"Please. You're scaring me." Riley's soft voice sliced through the thick haze inside my head.
When I blinked, I returned to existence with my enormous body pinning Riley's miniature one against the wall. I had my fingers wrapped around her arms and I was gripping them so hard that her bones were going to snap under the pressure. I made the mistake of locking eyes with her as the veil dropped and my surroundings merged back into focus. The expression Riley wore was one I had never seen before.
My girl was terrified of me.
Riley's hair was all over the place in knots on one side of her head. The shirt she had borrowed from me was lying lopsided on her body with the collar stretched and there was a nice chunk of fabric missing from the front. One of her tear-stained cheeks was pink like she had been in the sun too long.
Did I hit her? I didn't remember doing it, but I didn't remember anything at all.
I looked down at my hands as I took a step back. I had blood on my knuckles. I couldn't feel the ache, but they looked puffy and discolored, like they had been bashed into something repeatedly.
Fuck.
I stumbled back and turned to run upstairs to get away from her until I figured out what had just happened. I had to make sure I wasn't going to blackout again. If I hurt her, I sure as hell didn't want it to happen a second time.
I slammed the bathroom door and locked it. I swiped at the clutter on the vanity and it went flying across the room. Some cream in a red glass jar that must have been Anna's shattered and left a large white gloppy splatter on the wall.
I turned on the hot water and stuck my hands under the faucet to wash away the blood from my knuckles. It didn't want to come off. I scrubbed and scrubbed at the raw skin until it was red and blistering under the heat. Little blotches of red clung to my skin like they had been inked into my skin like a tattoo.
I didn't hurt her. There was no way I could have hurt Riley. It was the drugs making me act this way. It couldn't have been me doing this. I loved the crazy, beautiful girl more than I could even put into words. I wanted everything about her every second of the day.
I just didn't want the baby—not now or ever.
Shit.
I had forgotten about how this whole thing started.
I had to go take Riley to the store so we could get a test to be sure. We had to go right now.
I started to walk out of the bathroom and turn off the light when I noticed a brown paper bag on the floor with a small pink and white box sitting next to it.
It wasn't there before I left.
I walked over to look to see what it was.
It was a box for a pregnancy test and it was empty. There were three open wrappers on the floor next to the toilet and another open box behind it with another test missing.
She took them and she didn't even tell me.
My head pivoted in a full circle like I was possessed. The tests still had to be in here somewhere. They weren't on the counter or the floor with the other pile of things I knocked over. I grabbed the trash can, dumped out the contents, and came up with nothing but wadded-up tissues and an empty shampoo bottle.
I spun around and noticed three little white sticks lined up on the bathtub's edge.
The tests.
My heart was pounding in my ears.
The three steps it took me to get to the tub felt like an eternity. The bathroom quadrupled in size in front of my eyes. This was a moment I never thought would happen to me. There was no way I could prepare myself for what I was about to do.
I bent down and picked up the first stick. It had one section filled in with one pink line and another that had crisscrossed lines. The lines were dark pink compared to the light white background. I turned the stick over to look for directions and couldn't find any on the plastic.
I had no idea what the lines even meant.
The next stick in line was slightly different from the other two. It had some little black writing on the display. I picked that one up in the other hand to read what it said, hoping it wasn't as cryptic as the other one and would provide me the answer I was searching for.
There was a happy smiling face staring back at me.
Smiling was good.
It wasn't until I read the one word next to that smirking face on the display that I realized how wrong my assumption was. My jaw dropped as I sounded out each letter in slow succession.
I didn't know how long I stood there trying to process the word and its meaning. The little black letters blurred in and out of focus and I rubbed my dry eyes to see if they would disappear.
Pregnant.
Smiling asshole face equals pregnant.
Riley was fucking pregnant.
I bent over and dropped to my knees in case I passed out. I would be closer to the floor and cause less damage to my head if I collapsed and hit the tile. The laughing face danced around me as I fought the urge to throw up all over the floor.
No one else could find out about this. JD, Anna, Mark, Aiden—even our parents had to stay completely in the dark.
I had to hide the evidence.
I crawled across the floor on my hands and knees to the empty wrappers and boxes. I snatched up the other two tests, all the plastic and paper packaging to shove into the brown bag. The stick with the taunting grin was still in my hand. I couldn't let go of it. I didn't know why I couldn't put it in the bag with the others. My hands wouldn't do what my head told them to.
I climbed up on my feet and opened the bathroom door. I had to get back downstairs to Riley before she ran from me again. I slowly stepped across the hall and down the steps, cradling the brown bag and white stick like they were some delicate, priceless heirloom.
When I got to the bottom step, I found Riley leaning over a pile of something on the floor. I blinked at the fuzzy, broken shape until Aiden's red spikey hair came into view.
Why was Aiden here with her and what was he doing laying on the floor?
"Ry, I..." I started to apologize to her for hurting her when I realized she was busy playing nurse to an extremely battered Aiden, who looked like he was barely conscious.
I figured out whose blood was on my hands and thankfully, it wasn't Riley's.
"Shit, what did I do?" I dropped the contents in my hands and ran over next to Riley to make sure Aiden was still breathing. As soon as I got next to the two of them, he tried to rear up at me. He groaned and collapsed back down, unable to swing and connect.
He was almost unrecognizable under the swelling around his mouth, but he was alive.
For now, anyway.
Aiden started to attempt to stand, using Riley's short frame as a crutch. I grabbed his arm and nudged her out of the way so he couldn't touch her. He yanked it back from me and grabbed the wall instead.
Riley dashed to the kitchen and rummaged around noisily, leaving Aiden and me alone, standing almost chest to chest.
Aiden stupidly bumped against me to try to provoke me into going another round with him as soon as he knew she wasn't watching.
Aiden pressed his hand to his mouth and wiped some of the blood from the corner. He grimaced when his fingers came in contact with the open cut on the outside of his lip and he spat the blood out at my feet.
"Why Ezra? Why did it have to be her? Why Riley?" Aiden snarled at me with hatred in his eyes.
I started to tell him it was none of his business when Riley came back out and inserted herself between the two of us before it came to blows again. She handed Aiden a makeshift pack of ice for his face. He took it from her and pressed it against his mouth.
I placed my hand on Riley's lower back to show Aiden she was mine. Aiden lowered his eyes and had them glued to the spot I was touching her. I ran my hand over the top of her ass, rubbing and squeezing it so there was no doubt left in his mind who it belonged to. Riley's body sunk back into my hand right before his eyes. She didn't even realize she had just delivered the final gut punch to knock him out for good.
"You two need to figure your shit out. I'm done being in the middle. You both need to grow the fuck up." Aiden said the words like he meant them for the both of us, but he was really screaming out his feelings at Riley.
If he yelled at her like that again, he would end up back on the floor.
Aiden stared at the spot where my hand was again and shook his head when she backed up flush against me. I placed my mouth against the top of her head and gave her ass another little appreciative squeeze to tell her how good she was for me.
Aiden had finally seen enough.
He stormed off up the stairs and slammed his door. Riley turned her head and frowned at me from over her shoulder.
I didn't know if that glare was for me, Aiden, or the fucked up situation we were currently in.
It could have been a combination of all three for all I knew.
Riley kept scowling at me, which told me I was about to find out what the look meant.
Something told me I should go sit down for this next part of the conversation.