Page 27 of The Same Backward as Forward

That night and into the next morning, when I hid the tokenbeneath a loose floorboard in the shack, I found myself wondering why Toby Hawthorne had come to Rockaway Watch, drunk and high and looking for trouble. For the first time, I wondered if the billionaire’s son had been running from something.

I wondered if he’d had a reason to burn that mansion down.

Chapter 22

A week or two after Harry’s odd reaction to the token, he stopped leaving me paper creations to unfold, but he still asked for paper. I came in on my next day off to find that he’d written a single word on one of those pages.

“The name of the game, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward,” he told me, propping himself up on the mattress, “is Two Moves. It’s a simple game, really. All you have to do is make five words that aren’tsex.”

Every time I started to think that he was anything less thanimpossible…

“I can think of some words for you,” I said. “Now stand up.”

He could stand on his own now. I was there for balance, nothing more.

“Give me a happy pill,” Harry proposed, “and you don’t have to play.”

He didn’tneedthe oxy now, the way he had before. “Try totake a step,” I countered, “and I’ll let you explain to me why the name of the game is Two Moves.”

He managed to do it this time without dragging his foot. I arched a brow, waiting.

With Harry, I never had to wait for long.

“All letters in this game are drawn with a combination of straight lines. AnOlooks a bit like a rectangle. AnRhas a point.” He took advantage of our closeness to reach out and grab my hand. Before I could react, he was lightly tracing letters on the back.

His touch was deliberate and light.Too deliberate. Too light.

“A move consists of adding, subtracting, or repositioning a line,” Harry murmured. “It’s easy enough, for example, to turn anEinto anF.”

I knew with every fiber of my being and every nerve ending in my body that he was getting ready to draw on my hand again, so I freed it from his and gave him a quelling look. “You owe me two more steps.”

He hadn’t agreed to those terms, but he paid up anyway. His left foot was weaker than his right. I had no idea how long it would be before he could walk well enough to make it across the room—let alone handle a two-mile hike over rocky terrain. We couldn’t risk loading him into my car in Rockaway Watch, and there was no way that Jackson and I could carry him for miles. He needed to be able to make it on his own.

“Five more steps,” I told Harry, “and I’ll play your game.”

I didn’t think he would be able to do it, even using me for balance. I was wrong.

“Pay up,” Harry told me, using me to help lower himself to the floor. “Remember: You’re looking for five words that aren’tsex.”

Five words. Two moves. One chance to wipe that smug expression right off his face. I grabbed the paper he’d left on the mattress.

I gave my brain a moment to split each letter into its respective lines, and then I picked up the pen and made my first move, rewriting the word by removing the bottom line on theE, then flipping it and moving it up.

“Got it in one.” Harry cocked a brow at me. “Four more, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.”

I looked back up to the original word, staring at the letters Toby had written. It was so easy to see the one solution I wasn’t allowed—remove the crossbar on theA, slid one of the remaining angled lines over.Sex.This was a diabolical game.

He was a diabolical boy.

On a new line, I broke theS, repositioning two of the bars.

Three left.I wrote the wordseamyself this time, all lines and angles, exactly as Toby had written, hoping that the act of doing so would shake something loose in my mind.What next?My gaze was drawn back to the damnA, which could have so easily become anX.

Harry was officially the worst person I’d ever met.

Liar, something inside me whispered, but I ignored it. I loathed him. I despised him. The sooner I could get him healed and walking, the better.

I broke theA, ditching one line and moving another one up.