Page 97 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

A fucking acrostic—which I hadn’t even remotely considered—was the mechanism my enemy had used to reveal his plans to me before ever attacking Logan.

It was then that I truly understood the game he wanted to play with me.

He was hoping that I would attempt to stop him and that I would fail and feel guilty as I watched his targets die because of me.

Player had given me the answer; it was only slightly hidden, and I was supposed to decipher it.

If I had, I might have prevented him from doing what he’d done.

In this case, however, my inaction had made me his accomplice.

“What a fucking nutjob.”

I was finally starting to get the rules of this game, and now I knew that I needed to guess who would be next so I could stop his attack. However, I had no new clues and the photos of my family members seemed too vague to give me any leads.

He could have gone for any one of them.

I swiped a hand over my face and decided to get out of the room because I needed some fresh air or I was going to lose it.

Then, there in the hallway, my eyes were inundated by an ocean that I had learned to recognize intimately.

I stared down Selene, who was walking timidly toward me.

Her steps seemed unsure, and her cheeks were colored with a blush that revealed her discomfort.

She held a cup of coffee in one hand, and she was still wearing her outfit from yesterday. So she hadn’t gone home, either.

Her long auburn hair was different, though. Loose around her shoulders in messy waves that made her look disheveled yet irresistible.

I needed to tell someone what I had discovered—keeping everything inside was only going to make me feel worse. And Selene, after all, already knew about the last riddle I’d gotten at the pool house. So I pulled her over to a secluded corner and spilled my guts.

I told her everything, even showing her the paper covered in my handwriting where my underlying theory was laid out—the way out of this labyrinth we’d suddenly been dropped into.

Her crystalline eyes widened in shock, and I got a glimpse of the fear that Babygirl was usually so good at hiding from the world.

And then I kissed her, without really knowing why.

Maybe there wasn’t even a reason, and it was just in my nature to do dumb shit sometimes.

Or maybe it was my way of showing her that I appreciated her attempts to stay by my side, to help me through this shitty situation, even if I didn’t really believe all that crap she told me, like the thing about the violin and the bow.

I tried to humor her so she wouldn’t feel hurt, and I didn’t tell her that I was a realist, unlike her, and I didn’t live my life based on illusions.

I’d been sincere when I admitted that I liked her smell and her taste and when I told her about how aroused her body made me.

I was sincere when I kissed her, lashing her tongue with my own like I was trying to punish her for being so naive and inexperienced.

I was especially sincere when I took her hand and put it between my legs to make sure she understood that, even in those hideous pajamas, she made me absurdly hard…

All of that, though, was light-years away from an actual emotion.

For women, the smallest gesture could take on countless meanings. Everything was simpler for us men: a kiss was just a kiss and fuck was just a fuck.

I looked from her inviting lips to her glowing eyes and stepped back, putting a halt to the fucked-up thing I’d just done before I did it again.

“Go home and get cleaned up. I’ll stay here,” I said.

Selene gasped like I’d just told her she stank and looked like shit without her makeup on. But I really was just trying to tell her get some rest because those dark circles under her eyes were irrefutable signs of her exhaustion. Otherwise, she was completely beautiful, even all messy like that.

She didn’t say anything, so I just stared down at the paper cup she was still holding in one hand. Fuck, she’d brought me coffee, and I hadn’t even bothered to thank her.

I took it with a sigh, startling her. I gulped down the hot coffee in one shot and tossed the cup into a nearby trashcan. I licked my lips to savor the bitter taste—just the way I liked it. My stomach rumbled in protest because I’d gone too long without eating.

“I’m going back to Logan.” I gestured at my brother’s door and she nodded, still not saying anything. She walked away, but before she could get back to the waiting room, I snatched her wrist and drew close to her.

“Thanks for the coffee.” In reality, I was thanking her not just for that but for everything that she was doing for us.

She must have realized that, because she smiled at me and her ocean eyes lit up.

It took so little to make her happy, and she never wanted anything in return for all that she gave.

She just did it out of the kindness of her heart—her good and pure heart.

