The Heir Read online

  That was true; our families had often gone on the same vacations, but I couldn’t remember much, even when I tried to think about it. I remembered the pictures in my room, talking about the fun we had, but memories? I didn’t have them. Why is that? Does the pain from my tragedy block them out?

  I nodded. “Yeah, makes sense, I just didn’t realize your dad went by Ryker.”

  “Yep, now let’s see this knight in action.”

  I rolled my eyes and threw another pillow at his face. I would never tell him this, but I still would rather marry a prince. I wasn't sure how long we laid there, but I fell asleep, and when I woke up to the dark night and someone entering Ryker’s room, I sat up.

  “Emma?” I looked to the door where Ryker’s dad stood, confusion in his gaze. Ryker groaned and sat up, rubbing his eyes.

  “Hey, dad, what's up?” He asked, pulling me down back to the bed and wrapping his arms around me, his face in my hair.

  “Why is Emma Warren in your bed, son?” His voice was firm, and I wanted to be invisible.

  “We fell asleep.”

  “Obviously, son, but—”

  “Dad, seriously?”

  “Just take her home, and do not do this again. You are both way too young to be having—” I pulled myself from Ryker’s warmth and jumped to the side of the bed.

  “No, sir, fully dressed. It was completely innocent,” I said. My face had to be red.

  “Ryker?”

  “As much as I’d love to tell you something else happened—”

  I glared at him as he chuckled.

  “Emma is not lying, dad; nothing happened. We really did just fall asleep.”

  His dad nodded as if he finally believed us. “Well, hurry up, and get her home. It's late, and I'd hate her aunt to worry.”

  “If she is with me, Mary won't care.”

  His dad looked as if that was hard to believe. I didn't know why he was acting so strange. “Just take her home, son.” His dad then walked out of the room.

  “Ryker!” I whispered in anger.

  He laughed.

  “What? It's fun to mess with him sometimes.”

  “I don't want people to think that about me.”

  “Don't worry, Emma. He knows nothing happened.”

  He walked to the edge of the bed where I stood.

  “What was all that about—you wishing something did happen?” I asked confused. He merely shrugged and grabbed my hand in his as he pulled me from the room. We walked downstairs and through the front door, hearing his dad call out a goodbye. As we reached my house, I opened the door and then realized that Mary wasn't home yet. Ryker followed me inside and turned on the hall light.

  “She's not off yet,” I said sadly, not wanting to be alone.

  “Do you want me to stay until she gets here?” He made his way to the living room. I watched him make himself comfortable on my couch. “We could watch a movie again?” He asked, looking back at me. I walked around him, moving to the opposite end of the couch, not wanting Mary to find us all wrapped up together like Ryker’s dad had if I fell asleep again. Ryker’s brow rose in a question as he watched me.

  “What? I'm not doing a repeat of what we just went through at your house.”

  He laughed.

  “I'm not going to do anything to you.”

  “You’re my best friend, Ry. I know that.” His face twitched for a moment as if he didn't like what I'd just said, and I didn’t fully understand what could have been wrong with my statement.

  He finally shrugged, and then he turned on the sports highlights. I lost interest; my head was reeling with so many questions, so many thoughts. The face of that man was seared into my brain, an image I could not get out of my head.

  THE CAR WAS TURNED upside down, and the watch on my father's lifeless wrist ticked, counting down each second that blood dripped onto its clock face. I tried not to vomit and turned to my left to see black boots and a voice. “Yeah, both dead. You guys are real idiots, making such a mess.” Another pair of boots entered my vision. “I will clean this up. Go. At least, she is still alive; they don’t really matter—” As a face peered into the window with black hair, a perfect symmetrical face other than a crooked nose, I screamed.

  “EMMA,”

  I heard a masculine voice in my ear, and I fought to keep the man off me. What does he want? He knows I didn't die. Why did he spare me and leave my parents dead? What did he want with me? I panted and clawed at the voice trying to sooth me. “Emma, it's me, Ryker. You are dreaming.”

