Play My Game

by Adrian, Lara

A sense of déjà vu grips me, both alarming and disturbing. But Jared’s not Daniel, my heart hurries to remind me. Forgetting to mention he’d seen me in a nightclub is a far cry from withholding the truth about a habit that would eventually embroil me in its problems, too.

  Isn’t it?

  Jared stares at my conflicted expression, his own face taut with an emotion I can’t name. Or maybe I’m afraid to, because what I see in his eyes looks remarkably like guilt.

  He lets go of a low, vivid curse as he stares at me with bleak resignation. “There’s a lot I should’ve told you before now, Melanie.”

  Despite the driving rhythm of the music and the noisy crowd packed into the club, I can hear every word quiet Jared’s saying. All my senses are locked on him, searching for some truth that’s either going to allay my mounting dread or crack me wide open where I stand.

  “We should leave,” he says, his face so grave and filled with anguish I can hardly draw my breath. “There are things you need to know, but not here.”

  “No.” My voice shakes, but I don’t care. “Whatever you want to say, Jared, I think I need to hear it right now. What’s wrong? You’re scaring me. Tell me what’s going on.”

  He swears again, frowning as he rakes a hand over his head in a violent motion. The noise around us seems to expand, punctuated by a sudden, sharp ruckus taking place near the club’s entrance.

  A drunken male voice raised in fury reaches my dazed consciousness. The voice is familiar, if totally unexpected. “Where is he? Goddamn it, let go of me! I saw him bring her in here!”

  Daniel.

  Jared recognizes the angry shouts, too. Gone is the torment I saw in his face a moment ago, replaced by an all-business coldness I’ve only witnessed in him one time before—the night Daniel and I first stood before him in his study.

  He signals to one of the suited bouncers nearby. “Get him out of here. Now.”

  “What are you doing?” I gape at Jared as the man runs off to carry out the order. “Jared, don’t let them hurt Daniel.”

  He slices a dangerous look at me. “Still ready to defend him, are you? Don’t worry, my men are only going to take out the trash, not harm the son of a bitch.”

  The music is still playing, but the din of conversation and other noise has now dried up as Daniel’s disruption captures the attention of everyone in the club. The bouncers close in on him, but he keeps yelling, his wild gaze searching for us among the throngs.

  “Rush, you bastard! You sick, conniving fuck! I know what you’re trying to do! I know why!”

  I look at Jared, afraid to guess at what Daniel’s accusing him of. “What’s he talking about? What does he think you’ve done?”

  Two of Muse’s staff latch on to Daniel and begin wrestling him toward the door. I know they could easily overpower him. I know any one of them could silence him with a blow, but as Jared assured me they would, his men refrain from violence.

  Daniel takes advantage of the small mercy and manages to break loose. His drunken gaze homes in on me where I stand beside Jared and he charges forward like a mad bull, the bouncers right on his heels.

  “Mel, get away from him! He’s using you!”

  Jared swiftly moves me around to his back, shielding me with his body.

  Daniel is undeterred. “You don’t mean anything to him! All Rush’s wanted to do is destroy me! He’s been playing us both this whole time!”

  The guards make a grab for him, yanking him off his feet. They restrain him without any hope of his getting loose now, but he keeps screaming in crazed fury, acting as if he wants to protect me.

  I’m bewildered and unsure I can trust either of the men in front of me now. Daniel’s unhinged rage is shocking enough, but Jared’s chilling silence scares me even more.

  “It was all a setup, Mel!” Daniel shouts. “The constrution project. The poker game. Pretending he wanted to paint you. It’s all been some twisted game of revenge for this sick son of a bitch!”

  His accusations sink into me like sharp-edged blades. The pain of it makes a cry build in the back of my throat. When I step around Jared and see the bleakness of his expression, those knife points cut even deeper.

  “What’s he talking about, Jared? Is he right?”

  My voice is so quiet, I’m amazed Jared can hear me.

  But he does.