“No problem.” She stood up on her tiptoes and planted an unexpected kiss on my jaw. I was so much taller than her that I would have needed to bend down for her to reach my cheek or my lips. I hadn’t moved for her, however, because I had not anticipated the gesture.

“I didn’t give you permission to kiss me,” I said, stern and cynical. I even narrowed my eyes at her in a threatening sort of way to reinforce the concept.

“Well, then I must be very rude.” She gave me an indifferent, one-shoulder shrug and grinned cheekily at me.

Did she really think herself rude for stealing a kiss from me?

So what did that make me, who had stolen her virginity, her innocence, and everything else that belonged to her out of pure male ego? What right did I have to demand everything from her, leaving nothing behind for anyone else?

“Go on, get out of here.” I shook my head.

Now was not the time to think about how tight and hot she was around me or how she moaned timidly beneath me or how many times I’d been able to make her come as I fucked her because she was still so inexperienced and couldn’t handle the physical sensations.

I was going to keep on using her until her last day in New York.

Fortunately for me, she did walk away and I watched her body, slim yet shapely, proceeding toward the waiting room.

In that moment, I remembered that she too was a potential target, and I decided that I was going to make sure she returned to Detroit as soon as possible.

I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her because of me.

I knew, though, that Selene was stubborn and just telling her to leave wouldn’t be enough to make her do it.

I’d have to figure something else out. I needed to show her what I really was or I had to act like such a bastard that she’d actually hate me.

It wasn’t important how I did it, but I was going to have to hurt her.

It wouldn’t be too hard—the Boy would help me, after all. All I needed to do was think of Kimberly, and I would become the monster, the worst of beasts, and Babygirl would understand exactly why I was incapable of love, why I was so disturbed and deviant.

I quit thinking about Selene and returned to Logan’s room. Every time I saw him lying there in that bed, I felt a hollowness in my chest. I sat down next to him again and took his hand.

“Logan, I’m back.” I wasn’t going anywhere; I was going to stay by his side for as long as it took. I didn’t care if I ate or drank or slept; I just needed to hear his voice again.

I started talking to him again, like I’d been doing all night because I had once heard that talking to someone in a coma helps keep their spirit alive.

“What do you say I play some music for you?” I asked as his chest slowly rose and fell. I took out my phone and opened the music player, scrolling for his favorite song among my files.

“Here we go.” I played “See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth and adjusted the volume so it wasn’t too loud. Slowly, I brought the phone closer to him.

“Do you remember when you used to listen to this every day? You had just watched that Fast and Furious movie for the third time and every time this song started, you’d tell me about how choked up you got during the scene where Dom met Brian at the crossroads and they thought back on all the good times they had together,” I murmured, my voice weak as I rubbed the back of his hand with my thumb.

“You were obsessed with those fucking movies. You still have all the DVDs in your room,” I said archly. “Remember when you said you wanted to be as yoked as Dwayne Johnson?” I smiled at the memory of him pumping his biceps, pretending to be his favorite actor.

“And you had a thing for Michelle Rodriguez. You said you wanted to marry her someday,” I added, thinking back fondly on his hormonal teenage discourses on the subject. “You were so funny. Who’s going to watch our favorite movies with me if you don’t come back?”

It was hard to say it.

Meanwhile, the song echoed off the bare walls, my melancholy clashing with it—like dissonance, like arrhythmia, like a discordant note.

“This is it, this is your favorite part. You hummed it ad nauseam.” I truly wanted to cry. Maybe if I did, I could have gotten some feeling of release instead of just more suffocating pain.

When the song ended, I closed the app and locked my screen again. Everything was silent once more and the beep of the monitors bounced incessantly between the walls. I glanced at the clock and saw that Logan had now been in a coma for twelve hours, and he still hadn’t woken up.

I sighed and squeezed his hand again. I wasn’t going to give up. Life had always been cruel to me. I never got the opportunity to choose or even escape my destiny, but Logan still could. For him, there had to be another possibility.

“Come on, Logan. Wake up.”

I stared at his closed eyelids. He was immersed in a world of shadow, and I wanted to pull him out, but nothing happened. I sighed and lay my forehead on our linked hands.