Page 13 of The Games We Play

Life is tough.

There’s no one on the planet without problems.

Mine just seem to exist on the inside. People tell me I’m cool as a fucking cucumber, while under the surface I feel like I’m running for my life. Those desperate faces as the Taliban moved in around Kabul Airport haunt my dreams—the panic and screams and the knowledge that time was running out because multiple presidents in a row had fucked us and them over.

Iris’s bathroom light clicks on at the side of her house, and I know it’s gonna be three and a half minutes, give or take, before her silhouette appears by the window. I wonder what she does in that time. Peeing. Washing her face. Applying whatever shit makes her skin look so soft.

It’s such a soothing routine, calm, even. But I make the mistake of looking over at her porch, and even thinking about when she got shot there makes me feel sick. I don’t want her to have those memories. I know what recurring images of decimated bodies do to a person.

Fuckers from Los Reyes were hired to take out Prez’s family, and they planned to remove the witnesses, Iris included. But not on my watch.

I shake my head to remove the panic I feel, thinking about how I threw her to Clutch, my VP. I wanted the two of them safe and out of the way so I could return fire.

But she was shot anyway.

Some nights, I wake up in a cold sweat, thinking about what would have happened if that bullet had hit her femoral artery and she’d died. On others, I wake up from a sick dream where blood drips down the soft, pale flesh of her inner thigh while I fuck her on the pool table in the clubhouse. Even that visual doesn’t stop me from jerking off at the thought of her slender frame trapped beneath me.

Somehow, I can’t keep the people I care about alive.

Perhaps that’s why Iris feels like such an anomaly. So important.

She needs my help, and I can’t fail her.

Not stalking.

Protection.

Because I never want to see another tear slip from her eyes. Especially not tears caused by me.

Her silhouette appears at the window, turning around several times. I smile, wondering about what she’s doing. Plugging in her phone, forgetting to turn off the bathroom light, folding a towel, or tossing her robe.

“Three ... two ... one ...” I murmur, finishing just as the light in her bathroom goes out.

I take one last draw on my cigarette and drop the butt down the storm drain. As I do, my phone vibrates.

“Yo,” I say to King.

“Little birdie tells me you left the clubhouse same time tonight.”

“Felt like some fresh air.”

King huffs. “Told you to stay the fuck away.”

“From fresh air?”

“Clever fucker. Remember how you got your road name.”

As a prospect, I pulled some stupid shit that I’d visualized going differently. King’s dad, our old president, had asked which bright spark was responsible. I squared my shoulders, faced him like a man, and told him I was the bright spark. It stuck.

My silence says it all.

“Ó Ceallaigh will eat your balls for breakfast if he catches you with your dick in her. If you bring this on yourself, even I won’t be able to save you.”

“Yeah, well. I’m currently down by the shore.”

“And from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re peering in Iris O’Connor’s window like a fucking perv.”

I swivel around and look behind me, and the single light from a motorcycle down the street flashes. “Fuck,” I mutter and hang up. I start my bike and turn back down the street until I’m parallel with Uther. “You following me now?”