Page 36 of Study Games

Waverly killed the song, placed the phone in the harness and gave it a tug. I reeled the ropes up, never taking my eyes off my girl as she turned and threaded her way back through the cloud, pausing by the blonde I figured was the housemate.

They talked for a second, half of campus watching the interaction and filming everything, but Waverly didn’t seem to notice or care for the moment.

Then she walked away without another word.

When my phone reached the top, I stared down at the single message she’d left on the screen.

Thank you.

My heart nearly burst out of my chest. No ranting, no raging, no questions. Just acceptance, because that’s who, underneath all the layers and all the bullshit pressure the twins and everyone else in her life seemed to put on her, Waverly actually was.

I’d found her.

And that, for me, was enough.

While my display might have been enough for Waverly, it wasn’t sufficient to appease the twins. At least, not as far as I was concerned. I might have freed her from their wrath, but that didn’t mean there was a free pass all over. Their wrath turned elsewhere and that place was to me.

A fist slammed into my kidney and when I choked on my next exhale, I was surprised not to see blood splatter the filthy, cement floor in front of me.

Random, watered down stains of previous victims littered the ground I stared at while boots and knees laid into my sides. I studied each with a detached sort of vision, floating inside my own body rather than outside it, which might have been a blessing.

Instead, I experienced every sliver of pain that rained down from the twins first hand as they moved with the perfect unison of people who worked side by side for as many years as they’d been alive.

“Wouldn't it have just been that much easier to let her pay off her own penance, art child?” One of them–my vision was too blurry to deal with putting identical facial features together–cooed, tipping my head upside down and smiling.

A glob of spittle landed on my nose and trickled to my lips.

I fought the urge to vomit bile in his face, but I wanted to shower and crawl back to Waverly, and sink into her arms. After I passed out. Definitely after.

“So much easier. So when we come for her again, and we will come, as we aren’t done, yet, then we will rip her apart a shred at a time.” The other one spoke over his twin, and I was still confused as shit on who spoke.

What didn’t confuse me was their intent. Just their why.

“She’s a random on a scholarship. You’ve got fucking everything,” I managed to wheeze out as a boot caressed the lump forming over my kidney and pressed down.

A thin, high sound filled the warehouse, and I vaguely realized it tore from my own throat. Blood dripped onto the floor as I stared at the cement again.

Oh. There it is.

“But we’re calling in a debt.” Kash–I thought it was Kash–smiled as he scraped his fingers through my drool and blood and swiped it over my face.

“She’s paid whatever the fuck you think she owes you,” I gasped when my body recovered the ability for speech.

A polished boot tipped me backward and I landed on my damaged organs, praying they still worked the way they were supposed to. The twins exchanged an amused glance over my prone body.

“Oh, my dear, beautiful, oh so tortured artist. Whoever said it was her debt we called in?”

They left me lying there with the dreams of a beautful girl with curves in all the right places and a sense of horribly wrongness unfurling in my gut while I couldn’t even stand on my own two fucking feet.

Warm hands gripped my body and hauled me upright, managing to hit every place that hurt and doubled the pain barrier until I slammed my mouth shut and by some miracle managed not to vomit my pain onto the bodies of my saviors.

Blacking out that might have been a different matter. My vision frayed at the edges, leaving me in a permanent tunnel as I staggered toward a blue sports car I didn't recognize.

“Fuck, they did a number on you.”

I managed a nod and a grunt as Crush stretched me across the back seat with his team mate who looked ridiculously sized for the car. No one bothered with a seat belt, and I supposed that after the beating the twins threw me, it wasn’t like a car accident could do that much more damage.

The two up front chattered quietly for a moment, but their words went by too fast for my addled brain to keep up. After that I stopped noticing much at all apart from the nauseating sway of the vehicle as it moved beneath me, drifting around corners under Crush’s hard hand. Intermittent street lights flashed overhead through the thin sliver of heavily tinted windows against a darkened backdrop.

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