Page 102 of Deceptive Games

“If I say yes, will you come looking for me all the time?” she asked a little hesitantly, and I shook my head.

“No. Not unless you’re in danger.”

She was quiet for a moment before nodding, her eyes scanning the yard too. “I like to sit here and think. It’s peaceful at night unless other people are around.”

“Thanks for bringing me here,” I murmured, and she gave me a smile.

“That’s okay. Don’t come here without me though. You’d one hundred percent get stabbed and robbed.”

“Noted,” I cringed, my eyes returning to the orange flames. “My nightmares are always the same. I’m always little, waiting at the window with my face pressed against the glass on my birthday for my parents to come home. They never do. Sometimes the dreams add little things, like I remember onewhere the glass breaks and I cut my face. Another, a car crashed through and killed me. Either way, it was always my birthday, and always that window I sat at.”

“Is it a dream based on a memory?”

My brow creased, not knowing how she knew that. “Yeah, why?”

“I have a dream that does the same thing. One of Mom waking me for school with pancakes. Each time I had the dream, it would end with her being really hurt or killed. Sometimes by Max, other times someone else. It was the same memory I had from a summer’s day where we had pancakes and were supposed to go to the park for ice cream. In the memory, Max got angry and hit me with the breakfast plate because I spilled some syrup on the ground,” she said lightly, seeming to pause before adding, “We never got to go to the park. She left three days later while I was at school.”

My heart hurt for her, it really did. It sucked growing up with parents who didn’t care about you, but having one parent love you unconditionally then leave was a whole different kind of pain that I couldn’t imagine.

“You sure he didn’t kill her and bury her in the yard or something? Were they fighting?” I asked carefully, not wanting to upset her, but knowing this might not be as simple as her running away.

She sighed, obviously going over these questions in her head a million times before.

“She left a note saying she was coming back for me. She ran to find somewhere safe, maybe because he started hurting her too, I’m not sure, but Max had never done that before. He yelled at her and abused their money, but he only got violent with me. Josie found out Mom had a place with a new boyfriend in Rosevale and was pregnant, but her trail went cold after that and she vanished. Skeet’s going to help me look.”

I was pretty sure that was the most personal information she’d ever shared with me, and I savored it, silently promising to help her find her mom. If she managed to get to Rosevale and start another life, chances were high she’d changed her name or something to stay hidden.

Money talked, and thankfully, I had plenty of that if she needed it.

“You want to go home and smoke joints over breakfast? We should leave before teachers start arriving,” I warned, looking at the fire one last time.

“As long as we get coffee with it. I’m still not awake,” she laughed, getting to her feet.

She sucked in a sharp breath of pain, and I made a mental note to get her naked later so I could inspect her for damage.

If she’d been hurt, surely she would’ve told us, but I had to be sure.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SKEETER

“Skeeter Maddox,” Justin Lopez drawled as I was about to leave the gas station, finding him standing at the pump on the other side of my car. “What a lovely surprise.”

“Fuck off, Lopez. What are you doing here?” I muttered, leaning back on my car and crossing my arms.

I’d heard the fucker had been in Wet Dreams a lot lately, giving the Reapers more shit than usual. I didn’t know why he was so obsessed over Archer’s girl. She was just a used-up stripper that everyone had fucked. Everything about her was fake, from her bleached blonde hair to her ridiculous lashes and nails.

I wouldn’t want those talons anywhere near my cock.

He was forty, way too old for Lexi, not that age usually stopped her. His light brown hair was graying around the edges, his teeth stained from years of smoking and drinking, and his Hell’s Demons jacket was old and worn.

“Just pumping gas,” he grinned, tilting his head. “Want to tell me what your girl was doing setting fires in my territory this morning? Don’t tell me we’re going to have a problem too? I already have my hands full with Hendricks.”

“I don’t have a girl.”

“Sure you do. The dark haired hellion that’s pretending to be a rich bitch,” he snickered, my eyes narrowing.

“She’s not my girl, but I know who you’re talking about. She was setting fires in the Heights?”