Page 22 of A Game of Deception
“It’s working.” Tara looked up, facade crumbling. “You left,” she said, voice cracking. “You just left me. I’ve been frozen at sixteen, waiting?—”
Her raw pain gutted me. Without thinking, I stepped closer, cupped her cheek. Her skin felt soft, her breath warm.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though for what exactly—leaving, returning, or this whole fucking mess—I couldn’t say.
She leaned into my touch, eyes closing briefly. When they opened, they burned with a need matching mine. I leaned in, pulled by forces I couldn’t fight, didn’t want to fight.
Our lips hovered inches apart when a kitchen crash yanked us back to reality. We jumped apart like guilty teenagers.
Tara recovered first, smoothing her dress with shaky hands. “This never happened,” she declared with surprising steadiness. “None of it.”
She brushed past me, heading back with her chin up, leaving me to wonder how the fuck I screwed up so badly to end here.
6
TARA
My hands were still shakingas I fumbled with my keys at the apartment door. The metal jangled cheerfully, like tiny church bells, when all I wanted was silence. Blessed, empty silence to drown out my father’s voice saying Jimmy’s name.
I closed the door hard enough to rattle the abstract paintings on the hallway wall. The sound satisfied something primal in me, something that wanted to break things, to make the external world match the chaos inside my chest.
You left. You just left me.
God, had I actually said that? Out loud? To Xander?
I loosened my heels, sending them skittering across the hardwood floor, and went straight for the kitchen. The wine bottle had already been open since the day before. I poured a generous glass, then thought better of it and took the entire bottle with me to the living room.
The apartment was dark except for the streetlights filtering through the windows. But all I saw was Xander’s face, the wayhis green eyes had gone soft when I’d started crying like some pathetic teenager.
I’ve been frozen since sixteen, waiting?—
“Fuck.” The word came out as a groan. I collapsed onto the couch, pressing the cold wine bottle against my forehead. All this careful planning, building myself into someone untouchable, and I’d crumbled at the first mention of my brother’s name.
No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t just Jimmy’s name. It was how my father had wielded my dead brother like a scalpel, cutting precisely where he knew it would hurt most. And Xander—Xander had been right there to witness my unraveling.
I took a long pull from the bottle, not bothering with the glass anymore. The wine was crisp and cold, burning slightly as it went down. I replayed the hallway scene over and over.
The way Xander had found me. The concern in his voice as he’d called out my name. The tentative step forward, like he was approaching a wounded animal. And then?—
His hand on my cheek. Warm and gentle.
I’d leaned into that touch like a drowning woman reaching for shore. And when he’d leaned in, when his mouth had been inches from mine, I’d wanted it with a desperation that terrified me. Not as part of my plan, not as Dr. Swanson manipulating her patient, but as Tara. Just Tara, who’d been fascinated by this man since she was a teenager.
The almost-kiss burned on my lips like a brand. I could still smell him—something uniquely Xander that hadn’t changed.
If that dish hadn’t clattered?—
I stood abruptly, the wine sloshing dangerously in the bottle. No, I couldn’t think about what might have happened. It was a repeat of what had happened twelve years ago at Jimmy’s funeral. But back then I was only sixteen, hopelessly in love with Xander. Not anymore. I was an adult with a plan. Take control. Make Xander depend on me, and then I would reject him the way he abandoned me. Make him pay for what he did.
I needed to regain that control. To remember who I was and what I was doing here.
The wine bottle found its home on the table as I padded barefoot to my home office. I hesitated at the door. This room was my command center. It was where I plotted and planned.
I opened the door and flicked on the lights.
The wall was covered with close to a hundred photos, articles, and screenshots of Xander McCrae’s life. Here was Xander scoring the winning goal for Rangers. There was Xander stumbling out of a London nightclub, clearly intoxicated. A paparazzo shot of him with a blonde model in Ibiza. His transfer announcement to Chelsea. The fight that had gotten him suspended.
In the center, barely visible beneath layers of more recent additions, was an original photo. The one on Jimmy’s Instagram, taken just a week before the crash. Xander and Jimmy at the beach, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, grinning at the camera like they had all the time in the world.
