“Yeah, that should work,” Parker said after a moment’s thought. “But won’t that blow your cover with Leo?”
Ryker’s face was expressionless. “You may think I didn’t care if I killed her,” he said, “but you’re wrong, man. I love her, and I’m not about to let Viktor keep stalking her if I can do something about it.”
Oh God. I stared at him, caution whispering in my mind. He said he loved me, but what about Branna? What about how icy cold he’d been to me? Had I been utterly wrong about what had happened yesterday? What if Ryker hadn’t been lying to me about his feelings? He was putting his life on the line to help us stop Viktor … because he said he loved me.
And last night I’d slept with Parker.
Ryker took my hand and tugged me toward him. Still in a stupor of shock and confusion, I let him pull me in and wrap his arms around me.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured in my ear. “I knew you were afraid and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I just prayed you’d trust me. If I’d hesitated, he’d have killed us both.”
“And Branna?” I asked, unreasonably hoping he had slept with her. It would make things easier.
“She and I are through,” he said. “She knows me as someone completely different. Not the person I really am. Not like you.”
The nausea in my stomach increased threefold. It wasn’t that I regretted what had happened between Parker and me—I was utterly in love with him—but if I hadn’t thought Ryker and I were over, it wouldn’t have happened.
But now Ryker thought we were still together and if he knew, he’d think I’d cheated on him. Which I guess technically, I had, but that hadn’t been my intention. I’d believed we were over. I’d told Parker so.
At the thought of Parker, my gaze lifted, searching over Ryker’s shoulder, and I found him. He was staring at us, his lips pressed in a thin line and his hands clenched in fists at his sides.
“Say you forgive me,” Ryker said in my ear. “All I’ve been able to think about is the look on your face when you ran out.”
“Um, I-I don’t know,” I stalled. “I need time.” What was I supposed to do? Break up with Ryker right now? When they were about to go into a dangerous situation with Viktor? When he was already toeing the edge in this deadly game with Leo?
Ryker had said he loved me and I loved him, too—but I’d been in love with Parker for so long, I couldn’t give him up now that things had changed between us. It was bad timing, that’s all, but when this was over with Viktor and Leo, I’d explain to Ryker that it wasn’t going to work out between us.
Standing there, wrapped in Ryker’s embrace as I stared at Parker, I felt like the worst kind of fraud. Not only did I feel like I was deceiving Ryker, but what must Parker be thinking right now? What if he thought I’d lied to him in order to sleep with him? He’d unwittingly betrayed Ryker before at the hands of a lying female. What if he thought I was cut from the same cloth as Natalie?
“So what’s the plan?” Parker asked, finally looking away from me to Ryker. “When are you supposed to get back to Viktor?”
I eased out of Ryker’s arms, a flush creeping up my neck, and I couldn’t look Parker in the eye. If I did, I was afraid Ryker would know, would see my feelings written on my face.
“As soon as possible. Leo’s the go-between. Where do you want to do this?”
“Let me call my contact. See what they say,” Parker replied. He gave me a long look and took the stairs two at a time.
“Um, yeah, I’d better get dressed,” I said, backing away. Ryker caught at my hand.
“You know I’d never hurt you,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I just had to make it look good.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
His lips lifted in a crooked smile. “That move you did to get away, that was totally badass. Where’d you learn that?”
“Parker taught me a little self-defense,” I said. Even saying his name made guilt rise like a bile in my throat.
Ryker’s grin faded. “Lucky that you remembered what to do then,” he said.
I nodded, slipping my hand from his. “Yeah, lucky. Um, I’d better dress.”
I felt his eyes on my back the entire way up the stairs.
Looking through my closet, I was suddenly hauled around.
“What’s going on, Sage?” Parker asked, anger etched on his features. “You said Ryker was out of the picture.”
“I thought he was,” I said. “He pulled a gun on me yesterday. I didn’t know it was a setup. And there was this girl there that he’d had some kind of relationship with the last time he was undercover and it was like they were taking up where they left off … and yeah. I thought it was pretty over between us.”
“Do you love him?”
That wasn’t the question I was expecting. I thought he’d ask if I loved him, not Ryker.