Trapped In Your Bleeding Heart (Riff x Reader)

Chapter Forty - Home

One wheel of the suitcase kept catching on the sidewalk. The other kept squeaking. In it were a few dollars and two of Riff's shirts.

I caught the scent of one while packing and almost lost it.

There was one place I needed to go before leaving town, though.

I needed to go home.

I knew their schedules well. Anita and Maria would both be at work when I stopped by. They wouldn't even know I was ever there. Not until they noticed all my belongings missing. I still had a key.

I walked by the diner on my way there. Thought of my first day. Thought of my last. Remembered Riff flirting with me, looking at me the way he did, eyes narrow, interested. Smile as smirky as always, like he knew a secret. Like he knew it all.

And suddenly I was on the Shark's side of town, as fearless as I'd ever been, despite how many times I'd been told it wasn't safe to hang around the Puerto Ricans. It was quieter than usual. Like the whole city was in mourning.

I stared up at my apartment building. Then down, at the curb where I sat petting Squinty, Cash, so long ago. I'd saved him. Taken the paint-bucket-muzzle from around his mouth, and the rope from his paws. He wouldn't stop following me. He must have seen the good in me. Maybe he saw whoever I thought I was. Some savior. Some hero. Some broke girl wandering into the underside to heal the classes wallowing in poverty.

That was the first time I met Riff, stood in the distance like a ghost under a street lamp. He wasn't friendly. He was entrancing. His whistles and commanding posture and—

"Rose?"

I couldn't move.

That small, delicate voice. The heartbreak. My sister.

I turned to her.

"Maria."

"You—" she choked on the word. "You have been gone so long, I thought..."

Her eyes drifted down to my suitcase, and her eyes hardened. "Did you come back to take your things?"

I couldn't answer. I didn't realize just how much the guilt of leaving her would eat me alive. She lost her brother, and I was somewhere else.

"I'm so sorry, Maria." My eyes stung.

She looked lost. Confused, but reddened, like she'd been crying just as much as me. Burning regret welled in my waterline. I was awful. How could I leave her? I loved Maria. I would do anything for her.

"I tried to stop it. I tried so hard." I wept. "For you, I never wanted—" a hiccup. "I couldn't face you. I couldn't come back because I failed you. I failed myself."

She stared. Stared as I tried to get it together, and I'd gotten good at reeling it in. I was used to crying.

But when I saw Maria's eyes water. When I saw her lip tremble, and her fists clench, I couldn't compose myself.

She rushed to me and hugged me tighter than I'd ever been held. And we stood. And we sobbed. "I never should have—" I muttered, but she shushed me.

"I am just glad to have you home."

Hearing her say that. Feeling her arms around me. Knowing I was still loved, even through grief. Even through violence.

I was home.

"Come, come." She pulled back, swiping tears from her cheeks, pulling strands of hair stuck to her dampened skin. "Anita will want to see you."

"Oh, I don't know..." new tears almost overtook me, but I pushed them down. "I don't know if I can face her, Mare. Not after—"