Page 88 of Blood Ties

?Chapter Forty-Three

Riley

Days slide by in aconfusing blend. My head hurts; the sink drips; the ache between my thighs fades. I lie on my mattress feeling hollow, unable to get my last glimpse of Kai out of my head. His uncle and dad dragged him out of here, barely conscious and beaten half to death. And the look on his face...

He hasn’t been back since. I haven’t heard him upstairs either. He could be dead, for all I know.

Knox is the only face I see. I’m almost physically ill the first time I see him coming down the basement steps, but he just sets down food and water for me and leaves. Doesn’t touch me, doesn’t even look at me while I hide on the corner of the mattress, huddled under my blanket.

After three days of that, three days of darkness and silence broken only by Knox’s footsteps, I call out to him.

“Knox?” My voice is hoarse from disuse.

He pauses, glances back at me.

“Where’s Kai?” I lick my dry lips. “Is he okay?”

He eases his foot off of the step and turns fully toward me. His smile is small and bitter. “Don’t pretend you care about him.”

I sit up, clenching the blanket between my fingers. “You think I’m pretending?”

“I know you are.” He walks over so he can stare down at me. “I know exactly what you’re doing, even if he doesn’t see it.”

I lift my chin, fighting down the knot in my stomach that feels a little bit like guilt. Because he’s right — I am manipulating Kai. Or I was. It’s... gotten murky now, even to me, where the lies begin and end when it comes to my relationship with him.

“I love your brother,” I say softly. “And he loves me.”

Knox grabs the chain attached to my arm and yanks, forcing me up so I’m chest-to-chest with him. “Shut up,” he says.

I study his face, and my brow furrows. “You’re jealous.”

He sneers. “You think I’m stupid enough to give a fuck about you?”

“No,” I say. “Not jealous because of me. Jealous because of Kai.” His eyes flicker, and I let loose an incredulous laugh. “Jesus, Knox. Is that really what all of this is about?”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he growls, yanking the chain tight.

There is a hysterical feeling bubbling up inside me, a drunken kind of lightness that pushes me to recklessness. After everything he’s done to me, I’ve never had a chance to get under Knox’s skin like this. And if Kai is hurt too badly to help me, then my chance of escape is gone. It’s pointless for me to stay alive. “All these years, you’ve kept him locked up and dependent on you,” I say. “I bet you’ve never had to compete for his affection before. But now he has me, and you can’tstandit—”