  And there’s no need for him to answer, because I see the truth written all over his rigid face.

  29

  JARED

  The pain in her beautiful face wrecks me.

  Her cheeks are bloodless and pale, the lips that only earlier tonight had been so loving and warm on mine are slack with shock . . . and dawning horror.

  “Is Daniel right?” Her voice is soft, hardly more than a whisper, but it cleaves into me sharper than any blade could wound me. “Are you playing some kind of game, Jared?”

  I slowly shake my head, casting inside myself for the words—any words—that could help her understand that no matter why I started this regrettable plan, none of it means anything to me now.

  Only she does.

  And she’s looking at me warily, as if suddenly realizing I’m every bit the ruthless beast she judged me to be that first night when this whole fucked-up situation began.

  “I never believed it was just about the money Daniel owed you,” she says. “So, tell me now, Jared. Why?”

  “Because he figured out who I am,” Hathaway puts in bitterly, his gaze crackling with contempt. His breath reeks of alcohol I can smell from three feet away. “It took me until a couple days ago to piece together how he could know that, or why it mattered to him.”

  He’s still struggling uselessly against the security detail holding him. One of my men looks at me in question. “You want this piece of shit kicked to the curb now, Jared?”

  “No. Let him go.”

  As much as I’d like to erase Daniel Hathaway from this conversation, the damage is already done. Hell, it’s all self-inflicted. He’s not telling Melanie anything I haven’t owed her from the start.

  I dismiss my men with a curt nod. They release him, stepping back, but hanging close just the same. He staggers forward a pace, his eyes glazed but seething.

  “What do you mean, he figured out who you are?” Melanie asks Daniel. Then her head swivels back to me, understanding putting an even starker expression on her lovely face. “Oh, my God . . . Denton Sweeney. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

  “He was my father,” Hathaway announces. “I didn’t have any part in what he did. I was a kid for fuck’s sake. My mother didn’t tell me what he’d done until much later. It’s not as if I even knew the names of the people who invested with him.”

  “Invested with him?” I exhale a sharp, humorless laugh. “He cheated dozens of victims out of millions of dollars. He would’ve kept on bilking even more if he hadn’t died at the height of his scheme.”

  “You don’t know that,” Hathaway shoots back hotly. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know enough. I know that you and your mother used the money he’d stolen to flee to Montenegro, where you changed your names and disappeared for years afterward. I know that after she died, you returned to the States with what was left and you squandered it on gambling and expensive toys.”

  He shrugs while I recount the details my investigator gave me a few months ago, and it’s all I can do to contain the contempt rising in me. He may not have committed his father’s crimes, but he’s hardly the better man.

  “Those were people’s lives your father stole. The money you lived off and then threw away was stained with blood off your father’s hands, and you knew it. None of that meant anything to you.”

  He sneers. “You’re no fucking saint, Rush. Reeling me in, dangling a multi-million dollar construction project in front of me like a goddamn lure, knowing I’d take your bait. You had no intention of building that project with me. Just like when you invited me to your poker game knowing I was desperate for a windfall. Yo
u only wanted to watch me lose.”

  I stare at him, feeling no remorse for those deceptions. I needed a means of getting close to him, of earning his trust—just like he’d done with my father. The difference is, I didn’t put the rope around Hathaway’s neck; I simply handed it to him and waited to see if he would do the work himself. As I expected, he didn’t disappoint.

  “Rush set me up from day one, Mel. Everything he did was to destroy me.”

  Melanie listens in utter silence. After becoming so close to her that she almost feels a part of me, now I can’t tell what she’s thinking at all.

  “I should’ve told you.” I swallow past the knot of bile that’s forming in the back of my throat. “As soon as I realized you had no idea about Hathaway’s past or who he was, I should have told you, Melanie. Fuck. I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t believe him, Mel. Come with me instead.” Hathaway takes a step forward under the spinning lights of the strobes. My men situated behind him are coiled vipers ready to strike on my command. If I turn them loose on him now, I’ll lose Melanie for good. I see that cold truth in her uncertain eyes.