  I opened my eyes and saw blond hair, blue eyes, and I started to cry.

  “It’s him, Ryker, I saw him—that night. He kept me alive on purpose. He only wanted them dead.” Ryker held me as I cried into his shoulder.

  “What—?” he pulled away from me, searching my face.

  “It was him. You were right. He did help me, but he was irritated by the mess, but he didn’t care that my parents were dead,” I cried out and buried my face in his chest.

  “I will find him; I won't let him ever hurt you again.” As he said it, I wanted to believe it, to beg the universe to believe it with me and make it come true. But somehow, with that man’s face in the forefront of my mind, I knew that before long he would hurt me again. I just didn't know how.

  Snake

  “GET AWAY FROM ME!” My voice cracked in the middle of my scream. He was carrying me from the car, pulling me away from my father. I hit him in the chest and tried to kick, but my leg was throbbing. I looked at his face, so dark and so wrong.

  “Shh, Emma, I am going to keep you safe,” he had said, his voice making my insides squirm uncomfortably. I didn’t want him holding me, didn’t want him touching me. He set me down, and I was shaking, my bones rattling inside me, and I tried to catch my breath, but I was screaming. His face moved in front of my own.

  “Emma, you are safe. You are safe.” His dark black eyes were haunting me as he draped his Jacket over my freezing cold body, keeping me warm as I stood beside the wreck and the broken pieces of the car he had freed me from—from the blood that was pooling beside the open car door, the shattered glass along the highway, and the body on the side of the road with golden hair. I turned away, vomited, and screamed over and over again.

  “EMMA, YOU ARE HOME,” I heard a female voice. Someone was touching my arm, my hair, my face. I tried to move out of her grasp. Who was it? Where was I? As the fog of my nightmare dissipated, Mary lay beside me, and I realized that I was wrapped up in her arms.

  “I am here, Emma. I am here, sweetheart,” her voice cracked as she cried into my hair.

  “Mary?” I cried.

  “Yes, Emma, you are safe,” she whispered. I drifted back into sleep moments later, too exhausted to speak. My body had been too drained to fully wake up, and I gave into the blackness of exhaustion.

  “EMMA?” THE LIGHT FROM my window was blinding as the curtains were opened.

  “Ahh,” I groaned, pulling the blankets over my face.

  “We have to get to the flower shop. Are you still up for it today? That seemed like a really bad one last night.”

  “I am okay, Mary. If I just stay here, I will think about it all day.” I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. Mary walked to the edge of my bed and sat down.

  “You haven’t had these nightmares in weeks.”

  I nodded. What else was there to say? I am losing my mind—going crazy slowly. I just found out my parents were murdered? I remember parts of the crash that I wish I could forget? No, I can’t tell her those things. I don’t want to make her worry more than she already does.

  “It comes, and it goes,” I shrugged.

  “I am so sorry, honey. Let me know if I can do anything to help. Remember, we are in this together. You are not alone.”

  “Thanks, Mary. Sorry I woke you up.”

  “Oh, hush. Now, let’s get ready. We have got so many flowers to arrange.” She walked through my bedroom door, leaving me to get ready. With a sigh, I la
id down on my bed just a minute longer. Working would be good; working would help me forget him—the face I now held responsible for the loss of my parents, for the wreckage of my life.

  Working at the Rose Village was the perfect remedy for my Friday night with Ryker; the memories faded as the day progressed. Mary had two weddings to prepare for, so it was nonstop work Saturday and Sunday. It Kept my hands busy, and also my mind.

  On Monday morning, I didn’t wake up screaming, so there was no Mary there waiting for me with open arms. But, I did wake up in a cold sweat with his face etched into my mind. With aching hands from tying ribbons and bending wires, I showered his touch away, got dressed, and headed to school. I focused on looking forward to seeing my friends and to seeing Shad—not on him, whoever he was.

