The Sinners - Ruby Vincent Page 0,22
marched me to the grave. Rio cracked a seal that wasn’t ready to break and passing through the gates crumbled it to dust. Thirteen years and I never said her name. Thirteen seconds in this place and I fell apart.
Royal held me down, but it was truer to say he held me together. My tears slowed under his soft murmuring, and my broken pieces reformed like a video of a smashed vase played in reverse.
My hands came up, clutching his back. “I’m sorry,” I rasped. “Did I hurt you?”
“You clawed me to fucking ribbons.” The cuts on his face told the truth. As did his grin. “But I’ve taken worse.”
“I’m okay now.” My voice was small. “I want to give Rory her flowers.”
“We’ll do it together this time.”
Royal helped me to my feet. He held my hand as he picked up the flowers and guided me to her grave.
Holding them to my chest, I knelt, gazing at my reflection in the polished marble. She cried, but her tears fell gently, and her eyes were soft.
“I do love you,” I whispered. “If I could go back, I’d give you a thousand music boxes. I pray you have forgiven me... because I’ll never forgive myself.”
Taking out the dead flowers, I picked up her vase.
Ting.
I frowned. What was that noise?
I shook the vase. Something rattled inside.
“Em, what’s up?”
Tipping it over, a glint of refracted sunlight struck my eyes.
A key.
“Royal.” My tears vanished under horrible understanding. “Royal, oh my gosh.”
“What is it?”
“The note they left me.” I showed him the small silver key. “It was a message.”
“HOLY SHIT.”
Royal put his key in the ignition some time ago but didn’t try to go anywhere. We sat in his car as the rising sun brought more guests to the cemetery. This peaceful place did see life. It saw families and loved ones through the worst times in their story and, as I finally discovered, it also kept a secret.
The seal was reforming. The effect of my time with Rory and being violently forced to face her again clung to me like film. I wasn’t fine, but as had been the case over the last thirteen years, other things crowded my mind to the point I was able to lock my tragedy away to deal. My eyes were red-rimmed but clear as I faced the new problems of the key.
“Holy shit,” Royal repeated. “That’s why they didn’t flat-out write for you to go to the cemetery. If the cops got their hands on it, they wanted to make sure you were the only person to come here.”
“It’s the only explanation,” I said, pieces clicking together. “Something like this wouldn’t end up there by accident. No one else has a reason to go near that part of the cemetery. Grandpa bought that plot for the Bancrofts.”
“Your parents left you a key.”
I nodded slowly, gazing at the piece of cut metal that turned everything I knew upside down. “They left me a key.”
“A key to what?”
“I have no idea.”
“We have to get out of here.” Royal started the car. “This changes everything, Em.”
I tore my eyes away. “Changes everything? You’re not— Royal, you can’t tell your dad. You can’t tell anyone!”
“He’s Rio. Don’t call him my dad.” Royal screeched out of the parking lot, zooming onto the main road. “I’m not telling him shit. He believes that message meant nothing. He has to keep believing that.”
“You promise me?”
Royal gave me a hard look. “Do you really need to ask?”
I searched his face. “No,” I said. “I don’t.”
Inhaling deep, I held my breath till my lungs ached. It burst out of me as I made up my mind.
“Pull over.”
“What? Why?” asked Royal.
“You know why.”
The road to the cemetery was a lone dirt path surrounded by forest. Royal veered off the road and drove us through the tree line.
It was too much. Rio. Hiro. Cassius. Clay. Damien and the brutes. Rory. The key.
Forget crowding my pain out with more of a different kind. I wanted the brief relief to not feel pain at all.
We were on each other before he shut off the car. One hand tore at my zipper. The other yanked the key out. I drew back, throwing open the door, and my heart thumping like the bass at a rock concert. Royal’s growl at my escape was an injection of lust straight to my core. I was an attractive girl and boys flashed me interest often. But it was nothing compared to the burning hunger in Cassius’s eyes.