Page 199 of Let the Game Begin

Once my bags were packed, I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep. Eventually, I glanced at the alarm clock: it was the middle of the night, and there were six hours and forty-seven minutes until my flight. Yeah, I was counting down the minutes until I left.

Wearing my familiar childish tiger-print pajamas and leaving my hair disheveled, I went down to the kitchen. I sat on a stool and ate some of Logan’s cereal and drank a glass of warm milk. The room was lit by the soft glow of the moon that streamed in through the large French doors, and the entire house was bathed in silence. Only my small noises echoed faintly off the walls as I jiggled my feet, covered in colorful socks.

I thought and thought about my decision to leave, only confirming to myself even more that it was the right one.

I needed to stop reading books where all a woman had to do was try to save the beautiful-yet-damned hero to get her love story. Fairy tales didn’t exist and neither did men who allowed women to rescue them so easily. Instead, there were deep fissures, bleeding wounds that could not be erased by love. Which was, after all, only one of the ingredients required to redeem a profoundly damaged soul.

“I thought I heard noises in here.” I jumped at the sound of Neil’s voice puncturing the silence and the opalescent gloom in which I had been pleasantly conversing with myself.

I swallowed my bite of cereal with some difficulty before turning to look at him. He was leaning up against the door frame, and I struggled not to show him just how much his lethal appeal still affected me. To distract myself, I imagined that he’d just come from the pool house or some other “date” with one of his lovers.

“What are you doing here?” I sipped my warm milk, gripping the glass too tightly with shaking fingers, intimidated and excited at the same time. Neil gave me an enigmatic smile before slowly approaching and resting both elbows on the kitchen island. He stretched his torso out perilously close to me.

Once again, I willed myself not to be bewitched by him. Not even when a fresh wave of scent hit me right in the face, rekindling my longing to touch him.

“Do you know why I like the night, Tinkerbell?” he whispered in a velvety tone, like he’d never disrespected me on Halloween. I didn’t answer and avoided looking at him, pretending to be unmoved by his charms. “Because every night is followed by a new day, and I need to get up before destiny so I can anticipate its evil plans,” he continued, though I hadn’t encouraged him at all.

I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t affected by his words, though, because Neil really was such a strange, intriguing guy and so different from anyone else I knew.

“Were you out in the garden?” I set my glass down on the kitchen island, concentrating on its rim so I didn’t have to meet his golden eyes.

“Yes,” he confirmed, not moving from his position. I looked up at him through my eyelashes and caught him paying meticulous attention to me. I knew I couldn’t look like much at the moment, with my messy hair and my exhausted face, but he was looking at me like I was…something beautiful.

“In this cold?” I finally got up the nerve to look into his eyes, but he seemed focused on scrutinizing my lips as though memorizing the shape of them.

Instinctively, I swiped out my tongue to catch the last of the cereal residue, sure that was the reason he was staring at my mouth. Neil swallowed thickly and slowly bit down on his lower lip, looking somehow even more attractive than usual.

“I’d rather the freezing cold than the heat of old memories,” he answered flatly, turning his eyes to mine.

“You really are strange,” I whispered, thinking how little sense our conversations made.

“Would you say the darkness going hand in hand with the moon was strange?” he asked before strolling around the island to get closer to me. I stiffened as, step by step, he further invaded my space, turning my stool toward himself.

Thus I found myself facing his abdomen, my field of vision obscured by his broad chest and my bent knees touching his legs.

“I… I don’t understand you,” I admitted, raising my chin to look at his face, contorted into a serious, impenetrable look. He touched my cheek, and I winced at his cold knuckles, radiating winter against my warm skin.

He was frozen.

“You don’t need to understand me.”

I could sense his suffering.

“And Jennifer? Does she understand you?” I murmured in a curious, deliberately wounding tone, causing him to stop touching me. He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, ready for a fight.

“No, and she doesn’t even try, which is why I prefer her to you,” he admitted bluntly, not caring in the least if it hurt me. My heart seemed to hit the floor, shattering into thousands of pieces. I tried to get up off the stool, but Neil grabbed my hips and forced me back down.

He didn’t want me to cut our conversation short; he wanted me to stay right there and suffer. And all at once, I understood the motive behind his strange behavior.

“Oh, now I get it! You’re trying to get me out of New York! That’s why you wanted me to see you fuck her. That’s why you suggested a threesome with a girl who beat me up. That’s why you sought out her and the others even after you got in my bed, that’s why—” But his annoyed voice overpowered mine, cutting me off.

“Because of all that and lots more, I’m not fucking right for you!” he insisted forcefully, digging his fingers into my hips. His touch was all flame and pain, passion and peril.

I held my breath and touched my own chest, like he’d just stabbed me.

I felt like a butterfly alighting on a blade of grass, and Neil just kept stomping over me, keeping me from flying away. Killing me slowly.

“Thank you so much. Everything’s very clear to me, and in just a fewhours, you’ll be free of me.” I pushed him away with a strength I didn’t realize I possessed and then I brushed past him, trying to leave. But his hand seized my wrist, halting my steps.