The Game Series (59 page)

“It’s not even his real fucking brother, Abbi. You know that. Owen’s just a spineless little dick who hides behind him.”

“It doesn’t matter what Owen is. You know he won’t pay up!”

He grabbed my arm and slammed my back against the brick wall. Pain seared through me, but I bit my lip and hid my grimace.

“Gary isn’t here this weekend. Five minutes inside Owen’s house with him, and the asshole will cough up the cash.”

“You don’t know that,” I whispered.

“You’re not stupid, Abbi. You know I’ll get my money.” His eyes burned into me, anger sparking deep in them. “Don’t you? You know I’ll get it.”

I said nothing. He pushed me further into the wall.

“Don’t you?!”

“Yes,” I replied quietly, turning my face away from him. “I know you will.”

“Good.” He released me without another word and stormed down the street towards Owen’s house. I followed him slowly, letting my feet drag against the floor. My arm throbbed where he grabbed me, and I was certain there was a scrape on my back from the rough brickwork of the wall. I put a hand to my arm and flinched.

And I hoped to God there wasn’t a hand print there. I could explain away a bruise if anyone saw it, but there was no explaining a hand print.

Loud knocks at the door pull me from my past, and my arm burns. I look down and see my hand wrapped around it in the same place Pearce bruised me. A handprint never came, but that wasn’t the worst injury that night. The worst one was the cut across my leg from the glass he threw.

I say worst, but it was both the worst and the best. It had stung me and numbed me at the same time. It had made it easier to take the verbal abuse he’d inevitably thrown at me like it was my fault Gary had cancelled his weekend away and given Pearce a black eye for his troubles.

“Abbi!” Blake yells over his knocks, reminding me he’s there.

I lower my hand from my arm and walk towards the front door. The whispers are there still, stronger, begging me to do the very thing I promised myself I wouldn’t. I stretch my fingers out, even digging my nails into my palms too tempting. Even the sting from that would be bad. Too much. Too tempting.

I open the door and look up at Blake. His hand pauses in mid-air and his eyes flit over my face, taking me in.

“What…” he says softly. “Oh, Abbi.”

I look at him, not saying a thing as he steps inside and shuts the door behind him. His hands frame my face, and he wipes away the tears falling down my face. I drop my eyes, hiding them although he’ll never know the reason I’m crying and shaking.

“Talk to me,” he whispers, pulling me into him. I shake my head against him, my arms hanging limply by my sides. His touch quiets the whispers but it’s not enough. They’re still there.

“I think I need to be alone tonight.” I pry myself from his arms and wander into my kitchen.

“Hell no. You’re not getting rid of me that bloody easily.” His footsteps echo as he follows me.

I cross my arms and look out the window, my back to him. “I think I need to be alone,” I repeat.

“I’m not even thinking about leaving until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, if you can call crying and shaking like fuck “fine!””

I flinch at the volume of his voice. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Abbi.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I do. I want to know what’s got you so upset. What’s hurting you so much?”

“I said…” I grit my teeth. “No!”

“Goddammit, Abs!” he shouts. “Don’t push me away like this! Let me help you!”

“I don’t need help!” The words are a blatant lie, but my next are the truth. “This depression… It’s destroying me even more than I was before. Slowly it’s tearing me apart inside. I fight it every day. God, I fight it! Every day it’s a fight to get up, to get dressed, to leave the house. Every single day I’m haunted by things that have been and it’s hard. It’s so damn hard, but I have to keep fighting. I have to do it alone. No one can help me – only I can do that. Only I can make it all better, but I don’t even know if I
can,
so Mom, Dad, Dr. Hausen, Bianca, even you… You can’t make it better. You can’t make it go away.

