How To Kill Ryder Blake (COMPLETED)

{Sixteen} As The Sky Falls

Ryder's motorbike stunt left him curled up in a fetal position sick as hell for the next week. Ryan tried every hour of each day to try and get him up and to go to the hospital, but he still refused.

Instead, I came home from the store with my sister to find a beaten and bloody Max on my front steps and Ryan on his own. It couldn't have been a coincidence they both looked as if they'd just been in a fight.

"What happened?" I asked, watching my sister slip around Max and walk into the house with the groceries. Max stood angrily, nearly shoving passed me for round two with my neighbor.

"What happened is Blake doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut." Max snapped, my palm against his chest the only thing stopping him from stomping across the yard.

I threw a glance over my shoulder at Ryan, currently in the midst of wiping the blood trickling steadily from his nose with his shirt sleeve.

"I think you need to go home, Max." I whispered. For a moment, all anger drained from my best friend and he looked down at me like I'd just slapped him across the face. "Please. I'm exhausted. I can't deal with this right now."

He threw his hands up in exasperation and headed for his car without a word, leaving me to stare after the car speeding out of the neighborhood without even the slightest clue as to why he'd been here in the first place. Setting the couple grocery bags that had been in my hands on the front step so Mom or Kat could grab them before I made my way to Ryan.

"Come on." I grabbed my surprisingly heavy arm, making an ushering gesture toward his front door. He glanced up at me, one eye brow quirked and his top lip a mess of blood as it curled upward. "Seriously. Get up and into the house."

Luckily I didn't have to pry further and he stood and allowed me to nudge him through the front door. I grabbed paper towels and dampened them as well as an ice pack in the empty freezer and headed over to him in front of the door.

"What happened?" I asked once he'd sat down on the couch and started to clean himself up. "Why was he here?"

"I don't know." Ryan shrugged a shoulder, eyes fluttering shut so his long lashes fanned his blood speckled, fair skin. "But I wasn't going to deal with his pompous ass attitude. The second he saw me he got in my face. Threatening me and shit like I would ever be scared of him."

I crossed my arms. "Threatening you about what?"

"You."

"Obviously, Ryan. What about me though?"

"He said to back off." He shrugged again, this time wincing in pain a little as he pressed the ice pack against the bridge of his nose.

I lowered myself on to the recliner. "Back off? What? Why would he threaten you and not Ryder. I'm hardly ever around you."

That was a lie, I suppose. Especially for the last week or so. I'd actually spent more time with Ryan and Mr. Blake then Ryder. He had holed himself in his room all week, and though I'd cooked for the men, Ryder refused to come out and eat at the table. Or maybe he was in too much pain too and didn't want Ryan or me to call him out and get him loaded into the back of an ambulance.

"I dunno." Ryan sighed. "He obviously sees me as a threat to his perfect little life. To the fantasy he created with you inside his pea sized brain."

"Ryan—"

"No. Nobody else is going to tell you the truth, Zoey. Not even yourself. You know what he's doing, why he's acting the way he is, but you choose to be in denial over it."