Page 58 of Let the Game Begin

The one who broughtmeto life.

15

Neil

“You’re bad for me.”

Selene had just figured it out, but I had known it all along.

I’d fucked her, just like I’d done a million times before with every other person in every other erotic encounter.

Sex was my priority—a sick need that often had me forgetting to eat. I used it to remind the world of who I was and what my role here was. I was on the other side now—the winning side. I was in full control of my life, no one else.

I had been locked in the bathroom for more than an hour. I had washed myself again and again. I had scrubbed my skin for so long it had turned red, trying to chase off the nightmares that kept me from sleeping. The dark circles under my eyes were physical proof of the disquiet that had me in its grip. My anxiety was worsening again. I regularly felt disoriented; my chest would hurt, and I struggled to breathe. Basically, my body was clearly showing me that I was becoming more and more unstable.

But I wasn’t going to tell anyone. I never did.

Instead, I was going to pretend that everything was fine and that I could handle anything that might be happening to me. The truth was, I needed help. The kind of help that I continually denied myself.

I put my hands around the sides of the sink and squeezed hard. I was completely naked, and as usual, I disgusted myself. I stared at myself in the mirror and tried to mesh that image with the version of me that I couldn’t bring myself to accept.

But the truth was, we couldn’t both live in the same body.

I would never stop feeling ashamed, just as I would never stop feeling wrong. I would never get free from these feelings of revulsion and the yearning to escape—to die—that constantly knocked around inside my head.

I would never be healed; there was no absolution available for my sins.

I felt like I was trapped—suspended between vice and pleasure, a mockery of redemption. Though I forced myself to live “in the moment,” I remained stubbornly anchored to the past. My body had grown, changed, experienced new stimuli, but my mind was still set apart, far away in another world.

All at once, I couldn’t help but ask myself what my lovers—Babygirl now included—found attractive about someone like me. After a moment of reflection, the answer became obvious: I stirred the shameful, hidden lusts in women.

I knew that I was desired, and this generated a deep discomfort in me. I hated myself. I hated myself because my looks had only ever been a punishment for me. Now Selene had fallen into my trap, overcome by my enchantments, subjugated by my eyes and my body. In the end, she was no different from the others. She just liked the feeling of my tongue in her mouth, my cock in her cunt, my hands all over her. She wanted from me the exact same thing that they all wanted, and I shouldn’t have deluded myself into imagining otherwise.

The truth was, no one would accept a person like me, not if they actually discovered the filth that was inside me. And Selene was no exception.

She was just one of many. What’s worse—she was a liar as well.

That morning, before I holed up in my room like a monster in exile, I overheard a conversation between her and Jared. He’d gone urgently to Selene’s room, saying something about a call from Detroit, about his mother and her health.

I didn’t just listen in, though. I’d also crept up to the half-open door likea stalker to peer inside. Selene had hugged Jared, bursting into tears against his chest, and I couldn’t help but smile at the pathetic scene. Babygirl still hadn’t told him about us, but in her ocean eyes, I could clearly see the desire to confess it all to him, warring with her inability to do so at that very inopportune moment.

Then, she walked Jared to the front door. Her boyfriend was supposed to stay with us for longer, but apparently he had to leave early.

I felt an insane sense of relief in that moment. I even sighed in satisfaction and stared at my reflection as a perversely pleased expression spread over my face. I truly was a selfish bastard: I wanted Jared’s lovely girl for myself. I wanted her in my bed, underneath me, in all the dirtiest, most shameful and profane ways a man could want a woman. To satiate these unhealthy desires, though, dearest Josh needed to disappear. He had to just go back where he came from and quit fucking with me.

For once, it seemed that fate was on my side.

“Neil, what are you doing?” My brother’s voice came to me muffled, and I wasn’t completely surprised by his presence. I was standing motionless, naked, with my hands clutching the sink as I stared at myself. Who knew how long I’d been there, imprisoned in my own reflection? Logan must have sensed it.

My brother was the one person who knew me better than anyone. We were linked by a unique, unbreakable bond: we had a shared past that had shaken us. But only I had been destroyed entirely.

I stood up straight and walked past him into my bedroom. I needed to cover myself, though I liked to be naked and soak up the cold in the air. Sometimes, it still had the power to freeze my memories.

“What do you want?” I pulled on my boxers without looking at him, then grabbed a pair of jeans and a dark sweater from the closet. When I’d finished dressing, I turned to Logan and met his concerned eyes. My brother wasn’t here casually. I knew him well enough that I could smell the anxiety on him.

“It’s about…” he took a deep breath and passed a hand over his face, a sure sign that he feared my reaction to whatever he was about to tell me. “Chloe,” he finished in a whisper.

Just hearing her name was enough to make my every sense snap to attention. I walked over to him, a knot of tension in my stomach, and looked at him. We were the same height, but unlike me, Logan had a slim, lean body.