Page 72 of Heartless Game

He snorted.

“Sure, sounds good,” he said, following me into my bedroom.

I’d never had a guy in here. My bedroom had always been small, but with Isaac in it, giving off heat and so much energy, it felt almost claustrophobic. Having him in my space felt vulnerable in a way I hadn’t before.

Especially when he made his way to the closet.

I had a split second to decide: preventing my embarrassment when he discovered what I was hiding in there, or letting him get distracted so I could grab the burner phone without him noticing.

I chose to be embarrassed.

Isaac opened the door to the small, dark closet and disappeared inside.

Immediately, I kneeled beside the bed, lifting the loose floorboard and removing a burner phone, only to quickly replace the floorboard and tuck the burner phone into the pocket of Isaac’s hoodie I was currently wearing.

I did it just in time, because the closet door opened all the way, and Isaac stood there, an amused and bemused expression on his face. In his hands were hockey jerseys.

Three hockey jerseys.

Three hockey jerseys that hadJones 37written across the chest and back, to be precise.

“You know, I was going to make you wear one of my jerseys I have at home, but it looks like that wasn’t necessary.” He grinned, dimples annoyingly and adorably on full display.

I didn’t want to think he was cute. I was still too pissed at him.

I also didn’t want him to think I had a crush on him, or anything stupid like that.

“I didn’t buy them,” I lied. “The newspaper gave them to me.”

He shook his head, smirking, dimples showing. “Sure. And you had to take all three.”

“No one wanted them,” I told him. “No one was interested in wearing your number. I felt bad. It wasn’t the jerseys’ fault. So I decided to give them a home.”

“How charitable of you.” He was still grinning.

“Don’t make this something more than it is,” I said. “Don’t turn this into some huge thing in your head where I’ve liked you in secret forever and have been doodling ‘Tovah Silver’ in my diary. I know who you are, Isaac, don’t forget that. I’d never have a crush on someone like you.”

His dimples disappeared. He stepped toward me, reaching down with his hand and gripping my chin in between his forefinger and thumb, tilting my head back to look at him.

“Oh, little snoop. I’m not making this more than what it is, because I know exactly what it is. You can pretend to hate me all you want—hell, you can actually hate me all you want—but it won’t change what’s between us. It won’t change that you’re mine, body and soul. That you’ve been mine since the day we met. You know it, and I know it.” He nodded to the jersey in his other hand. “And you’re going to wear my jersey to the game tonight so everyone else knows it, too.”

With that, he released me, stepping back.

“Pack your clothes,” he said. “You won’t be coming back here for a while.”

I found an old suitcase and started stuffing clothes into it, heart racing like I was being chased. Because as much as I hated it, in a way, Isaac wasright. I had been his since we’d first met—as young children in Brooklyn on his family’s compound. But he didn’t remember me from back then, and I wasn’t his now.

I wouldn’t let myself be.

And I wouldn’t let him—or anyone else—think so, either. Not after what he’d done to me on the quad the other night. I wouldn’t put up with his bullshit, and he was going to see exactly whoTovah Lewiswas.

28

Tovah

In my time at Reina, I’d been to more hockey games than I could count. Always as a reporter or editor, and, more recently, as the captain’s girlfriend’s best friend. I didn’t mind my reporter or sidekick role, because it let me be there as an observer.

But as I’d been discovering, being attached to Isaac “Jones” meant I was no longer an observer. Instead, I was the oneobserved.

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