Page 113 of Dark Little Game

“On an onyx black night, my heart still burns a crimson flame. Honesty before everything.”

“Tonight, we have our Confessional,” Noah continues, the flames of all the candles lighting up his face. “For our new members, I think it will be an illuminating experience. We will pass around this box to each member, and you will randomly reach in, grab a secret, and read it out loud.As if it were your own soul, baring your own truth.”

That’s another thing I like about the confessional.

Writing down my own secrets felt vulnerable.

But readingotherpeople’s secrets, as if they were my own… it feels like sharing a burden. Sharing something deep and dark, with the people I’m closest to.

“I’ll begin,” Noah says.

He reaches into the black box, feels around, and pulls out a piece of paper. “I want my professor, Elizabeth Mayfield, more than I’ve ever wanted any other woman. I can’t stop thinking about her. And the sick truth is that I want to break college rules and fuck her senseless.”

No one ever comments after each secret is read.

We’re silent as we pass the box from one person to another, and each secret is accepted, just like the others.

No judgement.

Nothing but honesty.

A sophomore named Andy reads the next secret. “There is a freshman member of Onyx who gave me the best nightof my life. He is shy, but that all changes in bed, and I quietly say his name now, each time I come.”

Interesting. So Oliver’s a good fuck, and someone in here has had a taste.

I let the thought slip through my mind, knowing that I should stay unbiased.

The box passes to Hunter next, and as he reads it out loud, I watch the way his lips move, wishing they were on my skin instead.

“I cheated on my final exams last year, and I’m afraid that I’ll have to do it again this year. I know I’m fucked. I don’t know what else to do.”

I idly wonder if that secret may have been written by Weston.

But that’s the thing about the Confessional.

I’ll never truly know.

Hunter passes the box along.

A dozen more secrets are read out loud. Some of them are sweet. Apparently someone in Onyx can’t sleep without hugging a little teddy bear at night, another cries every time he hears a song that reminds him of his mother, and another has deep impostor syndrome.

Some are darker.

One person says that he secretly fucks girls from different sororities, but can’t ever develop feelings for any of them.

Another says that he has a secret love of touching himself outdoors, but he never wants to freak anyone out with it. Deep down, he just wants to find someone to go camping with and fuck wildly on a blanket in the grass.

And then there’s asecondsecret that sounds like it’s about Ollie.

This time, it’s someone who describes catching a “awkward but adorable freshman” in the act of giving a Luros girl oral sex while being fucked by a Double Daggers guy at the same time.

The secret that Roman reads catches me by surprise, though.

“I know that my best friend falls for men who aren’t good enough for him, and it kills me to see him self-sabotage.”

Weston takes a long drink of vodka as that secret is read out to the room.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that was his actual secret, and he wrote it about me.