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"Don't be like that," he groaned.
"Don't follow me, either. I'll know if you do," she snapped. She didn't care who was staring at that point, she just wanted to get the hell out of there. She sped out of the restaurant once she got back into her car and headed home, deciding that visiting Dexter could wait until the next day. The restaurant was only a few blocks from her house, so she arrived quickly and rushed up the steps to her apartment. She swung the door open and almost collapsed inside the door.
Ryker was sitting on her couch, seemingly waiting for her to come home.
"Jezebeth let me in," he murmured.
When his eyes met hers, she felt her eyes stinging with tears. "I'm...I'm sorry," she whispered, shaking her head back and forth.
He stood up and approached her slowly. She could see him through blurred eyes as he reached up and ran his fingers through his hair, a habit she connected with Renly up until now. It was hard sometimes to remember they were brothers but seeing him now, with sorrow-filled eyes as he stared at her, it hit her in the chest.
"Do you blame me?" she asked.
He closed the distance between them, enveloping her in his arms. She let her tears run freely, letting all her emotions flow out of her and onto Ryker's shoulders as she cried. He was so warm, and it was then that she realized that she never put her jacket back on.
That damn jacket, making everything worse.
"It's not your fault. Nothing is," he murmured in her ear. He brushed a comforting hand over the back of her head as he held her close to his chest.
"But...but Renly—"
"Forget about him," he murmured, brushing his hand over her hair again. "If he doesn't want to believe you, he doesn't deserve your worry. You have me. That's all that you need."
She nodded into his chest. Ryker was willing to listen, even if no one else wanted to believe her. In the end, she'd always have him and Caspar.
AWKWARD NIGHT
Ryker had guided her away from the doorway and over to the couch after a while. He lifted her legs into his lap, and they sat in the mostly silent living room wallowing in their own thoughts. Ryker continued to pet her hair as she leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Do you want to go to the funeral with me?" he asked, breaking the silence.
"What?" She lifted her head off of him, turning to see his expression. "Are you serious?"
"Yes. I need someone I can lean on, and you're the only one I trust. It's a few days from now, I believe. Madeleine is the one setting it up, but I'm sure she'll take as long as she can to make sure the event is extravagant, and everyone focuses on her instead of paying respect to Earl."
"You don’t really think she’d do that, right?" she asked.
“She’s a vile woman. I don’t understand how anyone could put up with her. She was the entire reason the business got wrapped up into this sort of chaos.” He shook his head. “If she wasn't so good at involving herself with just the right people to benefit her, I would have expected her to be the one under threat from the Cantil and dead right now.”
“How can you talk about this so…so calmly?” she questioned. “Even if you didn't like him, he still raised you, you know?”
He sighed.
“No one deserves to die, but it's inevitable, isn't it? They should have been smarter and listened to me when I told them they shouldn’t get into deals with people they were at a disadvantage with. That’s what got him stabbed in the hand in La Noir,” He looked at Mykie before looking away quickly. “I didn’t know who it was they were working with, but I knew nothing about it was good. If it wasn’t for my friendship with Chance, I would have said the same thing about a deal with him.”
Mykie nodded and leaned her head back on his shoulder as she contemplated what he said. It didn't make much sense to her, having this detached set of emotions for a parental figure. She was old enough to remember her mother and father, but Chance was the one to raise her from the cusp of childhood into adulthood. She could never imagine resenting him, even though he didn't devote his every waking moment to her. No sane parent did that, so no adoptive or foster family would be willing to do it either.
“Can you remember your birth parents?”
She felt his chin rub against the top of her head, indicating that he shook it. “Not much. I know my mother was blonde, and she had eyes sort of like mine. The rest of her is fuzzy in my mind. If I saw her again, I might be able to point her out in a lineup. My dad is a no-go for me. It’s possible that he left my mother way before she abandoned me, and that’s why I can’t remember him.”
"Hmm," she hummed. There wasn't much she could say to him about that. She couldn't imagine living with the knowledge that your mother abandoned you, even if he couldn't remember much about her.
“I never thought of you as ‘friends’ with Chance,” she murmured. “Really, I can’t see Chance having friends, at all. He doesn’t trust anyone enough.” She started to draw circles on her thigh with her finger as she thought back to her childhood. “He never brought people home, after he started living in my house. It was a long time until he started seeing anyone, either. I think he was worried that I would think that he was abandoning me.”
“I think he was hiding you away, while he could. No one knew about you until a year before you joined the Cantil.”
Mykie sat up. “What? I didn’t know that.”
