Page 159 of Fake Game

Can I feel safe?

“It’s not up for discussion. Your mam’s worried sick about you, and reporters are queuing outside your apartment like it’s the last Sunday service. Safety comes first.”

“They are?”

My mind conjures up images of people gathering outside the complex, of them storming past security and convening at my door, where they’ll hound and hound and hound until they break me down. I’m not safe.

I’ll never be safe.

“Come home, child. Take a break. Enjoy some fresh country air.”

Within my fractured soul, there is a churning whirlpool of guilt and shame trying to fight my selfish cowardice. It swirls with the reminder of my friends, with the reminder of the man who has stayed by my side this entire time and fought to help me. The man who has been my protector and who promised me the world.

My heart beats for him, but my heart is damaged. And while there is a part of me that yearns for him, that loves him, it is struggling to win out over the part of me that is dying, the part of me that just doesn’t care.

My mind is a mess of anxiety, fear, and depression.

I’m a forest that’s been put under a curse. My trees are withering, the air is turning poisonous, and the animals are morphing into monsters.

He calls me Sparkles, but my light is waning and soon all I’ll be is a speck in the dark.

What good am I to him like this?

What good am I broken?

I raise my phantom gaze and open my lips.

“Okay.”

And I fall deeper into the abyss.

FORTY-FOUR

JACKSON

Maybe today.

I load my latest batch of brownies into the glass Tupperware container, hoping that when I go downstairs that the container from yesterday isn’t still sitting outside.

It’s killing me.

She’s not replying to any of my messages, and all my calls are going to voicemail—there’s been nothing but radio silence. Every fiber of my being wants to break her door down and force myself inside so I can hold her. I’m not sure how much longer I can respect her healing process until I force the master code from Parker and let myself in.

My fingers tighten on the container as I steel myself and head to the elevator, ready to try again, to knock again and hope maybe today I get some kind of response.

“Hey, you bringing those down to Deer?” Parker wanders up beside me.

“Yeah.”

“Can I do it today?”

“No.” I punch the elevator button.

“Aw, come on. Let me give it a try. You know I have the golden touch.”

“No.”

The elevator doors begin to slide open, and Parker’s arm shoots out across the frame to bar me from entering.

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