Page 82 of Heartless Game

We kissed, and kissed, and kissed, some hidden magic between us casting a spell and weaving us together, changing us in ways I wasn’t sure I was ready for.

Overwhelmed and gasping from the intensity of it, I pulled away.

He opened his eyes, and there was humor in them.

“There’s no such thing as ‘too much’ with us,” he said, like he’d read my mind.

Unable to respond, to verify or validate, knowing that doing so would abandon everything that mattered to me, I asked instead, “Any other tattoos?”

He scanned my face, before shrugging. “Yeah. Remember that little girl I told you about? She had a birthmark under her left armpit in the shape of a crescent moon. I was drunk last year with the team and we all went to get tattoos; for some reason, I asked the artist to put a crescent moon tattoo under my armpit like hers. Don’t really know why.”

He lifted his arm, showing me. It peeked out from the hair, angry and accusatory.

There was something stuck in my throat; I couldn’t breathe.

He’d gotten a tattoo of a birthmark.

Mybirthmark.

I’d hidden it so well, was careful not to lift my arms too high. But it never occurred to me that he remembered. That he would’ve memorialized it.

That he cared so much about that little girl—the one he claimed he hated.

The one I left behind.

“You okay?” he asked, concerned.

“Just tired,” I said.

And I was, suddenly. Bone tired. Drained and exhausted by the reminder of who we were and what really kept us apart. There was no future for us. We were both dying vines on a wall, unable to ever climb to freedom.

Isaac, unaware of my morose thoughts, pulled me into his arms, stroking my back with his free hand, and murmuring something in Spanish:

“He intentado detenerme, pero no puedo. Me estoy enamorando de ti, amor.”

I knew some Spanish, but before I could try to translate the romantic-sounding words, I was already asleep on his chest.

32

Tovah

Isaac didn’t give me my phone back. He did, however, edge me to the point of insanity for the rest of the week, care for me afterward, and then cuff me to him every night and make me sleep in his arms.

They were the leather and fur cuffs from what I thought was a dream. Apparently not.

“Not going to hurt you again,” he’d said. “Got rid of those other goddamn handcuffs after they rubbed your wrists raw.”

God help me, but I was beginning to grow addicted to it—both his torture and his care.

That didn’t mean I forgot what mattered to me, though. So even though he and his teammates were still shadowing me to all my classes and newspaper meetings, I had to find a moment alone so I could call my mom.

I found my moment after my sociology seminar one day. Dave Lawson, or Lawson, as he went by, was my babysitter that afternoon. It was a bright, sunny day, warm for early spring, and the sun streamed in through the trees that surrounded the quad, dousing it with light and making the old snow sparkle.

Lawson wasn’t much of a talker. It was an easy silence, but we were both lost in our own thoughts. Lawson, thinking about god knew what, probably goalie stuff. Me, about how I was going to manage to call my mom. My phone was burning a hole in my purse.

Until Lawson stopped in the middle of the quad, almost tripping over his own feet as he stared into the distance.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

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