Page 96 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

Neil

I thought that life had already given me enough storms, enough rainy days, enough sunless ones.

Enough losses and injuries. But I was wrong.

I was wrong because now I could see that there had been something worse coming all along: my brother in a hospital bed.

I had gone with Matt to Logan’s room, which I would not normally be allowed to enter, and it was there that I truly realized exactly what had happened to him.

“Here we are. Logan’s in a coma at the moment, so I don’t…” Matt was trying to say something, but I couldn’t listen to him. My head was spinning and my temples were still pulsing from all the screaming I’d just done.

“I want to stay with him, Matt. I need to.” The Boy and I both needed it—we had survived thanks to him. Logan was a part of us. Of me.

I stared at the door to his room for a few moments, hesitating before I went in.

I knew I wasn’t ready to see him in that state, but I had to do it anyway.

I had to be with him. Sighing heavily, I walked inside slowly, and it seemed like I could almost feel a gust of cold air against my face.

Finally, I could see him there, lying on the hospital bed, intubated.

One of his monitors showed a heart rate that was far too slow, almost imperceptible.

I leaned toward him and gulped, swallowing down the sharp thing that was suddenly in my throat.

Then, I screwed up every ounce of courage I had and sat down next to the bed, staring at my brother’s white face, marred by the trauma he’d sustained. His bright eyes were closed, but as Babygirl had told me, it was time to look within myself for that flame of hope.

The bow.

“You’re in a fight with death now, Logan.” I took his hand and held it in my own, and for the first time in my life, I was genuinely afraid of losing the person I cared about most in the world.

“Logan,” I said in a simple murmur. “I don’t know if you can hear me…” My voice broke; I barely recognized it. The room was silent except for the beeping of the monitors, which echoed hauntingly, reminding me that his life was hanging by a fragile thread.

I looked up at the line that recorded his heartbeat: the waves were small and showed no sign of growing. I looked back down at my brother and took his hand again.

“Logan, you still have a lot of life ahead of you; don’t leave us.” I stared at him, overwhelmed by this huge feeling of despair, like I was on a dead-end road with no escape route.

“Don’t leave me,” I added softly, and I felt my heart break in two at the thought of never seeing him again. Of never hearing his voice or seeing his smile.

“Do you remember our pinky promises?” I smiled weakly as I remembered his big eyes staring up at me nervously every time I had to go away from him. “Remember how you made me promise to come back to you?” I rubbed the back of his hand with my thumb.

“Now you’ve got to make that promise to me.

” I took a deep breath because I suddenly felt short on air.

“You have to promise me that you’ll come back to me.

That you’ll keep lecturing me and we’ll have our talks in the garden and that I’m going to be able to watch you eat your cereal every morning.

” I continued, watching him closely, even though his body showed no signs of life. It was inert, devoid of any spark.

“Promise me you’ll come back to me. We’ll get through this, Logan.

” I gripped his fingers. “We’ll get through it.

But if you’re not there, then I won’t stay, either.

If you leave, I’m going to go with you…” The pain I felt was indescribable.

If someone had shards of glass stabbed into their body all over, the feeling might have gotten close.

“I wish I had been there, Logan. Actually, I wish I could have taken your place. I should have protected you the way I always have.” My chest ached, and I massaged it with one hand.

“I’m so sorry, Logan.” I squeezed his cold hand in mine and kept talking, “You’re the air I breathe, the best part of me.

I never said it but…I love you. I care more about you than I do my own life.

The only kind of love I’ve ever understood is the kind I have with you and Chloe.

So, you see, you have to stay with me. I promise you that I’m going to find whoever did this to you.

” My voice was flat but filled with hatred.

“I’m going to find him and kill him. I promise, Logan.

” I licked my now-dry lips and hung my head, closing my eyes.

Was this really all life was? It was like Roberto Gervaso said: a crystal pendant, dangling from the ceiling by a silken thread.

It was a fucking lie that each of us could be the architect of our own destiny, because destiny was the one who chooses for us. He was a piece of shit teacher who inflicted only punishments on his pupils.