  “I should’ve told you everything,” I murmur, self-loathing making my voice scrape like ashes on my tongue. “I should have told you how much you mean to me, too. Because you do, Melanie. Christ, you mean everything to me.”

  Gently, I reach out to her, trying to show her I mean no harm. I never could where she’s concerned.

  “He’s playing you just like he played me,” Hathaway urges, his voice rising in hysteria. “He killed my project, Mel. I lost my fucking job because of him. How long do you think his interest in you will last now that he’s got what he wanted out of ruining me?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I warn him as Melanie draws out of my reach, my gaze never leaving hers for a second. “He’s wrong. What we have together has nothing to do with him. You have to believe that. Please, let me prove it to you.”

  Hathaway cackles now. “This son of a bitch is still playing you, don’t you see that? He’s using you. For fuck’s sake, Mel, be smart and think about it. When he could have any other woman he wants, why the hell would he choose you? ”

  I see her flinch at that cutting remark and rage explodes inside me. “You fucking bastard.”

  When I lunge toward Hathaway, Melanie’s voice stops me the way nothing else could.

  “Jared, don’t.”

  I wheel back to face her, my breath heaving out of my chest. “He’s wrong. What he said isn’t true at all.”

  She stares at me. “Which part? The fact that you used me to get back at Daniel? Or that you’re still using me, even now?”

  My sternum feels as though a jackhammer is blasting into it. She’s slipping away from me. I can see it in her anguished eyes. She doesn’t believe anything I’ve said. “Melanie, please forgive me—”

  “I’m taking her out of here,” Hathaway interrupts. He makes his move, jolting forward and snagging her by the wrist. She tries to jerk loose and he clamps down so hard she cries out.

  My fist flies at him like a reflex. It connects with his jaw, snapping his head back on his shoulders. He goes down to the floor like dead weight, half-dazed and losing his grasp on Melanie.

  I nod to my staff and they swoop in. “Call the police and tell them we’ve got an intoxicated patron for them to pick up.”

  “Glad to,” one the men snarls, before the security detail drags him away.

  “Show’s over,” I bark to the spectators who’ve gathered to watch my life fall apart before my eyes. “We’re closed for the night, effective immediately.”

  The crowd moves off. In the next moment, the music stops and the lights come on. My staff starts corralling people off the dance floor and away from the bar.

  Without a word, Melanie starts walking away from me.

  “Wait.” My stride carries me in front of her. “Please . . . wait. Hear me out.”

  Her stormy blue-gray eyes seem huge, brimming with hurt and unspilled tears. “What more do I need to hear, Jared? Are you going to try to tell me that getting revenge on Daniel for his father’s sins isn’t the entire reason we’re together?”

  “It’s not.”

  She scoffs, scathing me with her doubt. “You wanted to hurt him. You wanted to take something away from him as payback for what his father took from you.”

  “Yes, I did.” I shake my head, unable to justify any of those motivations when she’s looking at me with such raw despair. “I wanted him to feel what it was like to lose everything that mattered to him. Including you. Especially you.”

  “So, you used me. Just like he said.” Her mouth twists with pain. “Why else would you have ever wanted to paint me?”

  “No. Jesus, no.” I want to touch her, but I know there’s no soothing I can offer her now. Only the truth. “You’re all I thought about after I saw you here with your friends that night. Not because of Hathaway. Because I’d never seen a woman I craved more than you.”

  “Did you know Daniel and I were in a relationship?”

  I nod soberly. “I also knew he wasn’t who he pretended to be. The private investigator I hired had already given me his full report. The night of the poker game, I realized you didn’t know what Hathaway was keeping from you. Not the gambling problem or the debts he’d racked up in Vegas, and certainly not the truth about who he really was.”

  “You could’ve told me.”

