Page 159 of Let the Game Begin

I felt like a drug addict going through withdrawals.

All I did was wander the edges of Logan’s room, like a caged lion, rubbing my temples because my headache was wearing me down.

My mind was now completely fixed on solving Player’s puzzles. I needed to figure out how to read his messages and analyze his language. That was the only way I’d be able to spot more hidden threats.

I asked the on-duty nurse for a pen and paper and began writing down my thoughts. Then, I tried my hand at cryptography to see if I could figure out how this fucking guy thought. Whoever he was, he had a sharp mind; his secret message was unintelligible to me.

But he also clearly wanted me to read these riddles and understand what he was trying to say to me.

I sat by Logan and used the dim nightlight to write everything on my mind down on that piece of paper.

I concentrated my efforts on the most recent puzzle, the vaguely satanic verse. I was certain there was something I had missed, something I should have been able to see before he’d caused Logan’s accident.

“Fuck,” I whispered. I had no idea what time it was, but my headache was getting more intense and all that thinking only made it worse. I was counting the syllables in the little verse and the number—thirty-one—felt vaguely familiar.

I grabbed my phone and searched “31 syllables,” which brought up a number of results, most prominently a type of Japanese poem that included thirty-one syllables broken into chunks of five and seven. Hastily rewriting the verse to fit into that format, I realized what I was looking at.

It was an acrostic.

A fucking acrostic—which I hadn’t even remotely considered—was the mechanism my enemy had used to reveal his plans to me before ever attacking Logan.

It was then that I truly understood the game he wanted to play with me.He was hoping that I would attempt to stop him and that I would fail and feel guilty as I watched his targets die because of me. Player had given me the answer; it was only slightly hidden, and I was supposed to decipher it. If I had, I might have prevented him from doing what he’d done. In this case, however, my inaction had made me his accomplice.

“What a fucking nutjob.”

I was finally starting to get the rules of this game, and now I knew that I needed to guess who would be next so I could stop his attack. However, I had no new clues and the photos of my family members seemed too vague to give me any leads.

He could have gone for any one of them.

I swiped a hand over my face and decided to get out of the room because I needed some fresh air or I was going to lose it.

Then, there in the hallway, my eyes were inundated by an ocean that I had learned to recognize intimately. I stared down Selene, who was walking timidly toward me. Her steps seemed unsure, and her cheeks were colored with a blush that revealed her discomfort. She held a cup of coffee in one hand, and she was still wearing her outfit from yesterday. So she hadn’t gone home, either.

Her long auburn hair was different, though. Loose around her shoulders in messy waves that made her look disheveled yet irresistible.

I needed to tell someone what I had discovered—keeping everything inside was only going to make me feel worse. And Selene, after all, already knew about the last riddle I’d gotten at the pool house. So I pulled her over to a secluded corner and spilled my guts.

I told her everything, even showing her the paper covered in my handwriting where my underlying theory was laid out—the way out of this labyrinth we’d suddenly been dropped into. Her crystalline eyes widened in shock, and I got a glimpse of the fear that Babygirl was usually so good at hiding from the world.

And then I kissed her, without really knowing why.

Maybe there wasn’t even a reason, and it was just in my nature to do dumb shit sometimes. Or maybe it was my way of showing her that I appreciated her attempts to stay by my side, to help me through this shittysituation, even if I didn’t really believe all that crap she told me, like the thing about the violin and the bow.

I tried to humor her so she wouldn’t feel hurt, and I didn’t tell her that I was a realist, unlike her, and I didn’t live my life based on illusions. I’d been sincere when I admitted that I liked her smell and her taste and when I told her about how aroused her body made me. I was sincere when I kissed her, lashing her tongue with my own like I was trying to punish her for being so naive and inexperienced. I was especially sincere when I took her hand and put it between my legs to make sure she understood that, even in those hideous pajamas, she made me absurdly hard…

All of that, though, was light-years away from an actual emotion.

For women, the smallest gesture could take on countless meanings. Everything was simpler for us men: a kiss was just a kiss and fuck was just a fuck.

I looked from her inviting lips to her glowing eyes and stepped back, putting a halt to the fucked-up thing I’d just done before I did it again.

“Go home and get cleaned up. I’ll stay here,” I said.

Selene gasped like I’d just told her she stank and looked like shit without her makeup on. But I really was just trying to tell her get some rest because those dark circles under her eyes were irrefutable signs of her exhaustion. Otherwise, she was completely beautiful, even all messy like that.

She didn’t say anything, so I just stared down at the paper cup she was still holding in one hand. Fuck, she’d brought me coffee, and I hadn’t even bothered to thank her.

I took it with a sigh, startling her. I gulped down the hot coffee in one shot and tossed the cup into a nearby trashcan. I licked my lips to savor the bitter taste—just the way I liked it. My stomach rumbled in protest because I’d gone too long without eating.