  As I walked down the hall to my first period, I could not help but notice that there were posters around school, advertising the homecoming dance. Had we really already been in school for a month? Time was slipping away from me, it seemed. I reached the classroom door, took a deep breath, and entered, putting on a face that smiled, a face that showed the world that I was okay, even though inside of me a snake was hollowing out my insides, and I was breaking from sorrow and pain.

  I made it through my first period, and I ached to see Shad. However bad it sounded, I knew I needed him to rid me of the hollowness and emptiness I felt. The snake of misery was coiling itself inside of me, making itself right at home, and I didn’t want it to stay.

  “Em—” The familiar voice of Ryker rang in my ears. I kept walking, knowing he would catch me. I felt his hand slip into mine, and I melted into him. His touch was warm, and I had not realized I was so cold yet. I looked into his sky blue-grey eyes, and I tried to hold back the tears. He wrapped me into his arms, and I let a few tears fall.

  “Ry,” I replied in a soft whisper.

  “I should have come by this weekend, Em, I knew you probably weren’t doing well, but I didn’t know if you would have wanted to see me after what I showed you.”

  “Ry, I’ll always need my best friend.”

  He pulled my face up to look at him, and he smiled at me. The warmth radiating off him made me feel at home, like things could be okay. My frozen insides were melting, unthawing, and I wanted to stay there forever in his arms until all the cold and all the pain was gone, until the snake uncoiled itself from around my heart forever.

  “Em, I swear I will find him, and I will give your parents the justice they deserve.”

  I nodded, unable to do anything else. The warning bell rang, and students started hurrying to class. Ryker let me go.

  “I will see you at lunch?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered as he stepped further away from me.

  “Emma, I wish I could fix everything.”

  I held up a hand. “It isn’t your fault, Ry. I will see you at lunch.” As he walked away slowly down the opposite hall, I turned and headed for class as well. I started to tremble with the built up cold and ice of winter inside of me, freezing back over. Ryker made me melt into the heat of summer, but without him, I was cold again, and the misery was all too real. I wished at that dark moment as I walked down the hall alone to the chime of the late bell, that the snake would bite me already and take me out of my misery because I wasn’t sure I could endure it all over again.

  I sat down in my seat, apologizing to my teacher. She nodded, and I was grateful she didn’t make me go to the office to get a late slip. To be honest, I didn’t know if I could have made it. But as I slipped into my seat, a song filled me, and the snake hissed and then disappeared. I looked up into two golden eyes, and I wanted to kiss the owner of those eyes for fighting the darkness within me, and casting it away.

  “Hey,” he said, looking at me with a strange look. He touched my foot with his. “You okay?” He asked.

  I nodded because what could I say with Karen Manning to my right and the teacher to my left?

  “Now, get with your partner and do some of the equations together,” our math teacher ordered. I realized at that moment that I had not been paying attention. How could I while Shad’s foot was nudging mine under the table? I felt a little loopy, happiness blooming through me where misery had been only minutes before.

  Shad moved his chair to my side of the table. He was close to me, so close that our shoulders were touching. I didn’t look at him, I didn’t feel like myself fully yet, and I didn’t know what to say. He slipped his hand under the table and found mine. When his skin touched mine, I thought that I had died and had gone to heaven. The darkness was gone, as if it had never even been there before. The snake was long gone with no sign that it had ever been there. I smiled at him, and he looked at me as if he were sad? Worried? I didn’t know. Somehow, he must have known that I couldn’t talk because we sat side-by-side, holding hands, and working on math, and I was finally free of that face, that person who haunted me, free from the misery, and free from the winter that had crept into me. With his touch, Shad healed me, took away my pain, my sorrow, and I was free.

  As class ended and I gathered up my notebook and things into my backpack, I realized that Shad was waiting for me. I slung my backpack on my back and started walking out the door. He came up beside me and casually ran his hand down my arm with electric shockwaves until his fingers tangled through mine. I breathed in deeply, feeling the happiness he seemed to be pouring inside me with just his touch. I looked at him then.