  “I should have. I should’ve explained everything to you that first day you came to my house without him, because by then I no longer wanted you to be part of this. I would have released you from our agreement. There was a part of me that hoped you’d tell me to go to hell and never come back, but you were stronger than that. You weren’t going to break. That only made me want to know you more. It only made me crave you more.”

  Instead of softening some of the woundedness I see in her, my confession seems to build a wall inside her. “You had so many chances to tell me everything, but you didn’t, Jared.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Her answering laugh is a choked, bitter sound. “What do you think you’re doing now? You lied to me. You used me. You’re breaking my heart.”

  “Nothing between us is a lie. Nothing. Daniel Hathaway may have been the start of this fucked-up situation, but he’s got nothing to do with us, Melanie. He’s got nothing to do with how I feel about you. I care about you, more than anyone I’ve ever known in my life. Melanie . . . I love you.”

  “Don’t say that.” She closes her eyes for a moment, exhaling a shaky breath. “Don’t you dare say that now.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “How do you expect me to believe that when everything we’ve shared has been built on your lies? How do you expect me to ever trust you again?”

  “You can start by giving me a chance,” I suggest solemnly. “I know I don’t deserve it—”

  “No, you don’t.” She takes a step away from me, folding her arms in front of her like a shield. “I can’t give you another chance to break my heart, Jared. I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want to be here. I’m going home.”

  “I’ll take you.”

  “No.” The word is crisp and final, as sharp as a slap. I feel it inside me, the sting of her disappointment in me flaying me alive. “You made me think you cared about me. You let me tell you things I never told anyone but my most trusted friends. Just like with your paintings, you peeled me open to my soul, Jared. And now there’s nothing left.”

  “Melanie.” I hold my hand out to her. There’s a tremor shaking my fingers, but I don’t give a damn. I thought she’d already seen me at my weakest the day she learned about my disease. I was wrong. I’ve never felt more useless or broken. “Please, come home with me. Let me try to make this right between us.”

  She glances down, mutely shaking her head. When she looks up at me again, I know I’ve lost the battle. Even worse, I’ve lost her.

  “I’m leaving,” she says softly
. “Don’t come near me again, Jared. I don’t ever want to see you.”

  She pivots away from me and starts walking into the departing crowd, a red dress in a sea of black. I drift after her, hanging back several paces only to avoid the urge I have to physically keep her with me.

  As soon as she’s out of the club, I see her hand go up to hail an idling taxi at the curb.

  She gets in, then the car speeds away.

  30

  MELANIE

  It’s been a month since I walked out of Muse in pieces.

  One month, but to my broken heart it feels like a century. I’ve carried on with my life and school, with my family and friends. Thank God for my friends.

  I’m only half-listening to Evelyn seated across from me for lunch at a table in Vendange, one of our favorite places in the city. Despite my inattention, I’m grateful for her company and conversation. Her excitement for her lingerie shop’s soaring success helps distract my mind from all the things I can’t avoid thinking about when I’m alone.

  Especially at night, when my longing for Jared and my pain for what I’ve lost—for what I possibly never had with him to begin with—is at its worst.

  My friends have held me together when it feels like I’m comprised of a million fractured shards, kept in place by sheer will alone.

  I’m surviving without Jared these past weeks because I have no other choice. I told him to stay away from me, and he has. Evidently, he’s handling our breakup with a lot less anguish than I am.

  Eve takes a sip of her iced tea and waves her hand in front of her. “Blah, blah, blah. Enough about me. Congratulations on getting that job offer from the firm in Midtown. I’m so happy for you!”

  “Thanks.”

  “When do you start?”

  “I go in for a day of introductions and training next week, but I won’t officially start until my classes are over and I graduate with my degree at the end of the semester.”

  Eve raises her glass to me. “Here’s to getting your MBA. You did it, girlfriend.”

  I smile as we clink our iced teas in a toast. Although the full-time accounting job will help pay the bills the way none of my other work could, I’m not as excited about it as I should be.