Playing for Keeps (The Game #2)(7)
Author: Emma Hart

“So many things wrong with that damn sentence.” I shake my head.

“So, who’d you annoy this time?”

“Who says I annoyed someone?”

“You’re here at half ten in the mornin’, boy! Something is up. You never get your sorry ass out of bed earlier than twelve on a Sunday.”

“I didn’t annoy anyone. Besides, I knew you’d want my ‘sorry ass’ in your yard today.”

Gramps’ knowing gray eyes settle on me. He taps his fingers on the arm on his chair, each knock of his fingers grating on me. Time stretches as he searches my face, coming to his conclusion. I swallow and shake my head.

“I know what you’re gonna say, and you’re wrong,” I say firmly.

He starts softly. “You’ve never spoken about her.”

“I don’t want to speak about her. I have nothing to say about her.”

“I think you do. I think you just pretend you don’t.”

I shake my head and look away. “And I think you’re shittin’ me, Gramps. I get it, alright? You miss her and you wanna talk about her, but I don’t. I can’t relate to the Mom you knew. She was never, and I mean never, that person to me.”

“You can’t live in hate forever, boy.”

“It’s not hate, Gramps. It’s pity, pure and simple. I pity her and I pity the life she forced me to lead until she died – until you took me in.”

“For all your schoolin’, for everything I taught you, you never learned to forgive and forget?” he says in a softer voice, his tone coaxing my eyes back to his.

“Forgiving and forgetting are two very different things, Gramps. You can forgive, you can forget, but rarely are they done together. I can’t forget my childhood and I can’t erase the scars. I can’t change the things it’s taught me or burn those images or memories from my mind. They mean I’ll never forget, and because I can’t forget, I can’t forgive. It’s that simple.”

His gray eyes darken slightly with disappointment and sadness. The usual pang of guilt hits me – guilt for hating the person he loves. Guilt for relief in his despair.

“Gramps-”

“No.” He drags his gaze back to the window, his focus on the yard outside. “I understand. I just wish I understood you, boy.”

“Nothin’ to understand,” I reply. “I’m just getting on with it, Gramps. I can’t let myself live in the crap of my past. Not now, not ever.”

“There’s some weedin’ that needs doing in the far corner, by my vegetable garden. When that’s done, I need some holes diggin’ for some bushes I’m getting this week.”

I take the subject change – and the escape. Both of us, we’re always running away from what we want to say. What we need to say.

“Bushes?”

“For your Nan. Hydrangea. Always Hydrangea,” he mutters to himself. “For devotion and understanding. We all need a little of that.”

I nod although he’s not looking at me. His way of remembering her. I wonder if he’s glad that Nan never saw what happened to her only daughter. I wonder if he’s glad that for all the pain she suffered, she never had to watch her baby destroy herself and die.

I wonder what she would think of me now, if she’d look at me and be happy I’m her grandson, or find comfort in my plans for the future. I wonder what she’d say about the way I cope and how I act.

I grab the trowel from the shed, crouching by the vegetable garden, and the truth smacks me full in the face.

Nan would probably be disgusted by me.

God knows there isn’t much to be f**king proud of.

Chapter Five – Megan

My eyes scan the room, and I sigh in relief when I see I’ve beaten both Aston and Braden to class. Every part of me wishes it was a day where we didn’t share a class, but it just doesn’t work that way. This is real life, and as my Nanna always says, real life likes to kick you when you’re down.

I sit down at my desk and remember who sits with me. Shit. I drop my head, resting it on the table.

“Crap,” I mutter.

The chair next to me squeaks. “If you’re trying to hide, babe, then you’re doing a shit job. I can see you.” Aston’s words curve around me, wrapping me in a smooth caress, and my throat goes dry.

“Why would I be hiding?” I sit up and forward, determined not to meet his eyes.

He shrugs a shoulder carelessly, grabbing his pen and twirling it between his fingers. God – I hate it when he does that. I catch his every movement from the corner of my eye. His eyes are burning in the side of my head, begging me to turn, begging to look at him.

“Because you want me so badly you can’t even look at me,” he says in a dramatic tone, arrogance weaving through each word.

My back straightens. “Clearly someone’s been feeding your damn ego again. I remember being the one who walked away – and I don’t remember ever telling you I want you.”

He leans forward and his bicep brushes mine, the heat from the fleeting touch sinking through the sleeve of my sweater. “Is that so?” he asks, his voice low and barely perceptible.

I fight the urge to drop my eyes to the desk. “Damn right it is.”

He trails his fingertip down the back of my arm, the tickling feeling leaving me tingling and fighting a shiver. “I think you’re wrong,” he whispers. “You might have walked away, Megan Harper, but you were also the one that walked toward me.” His eyes flick to my lips. “And it was a damn nice walk, don’t you think?”

My head snaps round, leaving our faces inches apart. His lips are curled in a slightly smug smile, and I curse myself for that being the first place my eyes fell. I drag them away from his mouth and across the sharp planes of his face until they meet his smoky eyes.

And I remember why I didn’t want to look at him. His eyes have the power to entrance me, to hold me captive in his gaze, and they are. The silvery hint at the edge of his irises is pulling me in and trapping my eyes in a silent battle with his. Like this, when I’m unable to focus on anything but the swirling mass of gray in front of me, I remember why nothing could have stopped me following him and kissing him on Saturday night.

“Is he being an ass**le again?”

My eyes shift from gray to blue as Braden’s voice cuts through the fog Aston put me in. “That’s a stupid question, Bray. He’s always an ass**le.”