I Belong to You (Inside Out #5)(8)

Setting the phone aside, I begin going through the comprehensive documents. Everything I could ever want to know about Ryan Kilmer, from birth until present, including a complete list of all business transactions his thriving real estate business has ever made. Squeezing my eyes shut, memories jab at my mind of the many times that I’d invited him and Ava into Rebecca’s and my most intimate moments. She’d hated them both, which was why I’d chosen them. To make her hate me. To make sure she didn’t want them. And I did it all under the guise of Master. I was such a bloody f*cking *.

Cursing, I push to my feet, walking to the glass door and stepping into the blast of snow and wind, intentionally tormenting myself. My hand closes on the freezing railing, a punishment for my actions, though I can never punish myself enough. Before me there is only white and gray, a flicker of lights muted in the core of the murkiness.

Ms. Smith asked who I thought had helped Ava, and the answer is Ryan. Fucking Ryan. I don’t give a damn about his alibi for the night Rebecca died.

And considering our many profitable business transactions, I can think of only one motivation for Ryan’s actions. The same as Ava’s for killing Rebecca, and trying to kill Sara. Pure envy. Maybe of me and Rebecca, or perhaps of the power the club had become for me. I, of all people, know how easily jealousy forms and the poison it inevitably becomes. I curse again and turn my face to the blurred sky.

I shouldn’t have done a lot of things I did where Rebecca was concerned. And I should have done a lot that I didn’t. Ultimately, everything that has happened is my fault—but I’m not the only one who is going to pay.

I silently vow that by morning, I’ll have a plan to unravel Ryan’s life and his money train. And then I’ll dial that phone, and let the real games begin.

*

It’s three in the morning when I finally lie down, having left a message for Doc to call me. In my hand is Rebecca’s journal. And as many times as I’ve promised myself that I won’t read more, I can’t help myself. It makes me feel like she’s still alive. It makes me feel guilty and hate myself. It makes me focus on doing right by her in death, if not in life.

I flip open a page, to an entry I’ve read before and I know will shred me, and start reading:

Lunchtime, Friday

Another nightmare. They were gone for months and now they are back, tormenting me as much as ever. I bought a book that said I should write them down to start understanding them, but they still mean nothing I can decipher in any way. But I keep writing them. So, here goes . . .

It started again with me hanging from a railing on the edge of a cable car that’s somehow operating without a driver, and my dead mother is with me. We’re both on the step hanging off the side of the car, but several feet separate us. As the car slowly climbs a hill the air is calm, but my emotions are in a frenzied dance. I remember how I felt as I write this. I don’t seem to be able to see what I’m wearing, and for some reason I need to know. It’s a silly detail that seems irrelevant, but maybe it’s symbolic of some event in my life. . . . I really don’t know.

My mother isn’t smiling in this version of the nightmare, and she did when she first started visiting me. She looks angry, but ten years younger than when she died. The long, sleek brown hair she’d lost during her lung cancer battle is back; her pale skin absolutely luminous. Then I had the sudden realization that we weren’t alone. A man in a suit is sitting near the back. There’s never been anyone but my mother and I in these nightmares, and a sense of foreboding overwhelms me. I strain to see this new visitor, but his face is oddly in the shadows.

The car begins to top the hill and my mother hisses, “Don’t look at him.”

I cut my attention back to her and now her hair is short and thin; her body is thin, her skin now ashy. Memories of her lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life come back to me. “Who is he?” I ask curiously.

“Just don’t look at him. He’s dangerous. He’s poison.”

“Who is he?” I demand.

“No one I ever want you to know.”

And then it hits me. “My father. Is this my father you refused to tell me about, even on your deathbed?”

“There are things it’s best you never know,” she says, repeating what she’d told me then. We start rolling down the hill and she lets go of the rail, balling her fists at her chest. “Do you know how much your anger hurt me when I was dying?”

“Grab the pole,” I order, panic rising inside me. Our speed increases and I repeat more urgently, “Grab the pole!” We hit a bump, and I scream as she tumbles to the street and then vanishes.

Deep, evil male laughter radiates through the wicked wind that lifts my brown hair. My gaze goes to the faceless man and I climb up the step, past the seats, to the center aisle. The car is racing down the hill, too fast for the rails, and I have to grab the edge of the seats on either side to steady myself. “Stop laughing!” I demand, but the laughter just gets louder and louder. “Stop laughing!”

Anger and confusion collide in me, and I don’t even think about the danger to myself. I rush at him, charging forward, but when I get to him he vanishes as my mother had. He’s gone, as if he were never here.

Suddenly the car jumps the rails and takes flight. I gasp, trying to catch my balance, but I fall, sliding down the middle aisle. Scrambling for a grip somewhere, anywhere, I manage to grab the steel bottom of a pole and hold on. Hanging on never saves me in these nightmares, and I remember being conscious of that fact, but unable to fully conceive it. I want to live. I want to survive. (I think that maybe I will survive when I fully grasp the meaning of these nightmares.)