Home wasn’t too far from the River Walk, thankfully, but every minute of the drive was dominated by my inner fears. Fears I’d been sure I’d gotten rid of, that I’d banished after Marcus and I had broken up. Or rather, after I’d freed myself from him.

“So much for that.” I parked outside my apartment building, and got out, exhaling through my mouth.

I’d been practicing breathing exercises just to keep from crashing into something. It was ridiculous.

It was the fact that it’d come from Bryan.

Even thinking his name still gave me the shivers, the kind that made me ashamed of myself. God, why did I care? Why did I want him? Why did you let yourself trust him?

I walked up the steps to the glass front door of the building and buzzed myself in, swallowing my fears and exhaling, slowly. Everything would be OK. I’d work this out as I’d worked it out the last time. Even if it meant moving away from a city I’d pretty much grown up in.

I’d find the money somehow. I’d move on.

Away from Bryan? Away from Carly?

My heart twanged in my chest, and I forced myself up the steps that wound to the second floor of the building. I walked down the hall, lit by the overhead lights, since there were no windows looking in on it, and toward 24C.

It was weird. Not two weeks ago, I’d come home to this apartment every night, studied, chatted to Bryan on the app. It had been home. Now, it was like… I was walking in the shadows of my past footsteps and it didn’t feel right.

The familiar hallway, the steps, the drive over here, it’d mocked me.

I wasn’t the waitress anymore. I was the nanny. I checked my watch and sighed. Still three hours until I had to pick Carly up from school. Which meant I had about two hours to think it out at the apartment before I had to leave.

My feet dragged on the wooden floor of the hall. I fished my keys out of my pocket and walked up to the front door of the apartment. I pushed the key forward and the door creaked open, nudged by the impact.

“What –?” My throat dried up.

The door was open.

Thoughts rattled through my mind. Beverly was fastidious about locking up the place after she’d gone. After all, she’d grown up poor and “on the wrong side of the tracks,” as she’d put it. She didn’t believe in leaving things open, even when we were in the apartment.

How many times had she insisted I close windows on a summer’s day, even though it was friggin’ boiling and our AC had been on the blink?

My stomach dropped, then lifted, dropped again.

I looked left and right then nudged the door open, carefully. I stepped up to it, on the threshold and peered inside.

The sofa was on its side, a long slit down it, its foam innards spilling out onto the floor. The coffee table was askew, the magazines ripped up and strewn across the stained carpeting we’d never had the money to fix. The bookshelf had been tipped over, the tiny TV smashed. The apartment was trashed.

“Oh my god,” I whispered, iced traveling through my veins.

It had to be them. The Riders. It had to be Marcus.

I stepped back, once, twice, and on the third time, my back hit the wall opposite our door. I fumbled my handbag open and grabbed for my cell, dialed Beverly’s phone. It went straight to voicemail. “Come on,” I muttered. “What the hell?” I phoned again, but same result. “Beverly! The apartment’s trashed. Someone broke in—I’m calling the cops. Call me when you get this.”

I hung up, my fingers fumbling over the screen. I tried dialing #377, but I kept slipping, mistyping. “Fuck!” I hissed.

A tan hand closed over my wrist. “Riley.”

I shrieked and tried pulling away, but the grip tightened.

“Riley! Riley, stop. It’s me. Relax.”

I looked up into Bryan’s face, but the fear didn’t instantly melt away. He had to be one of them. He was here to take me to Marcus.

“Let go of me! Let go!”

“Stop it,” he growled. “Give me your phone so I can call the cops.”

“What?”

“Give me the phone. I need to help you report this. I’ve got to –”

“No!” I wrenched my arm free and backed away from him, pulse racing now. “I don’t trust you.”

Bryan looked at me as if I’d punched him in the gut. “Fine. Fuck it,” he said, and whipped out his cell phone. He tapped on the screen, then walked off a short distance. “Yes, hello, I have—” His words died down as he walked out of range, and my heart leaped into my throat again.

How the hell had he found me here? And who had he just called? It could be the cops. Or it’s Marcus. He’s coming to get you. Take you away.

I scanned the hall, but there was no way out except for the stairs, and Bryan stood at the head of them. Through the apartment? A fire escape? But no, I had no guarantee that there wasn’t someone waiting in there.

Before I could make the decision, Bryan was off the phone and walking back toward me. “The cops are on their way,” he said. “Are you OK? I can run downstairs and get you some water, a soda or something. Think I saw a vending machine in the lobby.”

“What are you doing here?” I clutched my back and phone to my chest, struggling to breathe.

“Riley, you have to relax. I am not your enemy in this, OK? I called Bev after you ran off, and she told me you’d come back to the apartment to think. She gave me the address and asked me to check up on you.”

“What? Why would she do that? She knows what happened. She knows—”

“Beverly actually gave me the chance to explain myself,” he said, actually smiling at me. Smiling as if this was all a big joke. He had no idea. “Maybe, if you did the same, you’d understand.”

“I don’t want —”

“We don’t have to talk about this now,” he said. “The cops will be here soon, and we can, discuss it when it’s all over.”

I shook my head. “This is too crazy.”

Bryan didn’t make a move to come closer, but he did put out a hand, holding it upward as if he could calm me—like I was a caged animal lashing out. “I understand why you’re upset. And I get why this would freak you out, Riley, but you have to give me this chance to explain. Do you really think I would endanger my daughter like that? With the Crimson Riders?”

I didn’t reply, but the seed of doubt that’d been there from the start flowered.

“I’ll prove it to you,” Bryan continued. “I’ll show you I’m telling the truth. You just have to give me the opportunity. Fuck it, we can go somewhere public to talk about it, so you’ll feel safe, OK? Just give me a chance. Please.”

I pressed my lips together, my stubborn streak thickening against this moment and him. The belief that any of what we’d experienced together could’ve been real.

“Riley, please. I can’t lose you.” Those words were so real on his lips. It should’ve been a sin. It had to be a lie. “Please. Just one meal. One meal after this.”

“One meal?” I couldn’t possibly agree to this. It was the wrong decision. It would be easier to reject him, safer, even.

“Please,” he replied, struggling around the word. “I don’t usually ask for things twice. I’m not even asking at this point. I’m begging. Give me a chance to explain it to you. My sister believed me, and she’s the most cynical person I know. Just one shot.”

The curiosity bubbling behind my eyes, the need in my core, right behind my solar plexus, would be the end of me. “OK,” I said.