The Love Game (The Game #1)(50)
Author: Emma Hart

“What?” I wipe under my eyes, brushing away the hot tears there.

“Are you okay?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m sorry, Mads. If I’d have known….”

“You’d be too damn clever for Berkeley,” I reply. “Do you need anything, Kyle? I have a place to be.”

“Where are you going?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Do you need a way to get there, wherever there is?”

“I can call a cab.”

“No. I’ll come and get you. I’ll be outside your dorm in five minutes.”

“Thank you,” I whisper and hang up. The background image of me and Braden smiling into the camera laughs in my face. I’d only put it on there for appearances, but then I couldn’t change it.

I still can’t change it. I stare at it, numbly, remembering that this particular picture was taken after Pearce’s visit. My smile wasn’t fake.

I don’t think my smiles ever were.

A horn beeps, and I grab my suitcase handle, giving a cursory look around the dorm room. I leave, the door clicking shut behind me, and I bump my case down the stairs to where Kyle is waiting. He grabs it from me, hoisting it into his trunk. I get in the car silently.

“Where to?” He catches my eye.

“Promise you won’t tell? Not even after you’ve taken me there. If anyone asks, say you don’t know.”

“Maddie-”

“Kyle, please. I need to get away from here.”

“Fine,” he grumbles.

“Promise!”

“I promise. Where to?”

“The airport.” I gaze out of my window and hear his sharp intake of breath.

“The airport?”

“I’m leaving for a week. I’ll call in sick at school.”

“Where are you going?”

“To see my Dad. I’m going home. To Brooklyn.”

Chapter Forty – Braden

Fuck. Fuck f**k f**k and another f**k.

I stare at the space she just left through. A great, big, gaping hole. That’s what she does.

She comes into your life in a wild burst of color, filling an empty space you didn’t know was there. And when she leaves, she takes it all with her, painting it in shades of black and white.

I push off the wall. I’m determined to find her and explain. Two hands grab my arms.

“Braden, leave her, bro.” Aston tugs me back. “Let her calm down.”

Calm down? “No. Fuck no.”

“Bray.” Megan appears in front of me and I try to focus on her. “He’s right. She needs to calm down.”

“No,” I argue. “She needs to know the truth, Meggy! She needs to know the damn truth!”

“And she will.” She cups my face and makes me look at her. Makes me focus. “She will, when she’s calm. She’s hurtin’, Bray. Let her deal with it.”

Hurt. Hurt that I put there.

Prick.

I shake off Ryan and Aston and head for the backyard, slamming the door open hard. I storm to the side of the house and lean my head against the wall, feeling like the biggest ass**le ever. A car starts from the front of the house. I look up – to see Kyle’s car go past.

“Fuck!” I yell and punch the wall. Blood trickles from my already grazed knuckles, but I don’t care. I don’t give a flying f**king shit about anything other than the girl that just walked away from me.

Because through it all, all the kisses and the laughs, the playing and the joking, I never bothered to tell her how real she is to me.

All the times I’ve held her close at night through her nightmares, all the times I wiped away her tears and put a smile back on her face – they’re the times that made it real. Seeing that light spark in her eyes when I did something that made her laugh, the pain in the same eyes when she remembered the past – they’re what made her real.

But none of that matters now. She’s taken it all with her. Every last bit followed her out of the frat house ten, fifteen minutes ago. I don’t even know. I don’t even know how long I’ve been out here. But I am alone.

I can go.

I-

“Don’t even think about it.” Ryan’s face is in mine as I turn from the wall.

“Fuck.” I spit and shake my fist, my brain registering the first tinges of pain from my bloodied knuckles.

“Inside. Ice on that and a beer,” Ryan orders, grabbing my arm and pulling me back towards the house.

“I can f**kin’ walk, Ryan.” I yank my arm from his grip. “I’ve got bloody knuckles, not broken feet.”

“Really?” he drawls. “’Cause you look pretty f**kin’ broken to me.” He shoves the door open and crosses the kitchen towards the freezer. He grabs an ice pack and hands it to me. I rest it on my knuckles, flinching at the cold. Ryan grabs two bottles of beer from the cooler and nods towards the door, meaning we should go upstairs. It’s better than being down here.

I push my way through the crowd when I hear my name.

“At least someone finally did to him what he’s done to half the girls in freshman year,” a voice I’ve never heard before states.

I see red. I’ve had about as much as I can take today, and I spin. Ryan stops me and through the angry film covering my eyes, I see Aston’s fist fly into the speaker’s face. It cracks into his nose, and he staggers backwards.

“Shut your f**kin’ mouth,” Aston warns. “Anyone else wanna say somethin’?”

No one says anything.

“That’s what I thought.” He shakes his fist out and looks at the guy he just hit in disgust. “Goddamn. You got a nose of f**kin’ granite?”

Ryan snorts and pushes me back towards the door.

“Move it. Down here is the last place a live wire like you needs to be.”

Chapter Forty-One – Maddie

The house is the same as I left it, and a half shiver runs down my spine as I step from the cab. I wave to the driver in thanks as he leaves and look at the house properly.

Built just outside of city limits, our two-story house has been home my whole life. I played on the now yellowing grass in the front yard, planted the wilting flowers and, with Pearce, helped Dad paint the little fence that surrounds it.

A white picket fence. Cliché, but it was what Mom wanted – and Mom got it. It was the perfect family home. Until she died.

Now, the house is a shell of what it once was. There’s no laughing in the kitchen at breakfast, no water fights when the flowers needed watering, and no Candy, Mom’s cocker spaniel, there to greet you at the front door. Candy went not long after Mom.

I unhook the gate and walk to the front door, tugging my suitcase along after me in the darkness. I knock once on the door and step inside, noting the gentle light coming from the front room.