Playing for Keeps (The Game #2)(31)
Author: Emma Hart

“You’re lying and you know it.”

“Am I?” I turn, pinning her with my gaze. I am lying – but it’s better this way. “Am I lying? You think I feel anything when I take some girl back on a Saturday night? You think I feel anything other than sex?”

Silence stretches, and I f**king hate myself for this. I hate myself for pushing away the one person I want to pull into me.

“I know you don’t feel anything other than sex when you take a girl back to your room on a Saturday night.”

That’s more painful than the physical kicks to the stomach I used to get. “So why are you still here?”

“Because I’m not just any girl,” she says with certainty, her eyes boring into mine. “Do you think I’m dumb, Aston? You just bared your soul to me – the deepest, darkest parts of it – and now you’re trying to push me away. Who are you really trying to protect, huh? Is it me or is it you? Do you feel nothing for me when you call me ‘baby’? Do you feel nothing when you hold me against you? Do you honestly feel nothing when we’re together? Go on. Tell me! Tell me that right now, with me looking into your eyes that you feel nothing, and I’ll walk out that damn door. Tell me you don’t care.”

I can’t.

“Tell me!”

And she knows it.

“Go on!”

“I can’t!” I yell. “I can’t f**king tell you that! And that’s the problem. You have to go. You have to walk away, because I can’t. You have to protect yourself from me, because I can’t walk away from you.”

“I don’t want you to!” She storms across the room. “I don’t want you to walk away from me!” She stops in front of me, her chest heaving, and continues in a quieter voice, “I don’t want you to walk away.”

No one will ever want you. No one will care. You’re not worth shit. Son of a bitch. Useless prick.

I grab her and pull her against me, burying my face in her hair. I’m shaking as I hold her. I need her – I don’t know what it is, but I need her more than I’ve ever needed anything. She’s all I can feel. She makes me want to rip apart the mismatched pieces of myself and put them back in the right places. She awakens something in me, a will to live, a will to love. With her arms wrapped around my waist, her hands spread against my back, and her head tucked into my neck, it feels like home.

Megan feels like home to me.

Chapter Fifteen – Megan

“Did she really never tell you about your dad?” I ask, drawing circles on Aston’s arm with my fingertip.

“No. Gramps told me a few years ago she went away for a friend’s birthday and a few weeks later found out she was pregnant. She swore there was only him but she couldn’t remember his name,” he replies. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I have my Gramps, and that’s what matters. He was there when no one else was.”

“He sounds like an amazing man,” I say, tilting my head back and staring into his gray eyes. “It makes it easy to understand where you get it from.”

He makes a noise of disbelief. “I’m not amazing, baby, far from it.”

“The beauty of being an outsider is that I can see what you can’t,” I argue. “You might not see it yet, you might never see it, but you are.” I raise my hand to his face, stroke my thumb down his cheek and across the faint stubble on his jaw. And I’m not lying – I can see everything he can’t. I can see the beauty of him hiding behind the ugly memories of his past. He just needs to let it shine through.

“If you say so.” He catches my hand in his and kisses each of my fingers softly.

“I’m sorry I made you remember those things,” I say in a small voice.

“I’m not,” he replies firmly. “I’m not sorry you did. You were right yesterday. You have to get lost in the dark to appreciate the light. My head is full of darkness, full of shadows and horrors, and then I look into your eyes. It’s like finding the light at the end of the tunnel – the light I never thought I’d find.”

I flatten my hand against his cheek, his resting atop mine, and move my face forward so our lips brush. “I like that. I love that I make you feel that way.”

“It’s true. Who else could I threaten about spanking across the kitchen table?” His lips twitch, a bit of the normal light returning to his eyes as the darkness recedes.

“I’m sure you could find someone.” I shrug a shoulder.

“I probably could, but I don’t want to find someone.” His face turns serious again, and his hand trails along my arm and rests on my back. “I have to tell you something else – but you have to promise me you won’t get mad and leave.”

“I’m. Not. Leaving.” I put extra emphasis on each word. “Okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

For a second I see a glimpse of the little boy he keeps inside flash in his eyes, and my heart breaks a little. A tiny crack forms for the pain he must feel.

“A few nights ago I went to this bar. It’s out the way, and I went there because I had to prove to myself I’m not like my mom was.” He closes his eyes, gathers himself, and opens them again. “I knew if I went in there and left with someone, I’d be no better than she was.”

I swallow, trying not to let my facial expression change as a little bile rises up my throat. Even as my whole body tightens, a part of me believes he didn’t. He’s stronger than that. A part of me has to believe that.

“And?”

Outside my voice is calm, deceptively so, but inside my body is raging. It’s raging that he’d try it, raging at the people who made him this way, raging at the words he must have heard so many times to make him believe he’s no better than his mom.

“I couldn’t. I was in there for maybe five minutes, tops, and I had to leave. I had to run. It wasn’t me.” He looks steadily into my eyes. “And you’re the reason I left. Hell, you’re the reason I went. I told myself that if I went and left alone, I was good enough for you. If I left alone, I cared, I had feelings. If I left alone, I wasn’t hollow inside.”

“You’re not hollow inside.” I prop myself up on my elbow and look down at him, running my fingers through his hair. “You do feel – you must have felt to go in the first place. And as for being good enough for me …” I shake my head. “Who dictates that? Society? A TV show? A romance novel? No. Not even Braden can dictate that, Aston. The only person who decides if someone is good enough for me, is me, and I say you are most definitely good enough for me.”