Playing for Keeps (The Game #2)(37)
Author: Emma Hart

I looked toward the kitchen, shaking, my stomach hurting. I wanted to eat something. I was hungry. Mommy didn’t have any food this morning, apart from a biscuit she gave me. Just a plain biscuit. I wanted some gravy.

I hugged Bunny even closer and looked around again. Maybe if I looked I could find some food.

Someone knocked at the door and I screamed. The big scary monsters. I started to cry and ran back into my room, pushing the door shut. I took my blanket from my bed and crawled under the bed, moving right to the back corner. My blanket wrapped around me and I curled into a ball.

No one ever found me here.

I was safe from the monsters.

Darkness. Monsters.

I pat the bed beside me. The bed. Not the floor.

I lean over, turning my bedside lamp on, and look around. My room – in the frat house. At college. In Berkeley – not my tiny room in San Francisco. No monsters, no men, no Mom. Just me, alone.

I bury my face in my shaking hands, adrenaline still running rife from my dream.

Fell from a tree. And they f**king believed it. The ass**le had put his fist in my face for the first ever time, and all because I’d walked in front of the television and he’d missed a touchdown. That was all it took, five seconds, and I had another bruise, another memory, another scar to add to the collection.

And she still never did anything about it. She still covered it up. She still never checked on me.

Monsters.

It amazes me I was so f**king afraid of monsters that didn’t exist. The real monsters were the tattooed, alcohol and drug dependent dicks she brought home again and again. They were the monsters – not the things a five year old boy’s mind could conjure up.

The monsters in my mind then were much less worse than the ones I faced daily. They were nicer than the monsters I still face now.

I roll over, leaving the light on, and bring my knees to my chest. My thick blankets cover me the way my thin ones used to, and I curl up the way I used to under the bed. My need to protect myself, to protect my body outweighs all else.

In my mind, I am five again.

Chapter Seventeen – Megan

And we’re back to it.

Another day of lies. Another day of pretending. Another day of wishful glances, discreet smiles, and banter with an underlying meaning only we understand.

Another day I have to remind myself that we chose this. We chose to be secret and not tell Braden. I’m just not sure how much longer we can keep it this way. Someone will find out eventually no matter how careful we are.

Hell, Kay and Lila are already halfway there.

“Just tell me who,” Lila begs me. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

“It’s not a big deal. It was just one night. You guys are always telling me I need to get some, and I have, so leave it at that.”

“You’re kiddin’ me!” Kay exclaims. “I want the details!”

“Maybe I don’t want to give you the details.”

“Maybe I can keep buggin’ the shit out of you until you give them to me.”

“Maybe I still won’t give you the details.” I shake my head. “Seriously, you guys, I’m not giving you what you want.”

Maddie grins. “Stubborn.”

“No, just private.” I wink.

“Boring,” Lila counters. “Boring is what it is.” She sighs. “I and Maddie have shared our deets before, Kay has given us enough to write a damn book, and it’s only you left to share – which you haven’t this year. At all.”

“There’s nothing to share!” I protest, ignoring the guilt at lying yet again. I know full well there’s a lot to share. “It just happened. It’s not going to be mentioned again, so there we go. Conversation over.” I check the time on my watch and grab my books, standing up. “I have to get to class. I’ll see you later.”

“What are you hiding, Megan Harper?” Lila yells after me.

I shake my head, chewing the inside of my lip, and keep walking. Nothing, I want to yell over my shoulder. Aston, is the word that crawls up my throat. I stay silent, making my way through the few people still milling through the hallways laughing and joking.

I turn the corner to the stairwell, and Aston is standing at the bottom of the stairs. I double-take as he looks around the empty area and walks toward me. His eyes find mine. His broken, weak eyes. My stomach knots, and I’m relieved when he wraps his arms around my neck and buries his face in the hair falling around my neck.

My arms slide around his waist, and I hold him with the tightness he holds me, trying to ignore the heavy, deep breaths he’s taking. Trying to ignore the heaving of his chest and the shaking of his body. He nudges my hair aside and kisses my neck softly, breathing in deeply. I pull my face back and look into his eyes. He blinks once and dips his head. His whole body tenses when his lips crush mine and he’s shaking with more than just his pain. He’s shaking with the need to let it all out but not being able to. He releases me suddenly and walks the way I just came.

I stare after him, my heart feeling like a lead weight in my chest as reality sinks in. He said I make it better, take the pain away. I’d bet anything he spent the night tormented by his past, by the nightmares and flashbacks he tries to run from. Telling me on Saturday, then the conversation with his Gramps on Sunday must have been the trigger.

And five seconds is all I get to hold him. Five risky, stolen seconds and one desperate kiss is all I can have to take the pain away.

I shoulder my bag and head up the stairs to class, unable to take him off my mind. All I can see in front of me are his eyes. Even as I sit at my desk and open my books, the words blur and I picture the pain etched onto his face. I picture the scars I’ll never understand.

Because he was right. The worst scars are the ones you carry inside, the ones you hide from the rest of the world.

But I don’t have the scars. I lived a happy, sheltered life in a nice area, a million miles away from the reality of some people’s lives. The most horrible part of my childhood was my mom filtering my reading material and the best when Nanna told her to give it up and let me read what I wanted. I’m naïve and blind to the lives of people outside my own. I know this now, and I’ll never understand Aston’s pain. I’ll never understand the things that circle his mind each day, the words that poison it.

“‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here’,” my professor quotes from her copy of The Tempest, the words slashing through my musings. “A powerful statement – and very potent in a time where belief of the devil was very real. What did Shakespeare mean by his words?”