Left or Right

Chapter 29

.James.

I follow Riley outside, stopping to watch where she would go next but after only a few seconds, she seems to stop herself, at a loss of where to go.
She couldn't go to the studio to dance it off because the chances are one of the girls would find her and make everything worse. She couldn't go back to mine where no one was home, meaning there was the risk of Nate finding her there, she couldn't go back to Montreal, she couldn't go to our spot without the image of what happened by the fire last week popping into her head.

She had nowhere else to go.

Slowly, I sigh to myself before beginning to walk over to her. I had just watched her reaction to Harry touching her the way he did, and part of me feels like it could have been me who had touched her that way.
Would she have reacted just like she did when Harry did it? Was it something Nate had done to her in the past? Was it something I had obliviously done to her recently?

When I reach her, I don't tap her from behind or hold her in any way Harry had just done. Instead, I make my way around to stand in front of her and then she looks up at me, her eyes stained with tears which continued to pour down her face, painting her cheeks.

"Why are some guys so disrespectful?" she mutters, her voice sharp and bitter. "Why is it that some of the guys I meet only see me as an object?" she asks.
But she wasn't speaking like she was thinking or voicing her thoughts. She was talking like she knew and she understood the feeling. Like she had been suffering from it for years now. "Is that all I am? An object? Even Stephanie feels she can just kick me around like I'm some kind of bouncy ball," she continues, her words deceitful and strong.

"Riley," I sigh, reaching my hands forward to hold hers, but she shakes her head at me fiercely and takes a step away, tearing my heart slightly.
"I promise you, you're not an object. No one sees you like one," I try to tell her, but it was almost like it was no use. She wasn't going to listen to me no matter what.

"You also promised me that if I joined the team, I wouldn't get hurt and everything would be fine," she whispers, looking directly into my eyes as I bite my lip, those few words getting the better of me.
She wasn't lying. She wasn't wrong. 

I was the one who had persuaded her to come back to A-Troupe in the first place because I needed her. There was a gap in my life, a gap in the team, a gap in our relationship and I just wanted to get it back. To get my Riley back after she had left me for so long.
But I didn't expect her coming back to bring along this much drama and as many problems as it has.

"I'm tired of the promises, James," she whispers to me, refusing to hold my hands. With every step I took forward, she took another step back. "Why promise something if you know you can't keep it?" she questions.

"Riley," I whisper to her. I knew I had to try my best right now to get her to stay with me before I lost her, but my brain began to go fuzzy as the same scene from when we last departed each other flew to my head. "Please," I say, as if I was gasping for air, exhaling and letting out a deep breath. "I didn't know this was going to happen."

"The team hates me," she spits out, glaring at me the same way she had just glared at Harry. "And I know it's not down to you. I'm not saying that it is. But I can't string you along with me. I can't have the team turn their backs on you as well just because they dislike me at the moment. This is my situation and I'll deal with it."

"Ri, that's not how it works," I whisper to her, finally managing to get that one step closer in as she couldn't take a step further away from me due to her back already being pressed against the wall.
"In a relationship we work together," I tell her. I take her hand in mine and nod down towards the ring I bought her for our anniversary last year, and I bring it to my lips to kiss it lightly. "We're our own team and the girl I know and love would never turn her back on a team she belongs to."

"Well then maybe you just answered your own riddle," she says back, trying to make herself sound fierce and strong but I knew this wasn't and couldn't be her talking.

She always did this thing. Where she would put everyone else's needs before her own. She'd put them before her if she thought it would be of a better benefit to them, but that's not what I need. I don't need to lose her again. Not for the third time.
I lost her to Beth. I then lost her to moving away with her parents. I'm about to lose her the first time and I know I have to fight but this kind of Riley is the toughest to get past. She won't let me get to her no matter how hard I try. 

Sometimes I just wish she was this defiant with the girls instead of with me.

"Maybe this is a team I don't belong to," she whispers, her lips beginning to quiver slightly. 
"Ri, don't say that," I say back, shaking my head at her and trying to move as close to her as possible, but then she looks down to the ground to avoid eye-contact with me.

"You're doing the exact thing I was talking about," she tells me, her voice light and subtle. "Don't treat me like an object . . ."
"That's not what I'm doing, Riley."

"If it's not what you're doing then let me go, okay," she whispers, finally bringing herself to look up at me again. "Don't hold onto me like I'm some glass bottle that you're clasping in your hand with the fear that you'll drop it and it'll shatter. Just put me down and let me walk so you can run."

"Ri," I whisper again, but without having me say anything else, she swallows and then moves her hands to the back of her neck, causing me to watch her whilst tears form in my eyes.

With the brief sound of her undoing the clasp, she takes my grandmother's necklace off of her and then bites her lip as she takes hold of my hand. Opening up my knuckles, she places the piece of jewellery inside of it and then closes it again, giving my fist a light squeeze before kissing my cheek.

"I'm sorry," she whispers to me. "But eventually you'll realise this is for the best."

And with that, I watch as she slithers away from me, out of my arms, clambering away from my touch and then she goes sauntering off into the wild.

All on her own.