Page 152 of Dark Little Game

I found the grass field the first night I was here.

When I couldn’t stomach the idea of being in Onyx House yet. I left my father’s house and came here instead. I slept in my car, parked along a little road that backs up to the grass.

But the new feeling settling in my chest isn’t hot, like when I crave violence.

It isn’t cold either, like when the world disappoints me, over and over.

It’s something more likecertainty.

Fate, maybe, if that’s something to be believed.

Of course he isn’t going to come.

I have a picnic set up for us down in the field.

Basket, and all.

The kind of thing people with normal lives have, because they’re not worried about being stalked or turning into a violent stalker themselves.

There are strawberries in the little basket, of course.

His favorite.

Also caprese sandwiches, with the freshest mozzarella and the last of the good tomatoes and basil of the season. An avocado cucumber salad.

Little jars full of whiskey, and cans of Coke to mix with them.

I pace back and forth at the end of the street, looking down the forested path where I thought we’d walk together hand in hand.

Like some fucking movie.

Really let myself get carried away.

But now I’ve been waiting for thirty minutes, and Iknow damn well Rayne was only five minutes away, up the street.

From here, all I see is a curve in the road that leads up onto Red Row.

I can’t see the houses themselves, only the tops of their roofs that show through the patches in the canopy of leaves and branches. Every leaf is gold now, and many have fallen.

The ending of a season.

The start of a new one.

And there’s that ever-present voice in my head, reminding me.

I will always be alone.

I will always be alone.

Part of me doesn’t want to confront the truth. If I walk back up the road to Onyx House, will he be there to look me in the eye and tell me this was all a sick joke?

Like a girl stood up for prom in high school, with the popular jock driving by only to see the expression drop on her face?

For my entire life, until now, I would default to that thought.

Butfucking Rayne Colson.

Rayne’s put another idea into my head.