“You can’t save me, Blake. Do you get that?
You. Can’t. Save. Me.
” I turn around, dropping my arms to my sides, and meet his emotion-filled green eyes. “I’ve tried to believe it. I want to believe it, but I’m not a princess, Juilliard isn’t a fairytale castle, and you aren’t a prince riding in on a white horse to slay the dragon. Some things in life aren’t worth saving, and some aren’t able to be saved. I’m pretty sure I can’t
be
saved.”

“You’re wrong. You can be saved if you’d just let me help you!”

Impulsively I grab a glass from the side and smash it on the floor. Anger, helplessness, frustration, pain; they all heighten inside me to almost an uncontrollable level. But Blake doesn’t even flinch. His eyes don’t even fall to the glass. They never leave mine.

“Can you save that, Blake?” I gesture to the glass, my chest heaving with every breath I’m suddenly struggling to take. “Can you?!”

“You can’t compare yourself to a broken glass; that’s different.”

“No, it’s not. Not at all. You see those pieces on the floor? There are hundreds of thousands of shards, and no matter how hard you try will you never be able to get them all and put them back together. Even if you do, it won’t be perfectly. There will always, always be a part missing from it. There will always be one piece that you won’t be able to keep hold of.

“
I
am that glass! I’m shattered, torn, broken. I’m irreparable.” I walk backwards into the wall, my whole body tight. My trembling hands flatten against the wall, and I keep eye contact with him. “It doesn’t matter how hard you try. I’ll never be whole again. I’ll never be the princess climbing on the back of your horse. I will never, ever be the same person I was before.”

He steps forward, and when he speaks, there’s desperation tinging his tone. “You’re not the person you used to be because that was never the person you were meant to be. I want to help you, Abs. I wish you’d let me help you!”

“I don’t want your help!” I scream, pushing myself into the wall and hanging my head, my chin resting on my chest. “I don’t want your help. I want you to leave. I want to be alone.”

The sharp, cooling slice of a blade drifting across skin. The slow, stinging parting of flesh. The warm, relieving trickling of blood. Red against white.

“So you can search your house top to bottom for something sharp enough to cut yourself with?” His words are shorter and sharper than I’ve ever heard him use, the venom in them chilling me.

My breath catches and my head snaps back up, our gazes colliding. He looks nothing like the Blake I know. His eyes are cold, every sparkle and shine gone from them as they burn into me, slicing into me harder than any blade ever could. I try to curl my fingers into my palms, craving the feeling of my nails digging into them. A brief respite.

“Is that it?” he says in the same biting tone.

Nails. Palm. Sting.

“No,” I answer, but my voice is weak and unconvincing even to me.

“Open your hands,” he orders. I shake my head, bringing my fisted hands to my stomach. “Open your hands!”

“No!”

His feet thud against the wooden floor as he storms over to me. His hands close around my fists, his fingers prying between mine.

“No!” I cry again, feeling the heat of tears fall over my eyes as he succeeds in dragging my nails away from my hands.

“I won’t let you do this to yourself.” He grinds his teeth together, holding my hands tightly.

“You don’t understand!” I sob, my throat closing up as panic takes me over. “You don’t get it. I need something. I haven’t for so long, but I can’t do it anymore. I need it. I can’t keep remembering. It hurts too much. Let me go. Please.”

I shake my arms and kick out at him, desperately trying to get him to let me go. My body thrashes as he pushes his against mine, trapping me against the wall, and I scream, feeling Pearce press against me instead of Blake.

I’m hurled back in time yet again.

Pearce. Music. Alcohol. Drugs. His hand. My face.

“Sssshh.”

I’m rocking. And screaming. Screaming loudly, a scream that breaks even my heart. I can’t breathe. Panic. Weight on my body. I need to get it off. Get him off. Get him away.

“Get off. Please. Let me… Go. Now. Please,” I sob out. “Don’t hurt me. Please.” I stretch my legs out, and my face is buried in a shoulder.

“I have you.” British accent. Blake. “You are safe, Abbi. I promise you.”

I’m shaking. Hard. I want him to let me go and hold me at the same time. “No. Never safe.”

