Page 59 of Riot’s Revenge

That should’ve satisfied something bitter inside me after what he’d done, but it just hurt.

A quiet knock sounded against the bedroom door before Jenna pushed it open slightly. “You awake?”

I let out a tired laugh. “Yep.”

Jenna walked inside carrying two mugs of coffee, her dark curls piled messily on top of her head while exhaustion sat beneath her eyes too. Lately, our afternoon shifts had been brutal, but she still kept making space for me without complaint.

“Drink before you pass out standing up again,” she muttered, handing over the mug.

I accepted it gratefully before sitting up against the wall. The coffee tasted amazing compared to Riot’s, which was stronger and more bitter, but I drank it anyway.

Jenna studied me quietly over the rim of her own mug. “You gonna tell me what happened yet?”

I stared down into the coffee, not because I didn’t trust Jenna, but because saying it out loud would make it real in a way I still wasn’t ready for. But she had let me into her home without asking for anything in return.

“I walked in on him with another woman.”

“Oh.”

I nodded once, looking down as the tears dropped onto my hand. “He cheated,” I said quietly. “Except, apparently, it wasn’t cheating because we never technically said we were exclusive.” The bitterness in my own voice surprised me.

Jenna frowned immediately. “That’s bullshit.”

I gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah. I know that.”

But the worst part was that Riot genuinely hadn’t understood why I looked so destroyed. That was what kept replaying in my head over and over again—Riot standing there confused by the depth of my pain, like somewhere along the way I’d built a relationship without him ever realizing it had become one.

Jenna reached over and squeezed my knee gently. “You staying away from him?”

I looked down at the coffee in my hands. “I don’t know.”

That was the humiliating truth. Because part of me still wanted him, still missed him. I still reached for my phone during long shifts expecting a text from him waiting there. I hated myself for that more than anything else.

By the time we left for work a few hours later, rain had started falling steadily across the city.

I tied my hair back in the passenger mirror while Jenna drove, exhaustion sitting heavy beneath my skin. Everything felt harder lately. Sleeping. Eating. Concentrating, even breathing sometimes.

The clinic swallowed both of us the second we walked inside, pulling me into the familiar rhythm of twelve-hour chaos almost immediately. By the end of my shift my feet ached, my head pounded, and I realized halfway through updating charts that I hadn’t eaten since yesterday evening.

“You look dead,” Jenna informed me while pulling on her coat.

“Feel dead.”

“Come get food before you collapse.”

I almost declined automatically before realizing I genuinely didn’t have the energy to argue.

The diner across from the clinic smelled like sugar, coffee, and baked bread when we stepped inside. Warmth wrapped around me instantly while quiet music drifted through the small space.

“Sit,” Jenna ordered. “I’m getting pie.”

I slid tiredly into a booth near the window while rain streaked softly against the glass outside. For a few blessed minutes, I managed not to think about Riot.

Then a plate appeared in front of me holding a thick slice of strawberry cheesecake.

The man standing at our table smiled slightly. “You look like you need the good stuff.”

He was probably around my age, broad-shouldered beneath a black bakery T-shirt with flour dusted faintly along one arm. Attractive in a soft sort of way, he had warm eyes and an easy smile that felt completely non-threatening.