Page 37 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

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 like a 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.

“What happened?” I demanded, alarmed.

Logan was visibly uncomfortable. He hesitated for a few moments, getting up the nerve to tell me. “I think…” he started nervously, “someone hurt Chloe.” His words were deliberately vague.

I didn’t wait any longer and instead pushed him aside to rush out of my room.

I headed for Chloe’s room, and Logan followed hot on my heels.

The whole time, he kept telling me that I needed to stay calm, that we had to understand the situation and get Chloe to tell us the truth.

He said I should control my impulses, because he knew what I was like.

I lost my head easily; when I did, no one could manage me.

The short trip to my sister’s room seemed to last forever. My head was full of horrifying images, terrifying guesses and assumptions. I burst into Chloe’s room and then, I spotted her.

She was curled up on her white bed, her knees pulled up close to her chest and her face tucked down against them.

Her blond hair spread over her slim thighs like threads of gold.

I approached her cautiously, my heart pounding against my rib cage.

I sat down on the side of the bed and gave her head a gentle stroke.

She was trembling and a sob escaped her lips.

“Little Koala…” I called her by the nickname I’d given her as a child. Chloe was my Little Koala, and she always would be, no matter how grown up she got.

“Look at me,” I insisted in a soft voice, and she slowly lifted her head.

I sucked in a breath when I saw her blue eyes puffy and glassy with tears as well as a purple bruise marring her right cheekbone. I moved her chin with two fingers to get a better look. More marks dotted her neck, ending at an undetermined point underneath her T-shirt.

I had no words. I was shocked. Incredulous.

Chloe’s skin was a horrible meeting of innocence and violence. I felt like a cloud of freezing rain was hanging above me; it was too cold to move. Logan, meanwhile, was watching everything with glistening eyes and his jaw clenched miserably.

“What did they do to you? Who did this?” I murmured softly, keeping my voice calm even as I felt a violent, uncontrolled force welling up inside me.

I closed one hand into a fist and the other began to tremble.

I was the one who always defended my siblings—from everyone and everything.

But right now, I felt like nothing but a failure.

How could I have let something like this happen?

I touched her cheek, trying to reassure her, but Chloe just looked down, afraid and deeply wounded. I knew well the feelings she was experiencing: the fear, confusion, and pain. I’d been through them all myself.

“Tell me who did it, kiddo. You need to tell me…” I tried to keep calm, though I was already imagining the reckoning I was going to bring down on the bastard—or bastards—who made the mistake of crushing her like this. No one touched my siblings.

“Talk to us, Chloe, please…” Logan urged her, stroking her long blond hair. But our sister seemed to be in shock. Her eyes were vacant. Her legs began to shake, and her lower lip started shaking as well. I was going to make whoever was responsible for this desecration pay.

“Carter,” she said finally in an almost inaudible whisper. I stiffened at the sound of the name.

Carter Nelson, Bryan’s little brother. I ground my teeth together like an animal and inhaled noisily through my nose.

I was going to kill him.

My twisted mind could neither suggest nor accept any other solution.

All at once I stood up and started running my hands through my hair, tangling it wildly.

I could feel my reason slowly slipping away from me until I was completely devoid of any rational thought.

A heavy feeling slammed into my upper body, and my heart felt like it was about to be spat out of my chest.

“Neil…” Logan cautioned, realizing what was about to happen.