Page 31 of Riot’s Revenge

He shuffled over me, stood, and stretched, and I immediately regretted looking in his direction. The man had entirely too many muscles for somebody who spent half his life riding a motorcycle.

A faint smirk appeared. “See something you like?”

I rolled my eyes. “There he is.”

His laugh rumbled through the apartment. The sound followed him as he grabbed his kutte from the chair and shrugged it on.

A few minutes later he paused beside the front door.

“Lock this door behind me and get some sleep.”

“I was planning on it.”

“Good.” For a moment, he lingered. Then he nodded once and stepped into the hallway as the door clicked shut behind him. His absence seemed to echo from every corner.

I stared at the closed door for several seconds before letting out a slow breath. The apartment should have felt exactly the same after he left, but it didn’t. His coffee mug still sat on the table beside mine. One of my flashcards had disappeared beneath the sofa cushion, abandoned when he’d finally given up pretending to understand it. The blanket was still tangled around my legs, carrying the lingering warmth of where he’d been only minutes earlier.

I sank back against the sofa and stared at my revision notes. At some point, Riot had become part of the things I looked forward to in the week. I wasn’t sure if I liked that, but also knew that I wasn’t strong enough to say no.

14

RIOT

Three days had passed since I’d fallen asleep on Maria’s sofa. Reaper had been particularly annoying about it, taking every opportunity to remind me that apparently men like me didn’t accidentally spend entire nights at a woman’s apartment.

I ignored him for a while. By the fourth day, I was parked outside the clinic waiting for Maria’s shift to finish, already planning several creative ways to make Reaper regret opening his mouth.

The clinic doors opened just after six p.m. and all thoughts of him vanished. I knew something was wrong the second Maria walked out of the clinic.

At first, I couldn’t have pinpointed what it was. She didn’t look hurt, she wasn’t crying, and from a distance she looked the same as she always did after a long shift. The problem was that over the last few weeks, I’d learned the difference between tired Maria, stressed Maria, and irritated Maria, and the woman crossing the parking lot wasn’t any of them.

Usually, she spotted me straight away. There’d be an eye roll, a sarcastic comment about me lurking outside medical facilities, or some complaint about the fact that I’d somehow appeared with food or bad coffee again. That day she barely seemed to notice I was there.

I pushed away from my bike and watched her more closely as she approached. Her shoulders were tight, her gaze fixed somewhere ahead of her, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. By the time she reached me, a knot had already formed in my stomach.

“Maria.”

She looked up when she heard my voice, and it seemed like she was trying to smile, but she didn’t quite manage it.

Every instinct I had immediately started screaming that something was wrong. I stepped toward her. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing.”

The answer came too quickly for me to believe it. “Try again.”

Maria looked away, and that alone told me more than anything else could have. It didn’t matter whether she was annoyed, tired, or arguing, she always looked people in the eye and said exactly what she thought. The fact that she couldn’t do it now made my chest ache.

I closed the distance between us. “Maria.” Something in my voice must have reached her because I watched the control she’d been holding onto all day finally start to crack. It wasn’t dramatic, but suddenly her eyes were shining with tears, and she looked furious with herself for it.

Maria wasn’t somebody who cried easily. She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

The apology made absolutely no sense. “What happened?”

A short laugh escaped her, but there wasn’t anything remotely amused about it. “My landlord happened.”

Every muscle in my body tightened, anger surging before I knew what to be angry about. I folded my arms across my chest and waited. “Explain.”

Maria took a shaky breath and rubbed at her eyes before answering. “The building got sold a couple of months ago. Apparently, there was some issue with the lease, and the new owners want everybody out.”