Page 22 of Wicked Games

Her window is unlocked. I slide it open with one hand, then lift myself in. My entrance is nearly silent. I straighten and glance around the dark room. Her bed is made. Her uniform is crumpled toward the foot of the bed, a pair of running shoes just below it. She took her boots and high heels with her.

I lie down on the bed, fluffing the pillow under my head. It smells like her shampoo.

She isn’t a girl who wears a lot of perfume. Her scent comes from her skin and her soaps, and I think I like that best. Amelie and Savannah—and any other girl who got close enough for me to notice them—coated themselves in expensive shit.

Not Margo.

She forgets that I knew her as a child, too. Memory isn’t a one-way thing.

I catch her looking at me with regret. Maybe longing. And I know it’s because she wishes she could untangle the mess she made. The knots bind us so tightly together, it’skillingus.

Through the walls, one of her foster parents is snoring.

I shift around on the bed, leaving my mark. I have no doubt she’ll notice it when she returns. She’s tuned in to me. And make no mistake: she is going to return. The Bryans will find her and bring her back, even if it tortures them.

They’re honorable like that.

Why couldn’t Margo have been placed with someone else? A family less forgiving?

I’d call it fate that Margo was put with the Bryans, but unfortunately for them, fate operates by a different name: Lydia Asher.

My mother.

I pick myself up off Margo’s bed. I still have a pair of her panties in my dresser. The pair I ripped off her. But I cast a glance around the room and I can’t help but to think that this place doesn’t feel like her home. She’s inhabited the closet and the bed, a few drawers in the dresser. Beyond that… nothing. No pictures or posters on the wall. The same fucking bedspread that was probably there the day she arrived…

It’s understandable why she doesn’t call it her home.

And after what I did, it’ll feel even less like it.

I’ve been spinning off-kilter for years. It’s justifiable to want the same for her.

How does it feel, Margo?

I run my finger over the top of the dresser, and then I step into the hallway. There’s more risk out here. Robert or Lenora could come out any minute, half-awake and stumbling to the kitchen for a glass of water.

It’s almost pitch-black in here, except for the moonlight filtering through the window at the end of the hall. I lean close to one of the frames on the wall.

Robert, Lenora, Isabella. One happy family—on the surface. Of course, this photo was before Isabella got addicted to drugs and derailed her entire life. Theirs aren’t the only ones destroyed by Amber Wolfe.

The list goes on and on…

I lift the photo off the wall and unclip the back. I intend to take the picture—there are so many on this wall, it’ll take them weeks to notice it gone—but there’s a folded piece of paper in the back of the frame.

Intriguing.

I take it and put it in my pocket. I leave the photo. No need to raise undue suspicion. Carefully, I place it back on the wall and cross back to Margo’s room. I slip out of her window, closing it behind me, and climb back down to the ground.

Anticipation licks at my skin.

But no: first, the punishment.

I shouldn’t have come to the Bryans’ house in the first place.

Scrub out the weakness, son.

So I do. I’ll run until I puke, and then I’ll read the note burning a hole in my pocket. And maybe then, I’ll be able to sleep.

Chapter 8

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