Page 71 of The Game

“Take me with you, if you go,” I say, my voice rumbling as I try and fail to keep my fury hidden behind my teeth. Nick snorts and shakes his head, and Jameson’s eyes harden.

“No. You have things to mend here, clearly.”

Nick’s words are like a punch to the gut, but before I can stab him, a timid knock sounds at the door. Jumping away from it, I turn and stare like there’s a demon on the other side, but my hand reaches out and pushes down on the handle nonetheless.

Alice could be flaying me alive, and I’d still ache to see her face. Such is the pain and torment she now causes me, the very same I do to myself with my unrealistic expectations of her. I just don’t know how to make it go away yet.

Her and Ellie stand in the darkened hallway, shoulder to shoulder, very somber looks on their faces that have my toes curling for whatever they’re going to say. Is Alice about to come clean, tell us what she went through? Does Ellie have more information, more tallies on her body that we need to find and ruthlessly kill?

Cheeks flushed, lips tinted a cherry red from their wine, their eyes shine, and Alice is the first to speak, a small smile on her beautiful lips. The sight pulls me up short, makes my heart race and blood pump straight to my cock. I’d give anything to pin her down and make her remember why we belong together, why she will never need another man ever again, and then, her angelic voice speaks.

“Can you drive us to get ice cream?”

* * *

For once, Jameson allows me to take the lead, and though I can tell the girls want this to be a normal outing, we all don our jackets and boots and pile into Jameson’s Escalade. The girls sit in the very back, giggling to themselves as I drive, my eyes flicking to the rearview mirror so many times I’m beginning to get a migraine.

What’s worse is that their laughter isn’t the same. Ellie used to stay over a lot, and the two would be awake until the wee hours of the morning, laughing and giggling and destroying the kitchen after I snuck them bottles of caramel apple wine. I would give anything to hear the tinge of innocence in their voices again, to see the way light touches their eyes when they smile instead of this caution and constant war.

But it’s a step in the right direction, so I’ll take it. Jameson sits behind me in a captain’s chair, playing on his phone, but the small smile lingering on his lips calms me. He sees the progress suddenly, too, and it has everything to do with Ellie and the fact they both endured something we as men will never understand. They need each other more than they need us right now, and that further calms me. Even Nick beside me is fighting a small grin.

“How many glasses of wine tonight, little rose?” he calls back to Ellie, sifting through emails and feigning nonchalance. Nick is strongly opposed to drinking, but it seems he doesn’t mind if hislittle rosedoes.

“Glasses?” she teases. “I think the more astute question would be how many bottles.”

He rolls his eyes as the girls giggle some more.

“Mrs. Potter has turned her into a lush,” he mutters to me, and in his tone I hear it—the love he holds for this girl. It’s sickening in its sweetness but frightening in its ferocity. I’m sure he’s done and will continue to do heinous things in her name.

“She seems happy,” I grumble back, elbow on the middle console as my eyes swish across the darkened, tree-lined highway. It’s nights like these in the rain that I think of my father, of the truth we heard that night, how their accident was truly a set up. If I ever get my hands on that motherfucker…

“Took a while. She had me and Jonah for company, and she definitely enjoyed the latter’s more for a time.”

Snorting, my fingers play at my lips as I drift in thought.

“How did you…get over that? You love her. It’s obvious.”

I am not worried in the slightest of the girls hearing us; they’re now engaged in some secretive conversation, whispering in one another’s ears. He lets out a growl of a sigh as the highway morphs into the freeway, trees dwindling to be replaced by the structure of the city.

“It wasn’t something I ever had to get over, Tristan. It’s not like she asked for it, not like she’s…different somehow.”

He’s being delicate, but I think I know what he means. Switching to Russian so the girls do not understand, I continue my line of questioning, knowing he can speak and understand rather fluently.

“You’ve fucked since then?”

His eyes flash to mine in warning, but when he sees I am serious, he simmers down.

“Normally, I’d gut you for that,” he growls back in choppy Russian, making me grin. But then he sighs heavily, swiping his palms over his thighs. “Yes, we have. Happy?”

“And?”

He growls again.

“It’s no different, Tristan. Fuck, how would you feel if she asked you all this shit after what they went through? Are you saying you see her differently?”

I shrug, considering, but Jameson butts in, always the older brother, even if by only a minute.

“He’s just too nervous to find out for himself, so he acts like a fucking idiot.”

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