Page 129 of Wicked Games

It’s a bit cryptic, honestly, but I don’t question him further. We just sit in the quiet for a few minutes. My eyes track the pattern he’s drawing on my thigh. A circle, a cross, a loop.A word.

B. R. A. V. E.

“Who are you calling brave?”

He pauses. “I heard a woman screaming. It’s weird, right? Aunt Iris is used to her husband’s… outbursts.”

“Does he hit her?”

He flinches. “I doubt it. Uncle David has other ways of keeping her and my mother under control.”

The last time I asked about his dad, I got shut down. I keep my questions about him to myself this time. There will be other days to ask where his dad went. Did I drive him away? I know something had to have happened with my mother. I didn’t just make the Ashers hate me—I made herleaveme.

What kind of child does that?

“You’re in your head again.”

I meet his eyes. “Misery loves company.”

That gets a smile out of him. He kisses me softly, but it doesn’t last. We weren’t meant to be soft. So I let him push me onto my back and take away the aching in my bones.

Chapter 33

Margo

Riley picks me up from Caleb’s house the next morning. She wiggles her eyebrows at me, laughing. “How was your night?”

I glare at her. “I should be asking you the same thing.”

Her smile widens. “Yeah, you definitely should. Damn, Eli is good in bed.”

“Stop.”

“Nope, you asked.” She backs out of his driveway with a shit-eating grin. “He does this thing where he kind of rotates?—”

“Riley!” I yell, finally laughing. “I really,reallydon’t want to hear about your sex life. Not the details anyway.”

She shrugs. “Okay, okay.”

“I’m glad you’re happy, though.”

She goes quiet.

I tilt my head. “You arehappy, though, aren’t you?”

“We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”

“Hmm.” I don’t trust her glossed-over non-answer, but I let it go. I tip my head back and close my eyes. We had mind-numbing sex. Multiple times. One of us woke up in the middle of the night and the other just knew. We needed each other.

Hands reaching toward each other in the darkness.

Our faces so close we shared breath.

“Earth to Margo,” Riley says. “Where’d you go?”

“I want to remember what happened to me,” I whisper, my gaze on the houses flashing past us. “But I think it’s going to be traumatic.”

Riley’s family didn’t move to Rose Hill until I’d been gone a while, so no one was talking about it at that point. I don’t think anyone in our class actually knows the real story except Caleb. And a piece of my mind I can’t access.

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