Page 54 of Violent Skies

Why did you lie?

I watch as he strips slowly from the leather jacket, tossing it on the bed he never takes his eyes off me. The next to go is the shirt. He rolls it up from the bottom and pulls it over his shoulders awkwardly. The ink across his chest and shoulders is new, darker and heavier than I remember. I step forward and I understand why. It’s scar tissue.

I lift my fingers to touch his shoulder and he inhales so deeply I can feel it in my own lungs. I trace the lines of scarring across his collar bone, matching it to the damage on the hoodie as I go.

“Did it hurt?” I dare to ask, looking up to meet his eyes. He grinds out a rough breath as my fingertips brush across the large mangled patch on his hip.

“I can’t forget how excruciating it was,” he answers honestly, and I can see the agony there, behind the ice in his gaze.

“You weren’t driving.” I whisper, noticing the burn scars around his ribcage.

His jaw clenches tightly. “I was.”

“You’re lying,” I push, confused as to why.

“I never lied to you,” he corrects me. “Not once.”

“You never told me what was going on. Withholding is the same as lying. Secrets hurt just as much as lies, Riggs.” I watch him nod, the shirt tangling in his fist at his side, but he doesn’t make a play to put it back on.

“You think I don’t know that?” he says, finally exhaling. His tongue runs over his bottom lip and he looks down at the ground. “I’ve kept thousands my entire life, Cress—to protect you.”

“That’s an excuse,” I whisper.

“Only you would think that,” he chuckles, shaking his head at me. “I’m not going to start speaking ill of him just because you want the truth. I won’t ruin how they remember him for shit that’s in the past. Things I can’t change.”

“Is it really all bad?” I ask him, scared of his answer.

When he doesn’t say anything I take his silence as one, I just wish I knew the Koa they all did. “I killed him, Cress. It was me that night.” Riggs breathes out.

“No.” I shake my head.

“Why are you picking so hard at this?” he barks, louder than I’ve ever heard him.

“Because you’re still protecting him! Even now! And I don’t understand why…” I step forward again. “This is undeniable proof. You can lie to me all you want. These scars tell the truth.”

Riggs stares at me and I can feel the weight of the world on my shoulders through his gaze. It burns across the bridge of my nose and ripples down into the pit of my stomach.

“I feel stupid,” I confess.

“No.” He’s quick to move, his finger beneath my chin as he pulls my face up to meet his intense gaze. It’s not an omission, it’s more deflection. “He manipulated everything we knew for his benefit. Including us.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, staring at him, trying to control all the other thoughts stirring below the surface. All the unanswered questions I have that threaten to explode from me at any given second. But I have him here, now, talking and I can’t risk forcing him away again.

“I only ever wanted you to be safe and he used that against me. Every single time,” Riggs confesses.

“Why didn’t you ever just…”

“It’s not that simple..” He clears his throat. “He made me believe that he loved you the best, that he knew what you wanted and needed before you ever did, and I just got overwhelmed with the idea that I could never be that.”

“That’s stupid,” I argue.

“We were kids, Cress.” He drops the shirt and cups my face in his calloused hands, the cool metal of his rings biting into my skin. “Koa was always one step ahead, he took on the world like he was immortal. He was a god. So I did what I was told.”

“Like getting in the car that day?”

“Yeah,” he admits softly, and my heart starts to race.

I chew my bottom lip, tasting the copper that pools there as the skin splits from my frustration. His eyes well and I can feel his lack of control in the way his hands tremble around my face.