Page 63 of Heartless Game

It was Tovah.

I looked down. I was covered in blood—my fists, my bare abdomen. The guy beneath me was groaning and begging for me to stop.

So at least I hadn’t killed him.

Rising to my feet, I tried to ignore the carnage in front of me, immediately going to Tovah and untying her.

She was freezing. I covered her in the shirt I’d tied around her ankles, lifting her in my arms and carrying her toward the car.

“Isaac, what is wrong with you?” she cried. “You—you hurt me and then, and then…you have to go back. We have to go back. He’s not okay.”

“I’ll call 911 from the car,” I said. I didn’t give a shit about the guy I’d beaten. I should, and on some level, I was concerned about how little I cared, but that was an issue for later. Taking care of Tovah was for now. “I need to get you home before you get sick.”

Opening the passenger door, I carefully placed her in the seat and buckled her in, hating the way her body was wracked with shivers. Hating thatIwas the reason she was shivering. I’d never fully accepted myself, but I’d never loathed myself like I did in that moment. If anyone deserved to be beaten to a pulp, it was me.

No time for that right now. Going around to the driver’s side, I cranked the heat to its highest setting, letting the car warm up.

I’d never known I had a heart until those quiet minutes in the car, because as Tovah sobbed quietly in the passenger seat, my heart shattered into tiny, painful pieces. I reached my hand out for hers automatically, and she snatched hers away, moving as far into the passenger side door and as far away from me as she could, like she needed distance between us.

The small shards of my heart stabbed into my chest at her understandable rejection of me. I’d gone too fucking far, and I had no idea how to make up for it.

Someone tapped on the driver’s side window.

Shit.

I turned to address whoever it was…

…only to see Aviva standing there, glaring at me with utter disdain and disbelief in her eyes.

Double shit.

24

Tovah

Iwas numb.

Frozen everywhere: my skin, my bones, my heart. Maybe this was shock? I wasn’t sure. I’d been trussed up almost naked in the middle of my university’s campus for anyone to see me. And someone had, and Isaac had lost his goddamned mind and beaten the guy half to death like he hadn’t put me there in the first place. So I welcomed the numbness, because I knew it was the only thing keeping the pain at bay.

Isaac clearly didn’t give a shit that I wanted to be numb. He’d turned the heat up as high as it could go, and the warmth in the car melted my frozen heart into tears that spilled from my eyes. I hated that I was crying, that this asshole knew he’d hurt me. And when he reached his right hand over the console to grab mine, as if he couldmake it up to me, I pulled my hand away and huddled against the door, needing as much distance as I could get.

For a moment, I even contemplated unbuckling my seatbelt, opening the door, and getting out, but I didn’t relish the idea of walking around campus barefoot and half naked, in the dark.

Better the devil I knew.

And he was the devil. I’d thought I’d known how deep Isaac’s darkness went, but I hadn’t fully realized until I’d watched his fists fly and blood splatter everywhere while I stood, helpless and tied to a fucking freezing statue of two women who I knew wouldn’t have put up with this shit for a hot second.

I needed out. How, I didn’t know.Maybe it was time to listen to my mom and disappear for a while. I’d hate to give up college and my dreams, but I didn’t need to be tortured by the boy I’d loved as a child because he was more fucked in the head than I was.

While I was lost in thoughts and desperate plans, someone knocked on Isaac’s window. I turned my head, only to see Aviva standing there, Jack behind her.

Oh, thank god.

All I wanted was to cry in my best friend’s arms.

Unlocking the passenger door before Isaac could stop me, I burst out of the car and ran around the front, and then Aviva was grabbing me and holding me tight.

“I don’t know what he did to you, but I’ll fucking kill him,” she was saying.

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