Read Torn (Cold Awakening) for Free Online Page B

would you want to go through that again?”
    “That works out pretty good for you,” he said.
    I’d gotten much better at reading Riley, but I couldn’t read this. “What’s your problem?”
    “Seems like
I
am,” he said. “I embarrass you.”
    “You do not!”
    “Took you months to introduce me to your family—”
    “Because they’re
freaks
.”
    “—and now you want to make sure it never happens again.”
    “Because I hate how he treated you.” I leaned against him, hoping the pressure of my body on his would snap him out of this.
    “You can’t hate it that much,” he said. “
You’re
going back.”
    “That’s different.”
    “I don’t care what he thinks of me,” Riley said. “But he treats you like crap.”
    “He’s trying.”
    “You keep making excuses. Why are you so scared of him?”
    “I’m not!”
    “Right. You do whatever he says because you
want
to.” Riley looked disgusted. I imagined how much deeper the disgust would run if he realized that it was true. If he knew how much I still cared what my father thought of me, he’d think I was pathetic. Maybe he already did.
    “Come on, he’s my father.”
    “So what?”
    “So—”
So what did that mean to Riley, who’d never had one and, according to him, had never noticed the difference? Whocouldn’t go back home because home was a cement tower with broken windows and puddles of urine and old allies who’d found it to their advantage to ally with someone else? “So can we not talk about this anymore?”
    I should have told him what I’d said to my father before we left, that I’d stood up for Riley, that we were on the same team. But I couldn’t get the words out. Defending Riley to my father, defending my father to Riley, always the wrong words to the wrong person—always defending someone and still somehow always looking like a traitor.
    I wasn’t going to let myself get sucked into this fight when I knew what Riley was really angry about. And who. It would be easy to pretend this was about my father, because then we could both pretend he was the problem and I’d done nothing wrong. The easy way out, my favorite exit.
    Not anymore.
    “Are we going to talk about it?” I said.
    “You just said you don’t want to anymore.”
    “Not my father. The vidlife. Jude.”
    “What does Jude have to do with the vidlife?” Riley said, too eager. “Did he message you?”
    He didn’t know.
    “What did you think of it?” I asked cautiously. “The vidlife.”
    Riley shrugged. “I didn’t watch.”
    “None of it?”
    “You told me I wouldn’t like it,” he reminded me. “The stuff they’d make you do.”
    “Oh.” I should have been relieved. “So you didn’t watch at all?
Any
of it?”
    “Did you
want
me to? You said—”
    “I know what I said.”
    “So now you’re pissed?” He sounded half bemused, half annoyed. “What, you want me to dig an archive, watch it right now? Because I will.” He reached for his ViM, and—even though it was likely a bluff—I grabbed his arm.
    “No, you’re right. It’s not like I’m some kind of famewhore trolling for fans. I just figured you’d be … curious.”
    And maybe a little jealous.
    Not that I
wanted
him to be jealous.
    I definitely wouldn’t have wanted him to see me kissing Caleb or tearing out Pria’s hair. And I wouldn’t have wanted him to see me with Jude.
    But I couldn’t believe he hadn’t even looked, not once.
    “It would’ve felt like spying on you,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t going to do that.”
    I hated myself for questioning him. “I wouldn’t have been able to resist,” I said. “If it was you.”
    “I know.”
    Sometimes I loved that he knew me so well.
    Sometimes I didn’t.
    Something crackled in the bushes. I jerked around, but there was nothing there. No eyes peering out of the darkness. Just the patter of the rain.
    “Can we go back to your apartment?” I said, suddenly feelingexposed. If we were going to talk about