Page 43 of A Game So Reckless

Darragh pulls his hands away. His voice is as sharp as the rocks beneath my bare feet when he bites out, “You’ll live.”

“Like you care,” I snap, whirling around to face him. I throw anger between us like a wall, like a shield. Anger is easy. It’s familiar. And it feels so much safer than confronting the wicked throbbing between my legs, the prickling swell of my nipples. “I could have fallen off that tube and drowned at any time and you wouldn’t have even known. You didn’t even turn back to look at me once!”

Jesus, I sound absolutely pathetic. I meant to accuse him of callous cruelty, but instead I just sound like I’m complaining that he wasn’t paying enough attention to me.

I don’t even know why I bother. Darraghiscallous. Heiscruel. None of this is new information. To either of us.

But for some reason, it looks like my words actually affect him. His jaw works, and his hand jabs forward, fast as a punch. He hooks his fingers beneath the red ribbon tied in a bow between my breasts and pulls hard. I stumble forward until I crash against his front. His skin is even warmer than I could have imagined.

“I know that you don’t typically like to think before you speak,” Darragh hisses against my temple. “But how about you take a look at the front of that fucking boat before you spout off more bullshit in front of me.”

He gives my bathing suit one more vicious tug before he releases me and retreats. He stares at me with hate etched along his jaw. His forearms flex, his hands in fists. He’s looking at me like he almost wishes he left me out there on the water.

“Go home, pet. Go home, like the good little girl that you are. Before your mamma knows you’re gone.”

Rage simmers in my blood as Darragh turns away from me and walks up the rocky incline. He crosses the lawn and then disappears into the grey stone house.

He really must own this place now.

There goes the fucking neighbourhood.

Muttering and swearing to myself, I stomp as much as the rocks beneath my feet will let me and go to retrieve my tube. As I do so, something bright and shiny catches my eye, drawing my attention to the front area of the boat.

I didn’t notice it before. But there, directly in front of the driver’s seat and giving Darragh a perfect view of the back of the boat – and a perfect view of any stupid girl he might deign to tow on a tube behind it – is a mirror.

He could see me the entire fucking time.

I don’t know if I should feel comforted or unnerved by that fact. I settle on a bitter sort of neutrality, a lack of caring that feels just a little bit too forced.

But I have to not care. I have to find some sort of distance. Because if I let myself fall into the pit of anxiously examining every little thing Darragh does to me, I may never crawl my way back out.

I bend over to grasp my tube’s handle so I can pull it home. It’s only then, when my swimsuit top suddenly shifts and flops open, that I realize Darragh has just stolen my red ribbon.

Chapter21

Valentina

The next few days I stick pretty close to home. No more misadventures on the tube. When I go out on the dock or go swimming, I keep my time out there brief. It turns out this is somewhat unnecessary, as it appears that Darragh doesn’t spend any time at his new cottage during the day. On one of my morning walks with Mamma, I discover that his big green vehicle is gone. It doesn’t return until late at night.

But he does return. Every night. Sometimes, I stay up and wait for the sound of the wheels on the gravel on the road outside. Sometimes, it wakes me up from a dead sleep.

It doesn’t make any sense to me, but it very much seems like Darragh is only coming here to sleep and then going back to Toronto in the morning. Nearly three hours of driving each way. Every day. It’s one monster of a commute. His comment from the other day keeps echoing in my head.What I had to do was to get some fucking sleep.

More than five hours of driving per day doesn’t exactly seem like a recipe for a good night’s rest, but I highly doubt there’s any reasoning with him. Besides, I’m doing everything in my power to avoid him. So far, it hasn’t been too hard. I stay inside at night. And I assume that he does, too.

Mamma hasn’t even noticed that there’s a new owner next door. I wonder if Papà will be informed soon. He has to have somebody feeding him information about what’s happening around any and all of his many properties. If he has been told that the old Robinson place has sold, then there’s no way he’s aware that Darragh was the buyer. Otherwise, he’d be yanking Mamma and me out of here faster than I could say holy cannoli.

Days go by, and I wish I could say things felt somewhat normal and boring again, but they don’t. Even during the day, when Darragh isn’t here, the possibility of his arrival buzzes through the air like an electrical charge. His absence doesn’t feel like an absence at all. Only a ghostly prelude to his presence.

After a week of this, the tingling apprehension feels like it’s begun to poison my body. I’m tired and on edge, a heaviness building in my abdomen and tension behind my eyes.

Only, a trip to the bathroom before bed shows me it’s not poison at all.

It’s my period.

God, I must be going crazy. It’s my hormones, my stupid period, making me feel this way. Not Darragh.

Why am I giving him so much power over me? To the point that I believe that the normal processes inside my own body are due to his toxic influence? My cycle is somewhat irregular, but I should have recognized the signs. I glare at my panties, as if it’s their fault I’m such an idiot. The lining of the underwear is damp and pinkish-brown. Only spotting so far.

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