It was only when Ryder and Reese stood across from each other at the coffin, both watching the flowers twitch and shake from the breeze around them, that either one finally gave in to their tears.
“I’m…I’m so sorry,” she’d tried and the look he’d given her, that shocked, cool fury, scared her. “Ry…”
“No.” It was the only word he spoke, but it came at her like an anvil pinning her to the ground.
“She was scared.” Tears clogged her throat, made speaking clearly impossible. “She didn’t want…” One flash of his eyes, gaze searing and angry, and Reese didn’t finish her explanation.
Ryder Glenn had loved her. He’d told her so many times. He’d shown her in long, sweet kisses that never went anywhere. She felt it in the gentle glide of his fingers moving through her hair as she rested her head in his lap, sprawled on the grass of the empty stadium. She’d heard it in every drawl of her name coming out in a happy sigh when he spoke that long, exaggerated syllable. No one could touch her the way he did, —could listen and hear and want her the way Ryder did—and not love her.
“You never…told me. Not telling is the same as a lie. That’s what you are. A liar,” he’d told her, head down, tears covering his face. In his hand Ryder held the petals from a white rose, and they slipped between his clasped fingers. “You’re a disgusting liar.” Then Ryder walked away from her, those petals falling behind him on the ground as he left.
Reese dropped the towel, turning the tap up higher and sticking her head under the water, hoping it would clear her head, hoping like hell the shock of frigid water did something to clear away the swell of guilt she’d spent ten years trying to be rid of.
AUGUST IN NEW ORLEANS was like something out of Dante’s worst nightmares. Reese was in an inferno. That’s what she told herself as she left her Challenger and ran toward the elevator in the stadium parking garage. The garage was dark and well ventilated, but Reese believed the heat from the one-hundred and two-degree temperature would melt her Nikes right off her feet before she made it inside the building.
Reese didn’t care if she melted completely. The water hadn’t helped.
It was August 15.
Ten years since Rhiannon’s death.
It had landed, and like clockwork, the memories and dreams consumed Reese. Rhiannon filled every free space in her mind. Her laugh. The goofy faces she’d make watching old Disney movies. The way her eyes softened when Luke called her beautiful. The way she’d smile and release a long, swoony sigh when she caught her parents kissing. How she rolled her eyes and made an exaggerated disgusted face anytime Ryder pulled Reese into his bedroom. Every detail filled up Reese’s mind, and with those memories came the guilt. It suffocated her. She needed release, a distraction, something that would take away the ache in her chest.
She took advantage of the day and the empty gym, heading straight for the treadmill and jacking up the speed setting so she could run. Pink Floyd filled her ears. “Wish You Were Here” was the track she’d listen to over and over anytime Rhiannon’s memory came calling for attention. Reese would slip to older songs, then newer ones, until she had a playlist that brought her the right amount of emotion. She didn’t want to hide from her grief. She didn’t want to bury her guilt. She wanted it all toppling over, spilling into tears and sweat and exertion as she ran. It was a ritual she’d never been able to quit.
Her Guilt Run. Her exorcism of emotion. It was what Reese needed on that Sunday morning: just the rhythm of her feet on the treadmill and the whine of David Gilmour’s guitar as he sang about missing someone he’d never get back.
She could relate.
The treadmill whirled, and the steady pace Reese kept became a comfort she didn’t want. She needed the pain. She needed the release it would bring.
Reese’s body hummed. After just ten minutes and an incline of the treadmill’s surface, her heart raced, thundering loud enough that she heard it over the switching track on her phone. Floyd shifted into another sad song, something newer that brought more memories, more tokens of the past that she couldn’t ever lose.
“Joanne.” Lady Gaga. Another song about loss, this one specifically the loss of a bright, brilliant girl taken before her