Page 93 of Let the Game Begin

“Without adequate medical support all this time? Doubtful.” He didn’t believe me, but he was one of the few people who knew me well enough to tell whether I was lying. I decided to close that conversation and sat back down on the sofa. I balanced one ankle on the opposite knee like a smug asshole and gave him a disinterested look.

“My sister’s waiting for you, doctor.” I jerked my chin toward the door of his office, and he shook his head in resignation. He was surely thinking that I was lost cause, a total car crash of a person with little desire to reopen the lines of communication.

He didn’t push me, though, and fortunately just left me alone in the relaxing environment of the waiting room. My eyes fell back on the magazine that Chloe had left open on the coffee table in front of me. I got up and snatched it away, throwing it as far as I could away from the others.

The last thing I wanted to look at was that prick’s face.

“You’re making great progress, Megan, keep it up.” An unfamiliar male voice roused me from my thoughts. I turned to look at the two people slowly approaching. The first was a doctor, or so I presumed, with an unassuming, professional appearance, and the other was woman about my age.

I scrutinized the latter carefully. She had a mane of dark hair that fell past her shoulders, and she was tall and slightly built but with overflowing curves. Her face was an oval, and she had a pair of full, arresting lips and a dark mole shaped like a coffee bean right above her Cupid’s bow. Her emerald-green eyes landed on me, and it only took a few seconds to recognize her. She was Megan Wayne, Alyssa’s older sister.

“Thanks, Dr. Keller. I won’t let you down.” She held out her hand and smiled at him, occasionally darting her eyes my way.

Then, she turned fully in my direction, and I immediately began lookingaround for an escape hatch. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to look at her or even remember she existed. I jumped up from the sofa, in a hurry to flee.

“Hold on, Miller.” She’d reached me before I could even start walking away.

Shit.

I held still and kept my back to her, despite the overpowering scent of orange blossoms that she emitted. “Don’t run off like you always do,” she said in a low, toe-curling voice. I shuddered and not from pleasure.

We were the same age; we’d often been in the same classes, but it was nothing more than that. I avoided her in school just like I would have avoided her here, if she’d let me.

“I don’t want anything to do with you.” I turned and locked my iciest gaze on her. The other man, who I understood to be Dr. Keller, looked at us in confusion.

“Logan’s dating my sister. If they get married someday, we might become family. Have you thought about that?” She laughed.

I was struck by a wave of dizziness. I’d been aware that Logan was dating Alyssa and had slept with her a couple of times, but I was pretty confident he didn’t have any real feelings for her. Logan wasn’t in love with her, just attracted to her.

“What the fuck? Was I in some way unclear just now?” I faced her down, talking in a low, menacing tone and inching closer to her.

Any other man would have found her drop-dead gorgeous, with the kind of pneumatic curves that could get a dead man hard. But not me.

For me, Megan was a piece of the past that needed to be forgotten. To be eliminated entirely, if possible.

“Guess you haven’t dealt with it yet,” she murmured unhappily. She stared intensely into my eyes, and I kept silent. This wasn’t the right time to have a conversation about sensitive topics, and she definitely wasn’t the right person to tell all about my internal torments.

“I don’t think that’s any of your concern.” Itwasher concern, though, because she was an irrevocable part of the wicked labyrinth that was my mind.

“You should keep going with Dr. Lively. Don’t give up.” She touched my arm, and it was probably nothing more than a gesture of bland consolation, but I went stiff and jerked away from her. She shouldn’t have touched me, and I told her with my eyes just how dismayed I was.

Megan retracted her hand quickly and stepped back. She understood. She turned to Dr. Keller, who had been completely still this whole time, watching us cautiously. She gave him a small smile and then headed for the exit.

As I heard her footsteps get farther and farther away, I finally started breathing again. I felt an immediate, desperate urge to smoke, but I didn’t want to go too far away from Chloe. So I rifled in my jacket for my pack of Winstons. I stuck a cigarette between my lips while I searched my pockets for my lighter.

“You can’t smoke in here,” Keller interjected, standing a few cautious feet away from me. He looked to be about fifty, with fine-boned yet masculine features and the air of someone well-acquainted with life’s hardships. His light chestnut eyes dissected me patiently. He was at least as tall as me with the slim, athletic body of someone who maintained a healthy diet and some sort of physical hobby.

I didn’t say anything but put the lighter back in my pocket, leaving the unlit cigarette to dangle between my lips. Holding it there made me feel calmer.

“Are you a new patient? I’ve never seen you here before.” He moved closer, but I wasn’t there to make friends with my shrink’s new coworker. I gave him a severe look in the hopes that he’d stop saying things to me, but he didn’t.

“I’m Dr. John Keller. I’ve been working with Krug for a while now.”

Did anyone ask him?

I glanced around for any distraction, but all I saw was the receptionist’s saggy ass as she bent over to pick up some fallen papers off the floor. Horrified, I averted my eyes once again and wound up back on the man in front of me.

“I was one of Dr. Lively’s patients,” I said, and all of a sudden, the room became cramped and suffocating.