Page 103 of Play the Game

“Did you need it to sleep?” he asks quietly. His sleepy face softens, and I can’t help but lose my train of thought.

I shake my head and pull the covers up higher.

“You sure?”

I want to tell him to stop being so nice to me. I need him to go back to being like an annoying roommate who enjoys irritating me instead of acting so sweet—like when he grabbed my hand in the kitchen when his parents asked me about my family.

When he turns the TV off again, the room is filled with silence. It’s a calm silence, though. Comforting in a way…until he climbs underneath the covers, and I can feel his warmth from across the bed. Each one of his breaths sounds louder than the one before, and I’m positively insane for thinking such a thing.

Suddenly, everything feels heightened, and I’m lying in my fake husband’s bed, trying to think about all the ways he’s aggravated me since starting our little marriage game so I don’t think of other things.

“Hey.”

Excitement erupts from my chest when his smooth voice fills the room.

“Yeah?”I sound eager. God.

“Can I ask you something now?”

I smile to myself. “Technically, you get one question a day, remember?”

He makes a noise that sounds an awful lot like a sarcastic sigh. “Why’d you close off when my parents asked about your mom?”

My body breaks out in a sweat.

He noticed?

“You don’t have to answer.”

“Oh, so I get a choice?” I whisper-tease.

“This time? Yeah.” Emory’s tone is smooth and steady, whichmustbe the reason I’m considering telling him about her. There can’t be any reason other than that.

“I’ll tell you.”Shit, what?

“You will? I surely thought you’d put up a fight.”

I’m just as surprised as he is.

I turn away from him, as if putting my back to him will lessen the dread I’ll feel when speaking of her out loud.

I start with the basics. “She’s alive.”

Emory stays quiet, and I tell myself he isn’t even in the room—not that I could ever believe that. I feel his presence like I feel my own heartbeat.

“But the woman I once knew is no longer a woman I recognize.” My throat starts to feel tight and itchy. “I don’t like to talk about her, and it’s easier to just tell people she’s dead, but it feels wrong to do that. Like it gives her an easy way out.”

There were times when I wished she was dead, and I’m not proud of that, but abandonment causes you to become bitter at times.

“If she isn’t dead, where is she?” Emory moves under the covers, and for a split second, I wonder if he’s going to get closer to me.

But he doesn’t, so I keep going.

“Right now?” I ask. “Probably on the corner of 1st and Mcallister.”

He repeats what I said, dragging the words out with a familiarity that I highly doubt is true.

“How often do you go there to hand out coats and food? Do you go to check on her?”

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