Page 12 of The Games We Play (Balance of Power #3)

Now…Now his body looks hard and sculpted with a jawline that could cut glass.

My eyes briefly roam over his thick arms that fill out his clothes to tailored perfection, and I’ve never found myself staring at a man's ass, but Seamus’ is a sight to be seen, like he spends all his spare time sprinting for the Olympics.

I need to get the hell out of here. I sneak another peek at my phone. The Uber is just around the corner and can’t come fast enough.

“You need to give me a chance to explain.” He steps toward me.

I step back and he stops, feeling my discomfort.

“Mimi, that night?—”

“That night you took my virginity and then you left!” I shout at him, and he recoils. “You left, without a word. Nothing!” I yell even louder. The back of my throat is heavy with boulders. I swallow thickly and fight back the tears that begin to pool in my eyes.

“Your ten years of silence has said it all.”

The car pulls up and I take a couple steps back toward it .

His body stiffens and his brows squeeze together, expressing a painful confusion. Like he’s dumbfounded I would feel this way. But how could I not?

Then my stupid heart flutters at the possibility that he’s hurting. That my words hurt him.

“What happened, happened,” I say, defeated. “We’re done, we can move on and it’s okay.”

It’s okay …the Mimi melody I play on repeat and theme song of my life.

Grabbing the handle of the passenger door, I swing it open and hop in, closing it swiftly behind me.

Seamus stands frozen in place as he watches me. His eyes find mine and they’re…broken, but there’s something behind the hurt. A drive, a desire, a need.

And it’s all too much.

I slam my eyes shut. It’s so fucking painful to look at him, to see him. After all this time, you’d think I’d be over it. That I wouldn’t care what happened between us, more importantly, what it ended up leading to. But somehow, all my old wounds are open again and fully exposed.

The car finally pulls away and my lungs decompress.

I rest the back of my head on the headrest as my Uber driver comes to a stop at the light.

Unable to stop myself, I turn and look out through the back window. Seamus is walking away from the restaurant with purpose, and down the row of cars parked on the street.

Reaching into his pocket, the lights flicker on one of the parked cars and he opens the driver’s side door and jumps in.

The light in front of us turns green, and my driver accelerates at a snail's pace.

“Um, excuse me, can you drive a little faster?” I squeak out.

“No way, lady, I do this for a living. I can’t get a ticket or pull some Mission Impossible car driving stunt just to get you away from your broody boyfriend.

” He glances back at me in the rear view mirror and studies me for a moment.

His eyes soften a bit. He doesn’t say anything, but I feel the car go a tad bit faster and it turns the corner, out of sight.

I stare out the window at the Seattle skyline, recalling the moment I saw all the towering, downtown buildings. I didn’t want to move here. I didn’t want to leave Texas where all my friends were, and experience my last year of high school in a brand new place.

Everything was so foreign, and it made everything hurt so much worse. I felt lonely, insecure, and the nightmares I had…I shake my head, attempting to clear my thoughts. My body inhales a deep breath, as if it were automated, needing a hefty dose of oxygen.

His presence is stirring up all the feelings I’ve spent years masking, and now I wonder if I ever really truly got over everything or if they were just lying dormant.

Tomorrow is a new day. I tilt my chin up and silently pep talk myself. Something I’ve done my whole life, but I need it now more than ever.

What happened…happened.

That’s all I can say. That’s all I can do. It wasn’t his fault. Deep down, I know he didn’t cause what happened to me.

My getaway driver pulls up to the front of my house and I thank him, making sure to give him a tip on the app for going a few miles over his desired speed limit, and exit the car.

It’s cooled down substantially in the last twenty minutes, and I take in the humid but crisp air as I tilt my head toward the sky. It took a while to get used to when I first moved here, but now, one of my favorite things about this place is the weather.

Sure, the sun is great, and I love the feeling of the heat on my skin, but rain—the rain is cleansing. There is something special about being able to smell the rain coming.

Padding up the walkway, I take the two steps up onto my porch and dig in my purse to grab my keys, when a car pulls around the corner into the cul-de-sac. I glance over my shoulder at the empty driveway of my neighbor and my heartbeat kicks up a notch.

Finally, I’ll get to meet him or her.

