Worth the Risk (The Game #4)(49)
Author: Emma Hart

“Layla?” I choke on her name.

Iz shakes her head. “Hasn’t seen her since before… You know.”

I nod. I know. “Why didn’t she tell us? I’ve been sitting here feeling sorry for myself and she’s been f**k knows where!”

“She didn’t want to worry us. She thought she might have just taken off for a day or two to calm down. Apparently Roxy did that just after Cam died, but now she’s worried. She’s never disappeared for four days before.”

I sink back to the bed and bury my face in my hands. “Has she called the cops yet?”

“No. She wanted to talk to us first… See if we might know where she is.”

“Let’s go then.”

“Wait,” Iz calls, running after me. “Kyle! That’s not all.”

“What? How can it get any f**king worse than the girl I’m in love with being god knows where?” I yell. “How?”

My sister grabs me and holds me in a way she hasn’t since we were little. I clench my whole body, biting back the tears burning in the backs of my eyes.

I’m real f**king mad she’s gone and no one knows where she’s been. But I’m worried. And I’m scared. I’ve never been so scared about anything in my whole life. I thought I was scared of losing her before, but that fear was nothing compared to the one running rife through me right now.

The fear I could lose her for good.

She could be anywhere. With anyone. Doing anything.

I need to know Roxy is okay.

Nothing else matters except for that. Nothing else ever matters.

“Myra’s broken down,” Iz tells me when she releases me. “Really broken down. She’s locked herself in the bedroom and is refusing to leave. She’s just… God, Ky. She’s just crying. She can’t fight anymore and I’m worried about her. She won’t let Ray in. She won’t talk. All she’s doing is crying.”

I don’t answer her. I pull the door open with all my strength and run toward her house. My feet pound against the asphalt as I run faster than I ever have.

Without Cam here, the only person that can be the strength in that family is me. I’m the only person left that can hold it together – and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I burst through their front door and up the stairs, only just registering Iz panting behind me. Ray’s leaning against Roxy’s door, his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched at his side.

I spent half of my childhood looking up to this man as my second dad. I’ve seen him in every mood, from raging mad to laughing his ass off, but I’ve never seen him look so vulnerable. I’ve never seen him so broken.

I tear my eyes from him and bang on Myra’s door. Once. Twice. Three times.

“Open the door, Myra!”

Nothing.

“C’mon, it’s me.” Bang. “Please.”

Nothing.

Bang bang bang. “I swear, I’m not going anywhere until you open it! If I have to sit here until you open it then I will!”

Nothing. Nothing except the sounds of desperate sobs creeping through the gaps around the door. Nothing except the sounds of complete and utter despair.

Of surrender.

Of heartbreak in the purest, rawest sense of the word.

“Fine,” I call through. “I’ll just sit here until you come out.”

I turn my back to the door and slide down it. Ray turns and hits me with destroyed, pale blue eyes full of questions. I meet his gaze and hold it steadily despite the shaking of my body.

“You lost your son, but you still have me.”

Chapter Twenty-Five – Roxy

I stare at the penguins, my body pressed against the glass the way it has been so many times before. The chill of it calms me, and my fingers guide one of the penguins around as it follows my movements.

We’re not so different, me and the penguins. Both of us are trapped in a place we don’t want to be. There’s no way of escaping, instead destined to live this way until some miracle happens, but they didn’t choose this. I did.

I chose to trap myself. I chose to let my grief rule me, acting before thinking, speaking before pausing. And now I’m a penguin.

Cold. Alone. Trapped.

Stuck in an endless circle I’m not sure I have the power the change.

“Excuse me,” a voice says behind me. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. The zoo closed fifteen minutes ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.” I push off the glass and head toward the exit.

The roads of Portland are filled with traffic from people rushing home to their perfect families for their perfect dinners after work. The streets are laden with couples going for an early dinner, children begging their parents for candy before they have their McDonalds treat, and teens joking, waiting to hear where the next party is.

I push through all of these, my mind intent on getting back to the motel I’ve been staying in. There I can drink until Layla gets me and we go to her cousins to drink again. There I can forget all the shit of this year and just be. I can drown in a never-ending sea of vodka and not remember. No memories. No feelings. No anything.

Because forgetting is all that matters. Being numb is all that really counts when you hurt too much to feel anymore.

I walk into my tiny room, the bang of the door against the doorframe sounding too final. But then everything else in the last few months has been final, so why not that too?

I sit on the bed and unscrew the cap on the vodka bottle. I bring it to my lips, relishing the burn as it goes down.

I’ve lost everything, even the thing I should have been able to hold on to. I never should have let Kyle go. I never should have let him walk away from me on Friday night. I should have chased after him, grabbed him and told him I was talking crap, that I need him.

I should have swallowed every stupid ounce of pride in my body and told him I’m in love with him.

Now it’s too late. A f**k up of my own making. A disaster of my own doing.

I don’t even want to think about him. I can’t think about him. I don’t want to think about his lips on mine or his fingers through mine. I don’t want to hear his laugh in my ear or his voice teasing me. I don’t want… I don’t want…

I want everything. I want every single thing I threw away.

A part of me wants him even more than I want Cam. My heart cries out for them both, it’s broken for the two guys in my life that were always there, but my soul screams for Kyle. It’s my soul that’s hitting me round the head with my own stupidity, stinging me with my own words, cutting me with my own cruelness.