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This again.
“No.” Even though I release her, I don’t kick back in my chair. Letting my guard down for a second could end up with Leighton being dead. Never. “You’ll see her if and when you’ve been to therapy. In the hospital you’ll be admitted to. It might take weeks. Might take months. I’m not giving up on you. But don’t delude yourself into thinking it means I won’t protect Leighton with everything I have.”
“She’s gotten to you.” Rylan snarls first, then her voice slowly rises to a scream. “You’re going to lock me up in an institution and forget I ever existed, and it’s all because of her.”
At this volume, Leighton must be hearing this. “Keep your voice down.”
“Watch your mouth, keep your voice down, go to the hospital.” Rylan mimics my stern tone. “You’re gonna ask me to kill myself too? That’ll solve allll your problems, won’t it?”
“I would never.” My jaw clenches, fingers clawing at the arms of my chair. “I love you. I’m doing this for you just as much as I’m doing this for Leighton.”
“Liar,” Rylan wails, pulling at her hair. “You want to kill me! You want to kill me!”
She goes on and on, repeating the same sentence, her body shaking violently. Suddenly, she gets up. The sharp movement causes the chair she sat on to tumble backward and fall to the floor with a loud thwack.
“I don’t want to kill you.” Mirroring her movements, I stand up. I grab her shoulders, searching her eyes. I find nothing. “Listen to me, Rylan Kingston, I do not want to kill you.”
“You want to kill me! You want to kill…”
I hear the sound of the front door open over the repetitive screams.
“Don’t,” I growl. My gaze remains fixated on Rylan, hoping she thinks the command was meant for her.
“…Want to kill me! You want to…”
“Rylan, please.”
My daughter’s psychotic break stops in an instant. Her muscles tense beneath my hands, her head whipping to the woman behind me.
“There she is.” She grins, her chest heaving. “There’s the whore.”
“Shut up,” I warn her. “Look at me, Rylan, not at her. At me.”
“You look…” Rylan continues to eye Leighton, even when I grab her chin and tilt her head to me. “How should I say it? Freshly fucked? Yes. So very fucked. Whore.”
“Rylan, please,” Leighton repeats. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We’re still best friends.”
“Yes.” Rylan’s lips stretch into her predatorial smile. “We are. Want to hug on it, bestie?”
“Leave her alone.” I walk Rylan and I forward. As away as fucking possible from Leighton. “You’re talking to me, Rylan. Whatever you have to say, you say it to me. Your father.”
“Okay.”
She’s lying. I know she’s lying.
Leighton’s hand on my shoulder steals my focus. A mistake.
A terrible, terrible mistake.
In that split, horrible second, Rylan wrenches herself out of my hold. I watch in slow motion how she reaches into one of the pockets of her trench coat. How this isn’t a knife she’s pulling out.
It’s a gun.
“No!” I shout. My instincts kick in, and I start fighting with her over the gun. “Drop it now, Rylan. Drop the gun right fucking now.”
“I won’t,” she shrieks, shaking and twisting in an attempt to break free.
She’s crying and slobbering, and I hate it for her. I can’t blame anyone but myself for what’s happening to my daughter. Not even Leighton for wanting to help me get her friend back.
