Playing for Keeps (The Game #2)(6)
Author: Emma Hart

And here we are.

After all my attempts, all my fighting to keep away from him, I’ve still somehow ended up falling for his cocky smile and man-whore ways. Not that I love the man-whore ways – I want to set fire to the fake hair, fake nails, and fake eyelashes of every girl that sleeps with him. That’s what they are, and he knows it. Fake.

Jesus Christ, Megan, it was a freaking kiss. One little kiss. Not a goddamn proposal.

But … Maddie said Braden would never fall in love but she was wrong. He did, but Braden and Aston are in different leagues. Braden’s heart was never truly in the sleeping around, he just did it because he could. Something to pass the time – I know that as clearly as I know Aston likes the sleeping around and never-ending attention he gets from girls.

How has one little kiss ended in me dissecting his behavior? A kiss!

I don’t have any expectations for an “us”. I have wants but no expectations. I may be a hopeless romantic happy to get lost between the pages of a hot and steamy novel or a sigh-with-sweetness one, but I’m not naïve enough to believe that those kinds of things happen all the time. Some people will get that kind of love that makes guys wonder and girls swoon, but not everyone.

Love is a fickle thing. Just because you have a person out there that compliments you, that calms your storm and feeds your fire, it doesn’t mean you’ll always have them. You might never meet them. You might meet them – but it just might not be the right time for you.

I’m nineteen. I know love and lust. I know the difference – and I know that for some strange reason, Aston is my storm calmer, my fire feeder. I also know it isn’t the right time for us. It might never be.

Though after the way he held me to him and kissed me last night, I’m not so sure I’m okay with that anymore.

Chapter Four – Aston

I’m f**ked. And it’s all my own fault.

I had to do it, didn’t I? I had to go over to her and say what I did. I didn’t expect her to do it – I never thought she’d actually come upstairs, but she did. And shit; it felt so wrong but so right at the same time.

She’s so dangerous. She’s the one in this whole damn college, hell, in the whole damn state, that could strip away my devil-may-care attitude and put me on my sorry ass. She’s the only girl that could make me feel again. She could take everything I’ve tried for so long to stick back together and shatter it into more pieces than it was in in the first place.

I should have stayed the f**k away from her, but I didn’t. And now I know the sweet taste of her mouth as she kissed me. I know the softness of her lips as they moved across mine, and I know the feel of her hands gripping my hair.

I also know what it’s like to be so close but so far away. ‘Cause damn it all to hell, she had to stop and walk away, didn’t she? She had to f**king go and leave me there, as hard as a rock, staring after her like a lost little sheep.

Shit. Even though it was just a kiss, it’s gonna take nothing short of a goddamn miracle to get me to stay away from her now.

I grab my cell from the side and scroll to her name.

I’m pretty sure I showed Old Maid up last night. Bet the old girl can’t kiss the way I can. I press send, remembering the conversation in Vegas, and my lips curve.

Learn some tricks from the big boys in Vegas, did you? She retorts. I’d bet anything she’s smiling that smile that lights up her whole face. The smile that makes her looks so damn beautiful she’d put every girl in the country to shame.

You tell me, babe. I grin wider.

I roll over in bed and hit the empty side – the empty side she lay on last night before she left while I was sleeping. My eyes find the calendar on the bedside table, and I shove it off the top to avoid looking at the date. But I know it.

I always know it. It’s impossible to ignore – it creeps up on me silently then hits me with a big f**king bang. It’s always the hardest this time of year. This week, the one that shaped my life, is the one I love and hate. It changed me for the better but forever destroyed my Gramps.

One person’s blessing is another person’s curse.

I jump out of bed, get dressed, and grab my car keys. It’s earlier than usual and Gramps will probably whack me with his stick for turning up before lunch, but I have no desire to sit here in my room and wallow in my own bullshit self-pity.

I slip out of the front door before anyone stops me and climb into my car, quickly pulling away from the large house. It can become stifling all too quickly, and it’s easy to get buried under the weight of your own feelings. It’s not too far to Gramps’ house, his insistence on moving us away from San Francisco but not out of Northern California the reason I’m at college in Berkeley and not there. San Francisco holds too many memories. Too much shit to ever go back to.

I pull up outside his house, the sun crawling over the front yard an indication I’ll spend my day working in his back yard doing what he can’t. The rich smell of smoke wafting from his cigar hits me as soon as I open the door, and my face wrinkles up like it does every Sunday.

I hate it, but it’s safe – and there’s comfort in safety.

“I wish you’d stop smokin’ those damn things, Gramps.”

His low, raspy chuckle reaches me through the house. “You say that e’ry week, boy, and I’ll keep on saying the same thing back – I wish you’d stop goin’ on about me smoking these ‘damn things’.”

I grin and make my way into the front room, letting the front door swing shut behind me. The old, wrinkled man I call my Gramps is sitting in his usual spot in front of the window. The floral chair is as old and weathered as he is, but there’s definitely more life left in Gramps than in his ratty chair.

“I know. It’s worth the shot, though, right?” I shrug, dropping onto the sofa across from him.

He smiles as he turns his face toward me, his dark gray eyes crinkling a little in the corners. “If you say so, boy. What are you doin’ here early, bugging me?”

I look out of the window. “Got nothin’ better to do on a Sunday.”

He chuckles. “Never know, do I? Probably did what you had to do last night.”

“Gramps. Someone your age shouldn’t be making comments like that.”

“Why? Because I’m wrinkled? Find me a nice bit of stuff on a Friday at the Bingo, and I’ll put you to shame. Ha!” He puffs one last time on his cigar and stubs it out in the ashtray on the table next to him.