Suddenly, my cell phone rang. I leaped up from the chair and walked over to the window before pulling it out of my pants pocket. Glancing at the screen, I saw that it was an unknown number. My hand was trembling with rage as I accepted the call and brought the phone to my ear.

“Did you like my surprise, Neil? It was so simple, tampering with the brakes on your brother’s car.

” The person on the other end was using a voice modifier, making him unrecognizable.

But actually being able to hear whoever was doing this to us felt like a nightmare slowly materializing in front of me.

Automatically, I thought of the puzzle, the lock, the poem…

“You’ve made a serious mistake,” I hissed, cold and menacing.

The son of a bitch never should have touched Logan, just like he shouldn’t touch any other member of my family. I wasn’t afraid of him. I just needed to find out who he was so I could go beat him to death.

“Oh, for sure. Little bro’s in a bad way, huh? He’s going to die, you know.” The motherfucker laughed aloud. I clenched my fists as I stared at Logan, limp and motionless on the bed.

“Listen to me, you sick son of a bitch,” I began softly, feeling the anger surging through every part of my body.

My jaw had begun to ache from grinding my teeth.

“And remember these words,” I continued in a grim, deliberate tone.

“I am going to find out who you are, and I am going to kill you. From this day forward, that will be my only goal.” I gripped the phone tightly.

I wanted to destroy the anonymous person on the other end of the line, but I needed to keep my cool. I had to think and act strategically.

“Who will be next?” He burst into laughter and hung up before I could respond.

I remained frozen, staring at the white wall in front of me before slowly lowering my eyes to my phone, where my usual lock screen had appeared: flames on a black background. The same kind of flame seemed to rage inside of me at the idea of getting my revenge.

I turned to Logan and examined him closely. This was no fucking accident. It had been completely premeditated. Player had tried to murder my brother—Logan was the first pawn to be sacrificed in his sick game.

This was my fault. I’d had the solution to the riddle right there in front of me, but I hadn’t been able to figure it out.

The anger inside me burned like acid, eating me from the inside out. My hands shook again, heat spread like oozing lava into every fiber of my being.

I looked at Logan again and sat down beside him, taking his hand in mine.

“I’m going to stay here with you tonight.

I won’t leave you,” I promised him, watching his chalk-white face.

“But you’ve got to wake up, Logan. I’ll be with you, however fucking long it takes.

” I leaned over him, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“And I’m going to find the person who did this to you,” I repeated, still locked in the grips of an anger that I fought to control.

She was a ferocious beast, however, and she demanded to be let out of her cage.

Player, that bastard, wanted his revenge, but now it was time for me to get mine.

***

I had a sleepless night.

I was feeling agitated because I was still wearing the same clothes I’d worn the day before and my skin hadn’t been in contact with water for several hours.

I felt like a drug addict going through withdrawals.

All I did was wander the edges of Logan’s room, like a caged lion, rubbing my temples because my headache was wearing me down.

My mind was now completely fixed on solving Player’s puzzles. I needed to figure out how to read his messages and analyze his language. That was the only way I’d be able to spot more hidden threats.

I asked the on-duty nurse for a pen and paper and began writing down my thoughts. Then, I tried my hand at cryptography to see if I could figure out how this fucking guy thought. Whoever he was, he had a sharp mind; his secret message was unintelligible to me.

But he also clearly wanted me to read these riddles and understand what he was trying to say to me.

I sat by Logan and used the dim nightlight to write everything on my mind down on that piece of paper.

I concentrated my efforts on the most recent puzzle, the vaguely satanic verse. I was certain there was something I had missed, something I should have been able to see before he’d caused Logan’s accident.

“Fuck,” I whispered. I had no idea what time it was, but my headache was getting more intense and all that thinking only made it worse. I was counting the syllables in the little verse and the number—thirty-one—felt vaguely familiar.

I grabbed my phone and searched “31 syllables,” which brought up a number of results, most prominently a type of Japanese poem that included thirty-one syllables broken into chunks of five and seven. Hastily rewriting the verse to fit into that format, I realized what I was looking at.

It was an acrostic.