Page 91 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

It was impulsive and violent, and when I did vent my anger, I felt an electricity, a sick thrill that I couldn’t control.

Hitting other people, hurting them, gave me a kind of relief. A fact that demonstrated that I did, in fact, suffer from a mental illness, but I nevertheless refused any medical or therapeutic treatment.

I slid into the car and steered with one hand while I rubbed my head with the other. Chloe sat in silence next to me. She knew better than to try to talk to me when I was in that state.

Because of Megan my mind was trapped back in a place to which I never wanted to return.

I was back with Kimberly, who always wore plaid skirts, the short, high-waisted kind.

I was back in those moments when she demanded we play hide-and-seek because it excited her to hunt for me and find me hiding, terrified, in some corner of the house.

And if I tried to say no, Kim would make the choice for me.

She’d insult me, tell me what a spoiled little bastard I was all because I defied her.

I defied her when she told me to touch her. Defied her when she told me to lick her.

I defied her when she told me to “make love” with her, trying to justify the filthy things she did with an emotion that didn’t exist.

“There’s nothing wrong with loving someone, Neil, and we love each other,” she whispered into my ear as she moved over me or when she stripped me of my Oklahoma City basketball jersey and my shorts, which had concealed a body, still small and undeveloped.

“I’ll hurt Logan if you don’t do as I tell you,” she’d threatened and manipulated.

So I never had the guts to tell my parents everything, because then she might have started hurting Logan, too.

Kimberly had broken down my emotional resistance, assisted by my tender age at the time she started abusing me.

She was able to isolate me, making our relationship impenetrable from the outside, and she guaranteed my silence with blackmail.

The only way I could communicate with the world was through my drawings, where I tried to express some of my secrets.

Yellow for her hair, black for my fear, and red for hell.

Additionally, I used explicit language and demonstrated sexual behaviors and knowledge that no child that age should have.

I evinced a broad understanding of sex, even using toys in a sexualized way.

I suffered from an acute rash around my genitals as well, and these were just a few of the red flags my mother should have picked up on.

***

When Chloe and I got home, the first thing my body required to survive the memories was a shower.

I went into my bathroom and stayed there for an hour and a half.

I scrubbed and washed away the horrible feelings that felt like they were carved into me, like still-bleeding cuts.

If I could have, I would have torn off my skin and sewed on a new one.

But that wasn’t possible. Though I was emotionally monstrous, physically I was still very much a human being.

I rubbed my skin and felt my muscles, slippery under my fingertips from the excess of bath gel I used. In the past, it had given me contact dermatitis. I glanced down and was disgusted by myself: I was aroused.

I was aroused by the memory of what that whore had done to me. Not because the memory was pleasurable, but because it flipped the monster-victim switch inside me that made me want to get her underneath me. To drag her down into hell along with me.

I clutched my erection in my fist and stroked along its full length. I didn’t understand why women thought it was visually appealing, but I did understand why they loved it so much.

They loved it because it satisfied them.

They loved it because I’d been learning how to use it since I was a child, a fact that revolted me.

I began to masturbate, but that was never a solution to these moments of total abandon. It wasn’t pleasure that I sought from sex but revenge .

It was a revenge that gave only the smallest feeling of relief as I used whatever blond I could find, pretending she was Kimberly.

I’d been fucking her in my head because that was the only way I could feel sated.

But it was a satisfaction with a short expiration date, because the whole mechanism would just start up all over again, like my brain was a record player with only one song, over and over again.

I abruptly stopped stroking myself because it would have been pointless to continue. I was just going to have to live with a persistent hard-on for a few interminable minutes because I knew I couldn’t come on my own.

Sure, I could have gone to the next room and asked Babygirl to remedy it for me, but for fuck’s sake, I hadn’t even spoken to her since before I went to the clinic.

After our last time in bed, I’d barely looked at her, purposely ignoring her so she would realize how insignificant this thing between us was for me.

Our postcoital “talk” had generated a new turmoil inside me. I was only used to my familiar sort of inner chaos, the kind I’d been living with my whole life.

I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist, trying to distract myself enough to release some of the physical as well as the mental tension. I walked back into my room, and just then, my cell phone rang insistently. I didn’t even have a chance to get my sweatpants on.

Instead, I reached over and grabbed my phone to answer the call.

“Matt?” I asked as soon as I picked up. It was strange for Matt to be calling at that hour. In fact, it was strange for him to be calling me at all.

“Neil,” he said brokenly. He sounded profoundly upset. “You… You need to come here to the hospital,” he added, his voice anxious.

“The hospital?” I frowned and immediately headed for my closet to find something clean to wear.

“Yes, Saint Vincent Medical Center. It’s Logan,” he said.

After that, I no longer felt anything at all.

After I dressed and asked Anna to keep an eye on Chloe, I got into my car and sped down the street to get to my brother.