Page 25 of The Games We Play

I shake my head. “Nah. Whatever she has to say, I’m not interested.”

“Hey, Tyler,” she says, as I approach her. “Saw the bike and knew you must be around somewhere.”

“Great. Now fuck off.”

She runs her fingertips down my arm. “You haven’t returned my calls.”

“Because I got nothing to say to you.” I straddle my bike.

“I need help,” she says, and there’s the vulnerability that made me once think she was my everything.

“Yeah, you do. So go get some.”

“Mike left me. Kicked me out. I don’t have anywhere to go. Can I come back? To the house. To you?”

For about a year after she left, I kept waiting for her to show up and say something like this to me. I’d make her pay, for a little while, just because I’m a big believer in helping karma pay its dues. Then I’d let her come home.

But now ...

“We’re hiring at the strip club.”

Her mouth opens, then closes. But I see the flash in her eyes. I used to like feisty and fiery. But for all my talk of the woman on the pole, an image of Iris pops into my head. She’s the only one I really want. Everything else is just distraction.

“You can’t mean that,” she gasps.

I shrug. “Those tits I bought you would look great up on that stage.”

Slashes of pink hit her cheekbones. “Fuck you, Tyler.”

King laughs as she marches down the street. “You cool?”

“Her excuse for screwing my neighbor while I was in Afghanistan is because she was lonely. And, you know, I think I could have gotten my head around that. But she carried on fucking him when I came home because I wasn’t myself. Said she couldn’t deal with all my shit and needed an outlet. Wouldn’t fucking trust her as far as I could throw her.”

“Tell me about it. I was screwing Skylar while she was plotting with Cue Ball to take out my family.”

I think back to the scenes in the Pines when King killed her. The resignation in Skylar’s body language. She knew she was going to die. But her words to King felt ... honest.

“You had feelings for her?”

King flashes an angry look my way, then breathes deeply. “Why are we talking about our feelings?”

I shrug. “We don’t have to.” I climb on my bike.

“Fine. Feelings enough that putting a bullet in her wasn’t easy.”

I remember what she said, as she sat on her knees looking up at King.I wanted to be your queen, but you never really saw me.

And King looked at her for a moment ... just one second where he touched his hand to her cheek, brushed his thumb over her lip. “Instead, you became a pawn,” he said. Then put a bullet through her brain.

There’s a truck outside the diner across the street from our bikes. There’s a Totenkopf sticker on the back, the sign of Hitler’s SS.

“You see the neo-Nazi symbol on the truck back there?” King asks.

I reach for my phone. “Yeah, fucking white supremacists in town is not a good sign. Just sending Vex the plate. Ballsy move showing up here.”

When I look up again, I see a guy step outside the diner and immediately recognize him. I turn to face King. “Saw him last night at the docks. Had some girl tied up in his truck. She got out. Ran to Saint and me. Saint took her to some place after.”

“Abuse?” King asks.