’t know.”

Running a hand down his face, he leans back against the dresser. “Remember that night Gunner and I found you and Sarah here at Blackout?”

I nod, scrunching my brow. “Yeah, but what’s that have to do with anything?”

“A couple of guys hit on you two at the bar,” he adds.

I sit up straighter. “How did you know about that?” I never told him that. Maybe Sarah filled Gunner in about our night.

“We were here upstairs, watching you girls and saw them approach you,” he admits.

“How did you …?” I nod my head to myself. “My phone. You tracked us here. I was wondering how you found us.” Fuck, I should have fucking known. If I had just opened my eyes, I probably could have pieced it together.

“Long story short, Gunner and I killed them,” he confesses as if no big deal.

“What?” I gasp. “Ryat …”

“They had drugs on them, Blake. Shit that proved they were going to do more to the two of you than buy you drinks,” he snaps, then releases a heavy sigh.

“Did you find that out before or after you killed them?” I demand.

“After.”

“Jesus, Ryat.” I run a hand through my still wet hair. I understand they might have hurt us, but he killed them before that. “You can’t keep killing random people.”

“I will kill whoever touches what’s mine, Blake,” he states matter-of-factly. Lowering his voice, he goes on. “They were here with a friend—a third guy. He saw what happened and knew we took care of them. I didn’t know at the time, obviously, that Ashley had followed you when you ran, but Ty overheard talk in Blackout that the guy knew where you were. We followed him. It made me think that Matt had told him, and he led us straight to you.”