“Yes,” he whispers in my ear, his arms tightening slightly around me. My fingers are curled into his shirt, holding him to me as tight as he’s holding me. “I promise you, you will always be safe around me.”

I swallow, closing my eyes, and try to regain control of my breathing just like Dr. Hausen taught me. Deep breaths, count of three. In, out. In, out.

“I will never be safe,” I whisper hoarsely. “There’s nothing outside that can hurt me any more than what is inside. You don’t understand that.”

“Oh, I understand.” He breathes out shakily. “I understand that better than you think.”

“You don’t. You won’t ever get it.”

He releases me, his hands moving to either side of my face. My eyes open. Our faces are perfectly aligned. I’m still grasping his shirt, and he wipes his thumbs under my eyes.

“You know Tori died. What you don’t know is I watched her slice deeper and deeper every day until she finally hit gold.” His voice quivers. “And I didn’t do a
single fucking thing
to stop her, because everyone made me believe it was for attention. I’ve lived with that guilt for ten years. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit here and watch you do the same thing.”

More tears stream from my eyes at the raw pain in his voice, and I remember and I know. I know because I was so close. So, so close. I was minutes away from nothing, then Maddie found me.

“Saving me won’t bring her back,” I croak. “It won’t make it easier and it won’t make it go away. Don’t save me to make up for not saving her. I’m not a project.”

“I never said you were.” His voice drops to a bare whisper and he puts one of his hands into my hair, his fingers threading through it. “I’m not trying to save you because I couldn’t save her. I’m trying to save you because I don’t think I could cope if I lost you too.”

Tears brim in his eyes, and I’ve never seen him look so vulnerable. I imagine how we must look right now, crouched on my kitchen floor, both of us shaking. Both of us crying. Both of us broken, yet holding onto each other like that’s all that can fix us.

“I won’t watch you do it too. You are so, so much stronger than that. You are so much stronger than she was, Abs.” He moves his thumb under my eye to wipe away the wetness there. “You are everything I wish my sister was and so much more, and it’s that so much more that means you can push me away all you like because I won’t go. That darkness you have inside, the one that pulls you under, I swear I won’t let you fall into it. I won’t let you fall anywhere unless it’s my arms you’re falling into.”

I shake my head because I can’t. I won’t. I don’t want to fall anywhere. At all. Because falling means hitting the bottom, and hitting the bottom means pain. Hurt. Anguish.

And I have enough of that.

“I’m not strong, Blake. Not really. I still feel everything and I still think the bad things. I still want to give in. Depression… it’s like drowning, like being pulled to the bottom of the ocean, except everyone around you is swimming and breathing on the surface. It’s like being in a crowd of people where you’re screaming and no one can hear you. It’s everything nightmares are made of.”

“Then let me be the one to teach you swim again,” he whispers, moving his face to mine. “Let me hear you and let me be the one to remind you how to live.”

A shudder wracks my body, and I feel the tightening of my chest that always precedes the suffocation of the darkness. I release his shirt and wrap my arms around his neck, burying my face into his skin. Blake’s arms go round my body in one smooth movement, holding me tightly against him, and he moves us so his back is against the wall and I’m sitting on him.

I still feel it. I want to feel the sting. I want the sharpness of the blade against my flesh. I want the release it gives me. Until Blake presses his lips to my temple and my heart thuds once. Loudly. Reminding me I’m still alive.

And all there is, is Blake. The feel of his arms around mine. My skin against his. His breath against my ear. The tightness of his hold, so tight it rivals the tightness of the hold my depression has on me.

The sudden clarifying reminder that pain doesn’t have to equal feeling. I can live without hurting. I can live without the sting.

My fingers thread into his hair, and he bends his face into mine even though it’s still pressed against his neck. He cups my chin and nudges my face upwards. Our eyes meet, and the tears that were brimming in his not long ago have spilled down his cheeks.