Page 58 of Games We Play
“Tell me how you really feel.”
She grinned. He opened that right up to her, hadn’t he?
“I feel like I’m going to be sick. Every time I look at you, it’s like the bile comes up from my stomach and threatens to choke me out. You’re so good at doing that to women.”
He batted his eyelashes at her. “You used to love a good gagging.”
“Go to hell.” Sloan stood, almost knocking over her glass of water. “Go to hell and cut yourself on the tip of Satan’s pitchfork.”
She left the dining room the moment a server came by with their dessert. After announcing she would not be eating around Mr. Giles ever again, Sloan went up to her chambers and locked everyone but her chambermaid out. Even then, she made sure the middle-aged woman vacuuming the floors got out the moment her job was finished.
“What an impossible bastard.” Sloan paced in front of her bed. She had stripped down to her camisole. Where the hell was the thermostat, and how was she supposed to use it without the help of her chambermaid?So many buttons! Fuck it! Get naked!“I hope he’s a fucking centipede in his next life.”
She threw herself down on her bed. A mistake, since the first thing she saw when she looked up was the wall of photographs on the far side of her bedroom.
To someone who didn’t know Margaret Sloan well, it looked like any common collage of carefully framed photographs. Childhood. Adolescence. Degrees and vacations that took her around the world. Handshakes with dignitaries. Holding celebrities’ babies, because her PR agent told her she needed to soften her image. That was back when Sloan believed PR agents and their asinine advice.
In truth, it was a timeline of the events that made Sloan who shewas.
Everyone had a timeline, of course, but Sloan’s told a story that was more cliffhanger chapter endings than one continuous, flowing scene. Other women would segregate their memoirs by life events.“I lost my virginity here. Went to college here. Met the man who would become my husband. Wedding day. Babies. Retiring to the Riviera and dying with a view to make angels cry.Sloan’s told a different story. It wasn’t a list of events that showed her gradual progression into adulthood.
She could see the line between the old her and the woman she was now. There. Between the photograph with Senator Barack Obama and the black and white photograph of her sitting on a chaise lounge and gazing at the Chicago River.That was the moment I made the most fateful decision of my life.She had been paying for it – and reveling in it – ever since.
It was also a month before she shaved off her silky black hair. That was the day therealSloan was born.
She had buried her truths, her secrets, and her desires so deep inside of her that she no longer knew what to tell people. One day, a biographer would cross her doorstep and ask her about her life’s mission. What had she always accomplished? What was still on her bucket list? What was the most significant moment of her life? She wouldn’t have answers. She’d confess that she never talked about herself at length since she was the tender age of thirty-two, because certain life events had solidified her need to detach from humanity and simply have a smoke.
She didn’t have friends. Not real ones, anyway. There were people in Chicago who pretended to be friendly acquaintances, so they would get what they wanted from her. But they didn’t like her. She didn’t like them, either. People used each other. That’s how the world worked. Every interpersonal relationship was an exercise in control and manipulation. The only good Sloan was capable of was never bringing a child into her world of shit.
No one could take that decision from me. Not even him.
Sometimes a true narcissist or sociopath arrived to make her life more interesting and help her hone her skills, but in the end, Sloan always knew how to be the most dominant force in the room. There was no space for error. Either she conquered, or she was conquered.
No in between. There had never been.
She lied on her bed for half an hour, almost expecting Aaron to arrive and continue to make her life hell. Yet the world was blessedly quiet – until her phone buzzed.
I swear to God, Aaron…
Sloan almost didn’t pick up her phone. Even if it wasn’t Aaron, it might be Ayla, or Sean, and she wasnotin the mood to deal with work and security. She wanted to lie on her bed and pretend nothing but her life existed. Maybe not her life. Was it really so bad to want to disappear once in a while?
She checked her phone. It was a message from Leah.
Leah. I had almost forgotten about her.Not for a lack of caring, but because when Sloan had to deal with that level of crap from the man she worked with, she couldn’t bring herself to think of anything but the moments leading up until now.
“Is this what you wanted?”Leah had texted. She also attached a photo of her outfit. A royal purple negligee that Sloan had never seen before lit up Leah’s skin and made her look like the most spoiled underwear model to ever grace a woman’s phone.
“Yes.”That was Sloan’s truth, at least. She needed a distraction, which women and sex were good at providing.I know. I am a woman. What are we but distractions?Someone had told her that, once. She wished she could forget it.“You’re beautiful.”
“Really?”
Sloan called her. When the phone touched her ear, she heard Leah’s voice.
“Really?” she said out loud.
“If you know anything about me at all,” Sloan said, knowing full well that Leah knewnothing,“then I don’t lie about that. I wouldn’t tell a woman I found unattractive that she was beautiful only to blow up her ego.”
Leah giggled. “I bet you wouldn’t string her along as your lover, either.”
