Page 153 of River of Deceit

I breathe in, inhaling his scent. There’s a smoky scent clinging to his shirt, along with the familiar smell of blood.

If somebody hurt River, I’m going to eviscerate them.

He clings to me like he’s scared of letting go, and I run my fingers through his hair, trying to calm him down.

I glare at the guy who’s stepped out of his own room, who looks bedraggled and annoyed, and he takes one look at us and closes his door again.

“I need you,” he whispers, his voice ragged and raw in a way I’ve never heard it before.

The only other time I’ve seen him this upset was when he found out about Rachel’s death.

“I’m here,” I answer. A door opens behind me, and before Samcan complain about us, I say, “Sorry about the noise, Samantha. River and I are heading into my room now.”

There’s a suspiciously long silence before Sam says, “Fine. Just keep it down.” She closes her door again.

I take River’s hand and pull back enough so I can look at his face. It’s hard to tell with only the light from the hallway, but his eyes look puffy.

If somebody made him cry, I’ll do more than eviscerate them. I will gouge their eyes out and make them eat them.

“Come on,” I say softly. “You can take whatever you need from me.”

“What I need,” he repeats, letting out a choked laugh. “You can’t give me what Ineed, Pandora. No one can.”

I squeeze his hand and lead him to my bedroom, all while my heart sticks needles into my chest.

“Take whatever you want, then,” I reply. I close my bedroom door behind us. The only light is the small bedside lamp.

I want to offer sex. I want to kiss him, hold him, comfort him.

Like he’d comforted you after Rachel died?a small, vicious voice in the back of my mind whispers.

That’s irrelevant now. The past is in the past. River paid for his mistake. He gave me his finger, and I know he didn’t mean it because River would never purposefully hurt me.

He leads me to my bed in silence, tugging at my hand as he lies down. He pulls me down into his arms, and he buries his face against the fabric of my tank top. It’s soon soaked through with tears as he sobs, his shoulders shaking with the force of them.

I let him cry, smoothing my fingers through his hair.

I don’t know what to do. My heart continues to scratch and stab my ribs, and I want to offer to maim somebody to punish whoever did this, but I have enough sense to know that’s not what he wants from me right now.

I kiss the top of his head and try to will myself into being a normal person who understands how to have normal feelings.

Mama would know what to do, I think, but I can’t exactly call her up at 3 a.m. and ask her to come down here and comfort my… boyfriend? Yeah. River’s my boyfriend. That sounds right.

River’s sobbing slows, and I let out a small sigh of relief.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask as gently as I can.Tell me who I need to murder.

“He’s dead,” River blurts out through his tears. “Pandora, he’sdead.”

Dead.

Blaze? Or Asch?

The knife goes through the inside of my chest, and it’s a wonder there isn’t a torrent of blood.

“Who?” I demand.

River looks up at me, his eyes still glassy with tears. “You wouldn’t know him,” he says, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows hard. “You should have, though. You’d have thought he was pathetic but sweet.” He sobs again. “Fuck. Franklin was such an idiot.”