  He smiled. “Hey, are you really okay? Do you want to talk?” he asked quietly. I looked at his golden eyes, his perfectly styled hair, and his collared shirt that was again unbuttoned and untucked. I looked to his pants and noticed he was wearing jeans, and I looked back at him in surprise.

  “I know, very surprising,” he chuckled.

  “You are wearing jeans,” I said in a whisper.

  “Yes, it would seem you make me rethink my outfit choices.”

  “I like what you wear.”

  “I know, and believe me, I appreciate it. Trying something new for once isn’t a bad thing; however, I really think I prefer slacks to jeans.”

  I laughed, and wanted to cry for the pure elation it brought to me. Only an hour earlier, I wanted life to be over, and there I was, standing in the hallway, laughing with a very casual Shad in blue jeans and a white button-down shirt, that was untucked. How could he look so effortlessly perfect no matter what he wore? I wished I could pull that off.

  “Good,” I said with a smirk and touched his collar, smoothing it down. “But this is indeed a drastic transformation.”

  “My mother would be a little freaked out right now, I can tell you that. But she would be confused about how everything worked here, so I guess it was time I adapted.”

  “Adapted? Public school is so different?”

  “I mean, the uniforms are a big difference, and the parent involvement at my old school was insane.”

  “I see, well, nice to meet you, Relaxed Shad. I like you both ways.”

  “Now that we have my clothes figured out, which always seems to draw your attention—” He paused and pulled me closer with his hand that was still intertwined with mine. He was leaning against the brick wall, and I crashed into him, as his hand let go of mine to hold me close, my hands on the hard planes of his chest, his on my waist. He smiled his playful smile. I gulped. “That’s better. Now, tell me—what is bothering you?” he asked while moving one hand from my waist to touch my cheek. The long outdoor halls of classrooms and lockers were so silent, making it feel as if we were secluded even in the open hallway. It was silent, other than his song playing inside me. His closeness and his touch were doing strange things to my insides, and it was hard to hear my own thoughts.

  “I have nightmares,” I blurted out as I looked into his eyes.

  “Nightmares?”

  “Of the night my parents died, of the car crash.” The words had just flown out of me, as if talking to him about the worst thing that had ever happened to me was as easy as talking about the weather.


  “You were there?”

  “I was in the backseat of the car. And I saw them die. I was pulled out of the car by someone, and I had suppressed that memory until this past weekend, and I think I remember the man who hit us.”

  “What happened to him? Is he in jail?”

  “It was a hit-and-run, but now, I am thinking that he was the one who called 911. He was there with me. He gave me his jacket, but once the police got there, he fled. He was guilty.” A tear left my eye, and Shad wiped it away.

  “Oh, Emma, I am so sorry.”

  “Ryker is working on trying to find this guy. He thinks that this man—that he—he murdered them—wanted to kill them.”

  “Ryker is?”

  “Yes, he is trying to hire a private investigator.”

  He looked away for a moment. “He was talking to Keil the other day at the office; I wonder if he hired my family’s company. They are good at finding people. He told me he needed my help, but he never talked to me about it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I can assure you that if he is out there to be found, they can find him.”

  “I just want to forget about it all. I just want to have a normal life,” I said, wanting desperately to lay my head against his chest. I want to melt into him, be in his arms always, to kiss him.

  “Well, let’s think about something else then,” he suggested, clearing his throat.

  “What else is there?” I sniffled, not realizing a few tears escaped and then my stomach decided to growl. That is embarrassing, maybe he did not notice?

  “How about lunch?” he asked, and I looked up at him. The hall was silent as all the students were probably already eating. “Food can fix that stomach of yours, which is growling like a tiger.”

  “You heard that?” I said, moving away from him.

  “I think the whole world heard that,” he laughed, and I playfully pushed at his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you some food there, little tiger.”