The headlights of the over-sized truck beam through my front yard as they turn into their driveway. Blinded for a moment, I squint and raise my hand to cover the flare of the light as it hits my pupils.

The truck stops and sits idle for a moment, and I decide that I’m not going to let them avoid me.

I turn fully and stand at the top of my steps.

A lone silhouette sits in the driver's seat, and it appears to be looking my way. There’s a brief pause when the engine finally shuts off, killing the lights with it, and the driver’s side door pops open.

A man steps out, and my breath catches in my throat as my brain registers everything in slow motion.

Seamus.

He stops, stilling between the car and the open door, resting his elbows on either side, as if he knows I need this minute to catch up. Those dark, driven eyes sear through me. Studying me. Testing me.

I blink, questioning my sanity, and look away, then look again, and he’s still there.

Fuck.

He steps back, shutting the door, taking a few steps forward, aligning himself in front of his truck, still saying nothing.

This can’t be right.

I look at his house, my house, then back over to him. I can’t help but huff out a laugh.

I’ve always been a believer in fate, signs, karma, and anything else you want to dress up as coincidence, but this…This is the worst prank of divine intervention that could ever happen in real life.

I gesture my arms up from my sides, in a silent what the fuck .

My shoulders slouch as my arms fall to my sides. Defeated. I feel defeated.

Unmoving and frozen, I gaze over the yard between his house and mine as he pulls the sports jacket off his shoulders and shrugs it down his arms. The long sleeve shirt underneath fits him like a glove, wrapping around his corded arms and broad shoulders like a second skin.

Stepping over the white, knee-high fence that separates our homes, he begins making his way toward me.

As he crosses the lawn, nothing has been said between us. The silence thunders through the air and I have no idea what words even make sense at this point.

His face is level with mine as he steps onto the bottom stair, aligning his body directly in front of me.

His colossal size on just the bottom step of my porch is overwhelming. His physical presence is commanding, taking over the space around me and stampeding through my emotions simultaneously. The same feeling of security and adoration wraps around me, and I hate that I feel so comfortable so easily.

“Hey, sunshine.” He says it slowly, like he's savoring the syllables that have been waiting a decade to be spoken.

I glance back over to my neighbor’s house and recall the urgency in which they left, the off market sale, and sudden need to move a couple months ago. It wasn’t even a month after I saw Seamus at Afterburn that all of that happened.

Holding my eyes closed for a moment as I take a deep breath, I blink before turning back to face him.

“It’s not a coincidence that you’re my new neighbor, is it?” I ask, although I already know the answer.

I stare at him, appraising his body, his face, and studying his beautiful, dark eyes. Recalling all the moments I got lost in them. A drive, a desire, a need burns through them like wildfire, unafraid of consuming everything in its path.

“Why are you here?” I ask .

“I wasn’t done loving you yet. And I’m here to prove it.”

I gasp in shock at his confession. My lips part as I open my mouth to fight back, to say something, anything. But nothing comes out.

He looks down at my mouth, and as if on instinct, his tongue darts out, licking his bottom lip. It catches my attention as my eyes bounce between his eyes and mouth. A lopsided, barely there smile replaces his tongue, and then he reaches up, using his thumb and finger to caress my chin.

It’s the first time I haven’t backed away or flinched at his touch. My entire body is heated, not just from the tiniest touch of his skin on mine, but from the raging inferno of everything that I’m feeling.

I want to be pissed, but somehow, he’s suppressing it, extinguishing it with one simple touch along with his stupid, gorgeous face and dangerous eyes.

His thumb traces my bottom lip as he tilts his head, studying the way my body responds to his touch.

Stupid, traitorous body.

He smirks, because he knows. He knows what he does to me. What he’s always done to me.

“Goodnight, Mimi,” he says, pouring ice cold water on the mood of the moment. Stepping down, he makes his way across the yard, the same way he came, and I watch, still in absolute shock.

He grabs his jacket and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a small set of keys. Walking up the steps of his porch, the metal key zips into the keyhole of his door handle, the sound echoes through the air between us.

He pauses and turns to look at me, still frozen in the same position he left me in. He shoots me a blinding, gorgeous smile, then steps through the threshold of his house, closing the door behind him.

What the fuck .

Still dumbfounded, I glance down at my rooted feet and shake my head.

Seamus:1

Mimi: 0

You win that round, Rambo.