I nod, blinking back my tears.
Ilmari takes my other hand, leading the way back up the boardwalk.
“What’s the ace up his sleeve?” Jake calls from behind me. “How does he want to hurt Ryan?”
“The photographs,” I reply. “He wants to flip the script and say I’m the cheater, not him. He wants to tear Ryan down and frame him as an adulterer so the Rays and his endorsement deals will all drop him. He wants to ruin his career with bad press.”
“Jesus,” Jake mutters. “Fucking diabolical.”
“And this is his best plan?” Ilmari asks. “Framing Ryan as your adulterous lover? He has no other cards to play?”
“As far as I know,” I admit. “But as Jake says, he’s diabolical. I didn’t think he was capable of some of the things he’s already done.”
We step back up onto the deck which is flooded with golden light from the wall of windows. The three of us stand together, hands clasped, gazing through the glass. It’s like all our friends are somehow enshrined inside the glass, like a moving portrait. Laughing and smiling faces, light twinkling off glass stemware, the bluesy notes of a Norah Jones song filtering through the speakers.
I have eyes for only one person. “Where is he?” My anxiety mounts as I look for Ryan.
“What does Troy even fucking look like?” Jake says, his gaze darting left and right.
“There’s Rakas,” Ilmari says, relief in his tone. “Come.” He pulls on my hand, and the three of us hurry inside.
“Mars, we need to find Ryan,” I say, my neck craning.
“We need to find Troy,” Jake counters. “If someone yells ‘shark’ at the beach, you find the fucking shark first.”
But Mars isn’t listening. He drags us both over towards the cash bar where Rachel is standing laughing with two players whose names I don’t know. She turns at our approach, her smile falling as she takes in our faces.
“What’s wrong—”
“Come,” Ilmari says, throwing an arm around her shoulder and pulling her away from the others.
“Ilmari, what’s wrong—”
“Troy,” I answer for him. “He’s here, Rach.”
“No,” she whispers, immediately glancing around. “That’s not possible. God, why?”
“Because I broke his rules. He told me to walk away from Ryan and I didn’t. He told me to let him go and I can’t. I won’t. Rach, I love him, and he loves me, and we want to be together, and there is nothing wrong in what we’re doing—”
“Oh, honey.” She wraps me in a hug, and we cling to each other.
“We need to find Ryan,” I say again. “Please, Rach. Help me find him. Please.”
She nods, smoothing her hands over my shoulders. “Okay, honey. Yeah, let’s—” She goes still as a statue, her concern morphing into silent, quivering rage, and I know there’s only one reason why.
I go still, my every sense firing, telling me to be wary of who is approaching. One look in Rachel’s eyes, and she gives a curt nod, confirming what I already know. Her men read her, too, because Jake and Ilmari quickly move to either side of their wife, boxing her in, even as they both keep a hand on me.
Slowly, I turn, coming face to face with Troy.
“Hello, Tessy,” he says with a cold smile. “Why don’t we step outside so we can have a little chat?”
63
Troy is here. It all feels so surreal. He’s not supposed to be here. The Rays are not his set of people. He’s an ‘old money’ type. He gives off such an aura of arrogance and condescension. When we were younger, I mistook it for confidence. He has nothing in common with someone like Jake Price, who comes from nothing and worked his way into something through drive and talent.
It took me a long time to see that Troy’s upbringing was not so much a blessing as a curse. He doesn’t know how to work for things. He doesn’t know how to value the things he has. And he doesn’t know how to appreciate what it feels like when those things are taken away. In a word, he’s spoiled. And he’s the worst kind of spoiled: the kind that is fundamentally incapable of admitting it.
That’s why he’s here now. He doesn’t understand that there are things in his life that he can’t possess. I am one of those things. Try as he might, he can’t control me. He can’t make me do as he commands. I center myself in that truth.
I am wild. I am fierce. I am free.