Games Boys Play: A Dark High School Romance (Troubled Playthings Book 2)

by Tiffany Sala

  Ms. Miller sighed. “Tamara, I don’t understand what’s going on with you. You never had this kind of character until something happened between you and Steven Dillon.”

  What had happened was that I’d started to stand up for myself to everyone in my life, and nothing pissed off the people who supposedly cared about you more than that. I felt for Jess, who had yet to feel the full force of this. At least in her old life, she’d probably been able to hide most of the time.

  Miller drummed her fingertips on her desk. “My prior offer still stands. If you think Steven is crossing the line…”

  “Why are you so determined to get me to tell you what you should do about Steven, Ms. Miller?” I interrupted. “I mean, you’re the expert, and I know you know all about his recent history. Shouldn’t you be able to use your degrees to figure this out or whatever?”

  “I don’t want to make a mistake based on judging a situation too quickly, Tamara,” said Miller. “I sincerely believe that every person is entitled to redemption in their lives… but what Steven did was particularly heinous, even considering the mitigating circumstances. I think I run the risk of jumping in the opposite direction, giving him a chance that will empower him to harm other young women.”

  “Have you ever asked him about the heinous act behind those mitigating circumstances, though?” She just stared at me. “I guess he told you some of the facts and that’s why you feel a bit sorry for him, but you’ve never tried to talk him through what happened to him, have you? How do you expect to help him? Is he supposed to just stew around feeling shame over what he did and eventually maybe work out how to do better from that?” At least I could say I had asked the right questions of everyone I needed to… eventually.

  Ms. Miller had nothing to say to my challenge. I got up and started to pace in her tiny room. “Do you know what my theory is?” She reached for her pen and paper. “I don’t think you want to give Steven a break at all. I think you’re looking for someone else who will tell you he’s bad all the way through, so you can tell yourself it’s all right to discount him completely.”

  I smirked at her. “He’s bad, Ms. Miller… but I don’t think it’s all the way through.”

  She shook herself, as if she could stop what I’d said from even touching her. “Well, Tamara, there’s going to need to be some sort of reckoning for that punch you’ve given Rodney.”

  “I could have sworn his name would be able to be abbreviated to ‘Dick’,” I muttered.

  Ms. Miller was a long way from smiling now. “Some advice, Miss Hills, which you probably won’t deign to take on board, but you are going to get it anyway. Those of us who have been here for more years than you, we aren’t so boring and restrictive because we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young, to feel all those things for the first time. It’s just that we’ve been here long enough to see what happens when you just do what you feel. The people who get hurt at the other end of it. The long-term consequences. We give you these serious looks and we try to enact discipline because we want to protect you from all of that.”

  I wanted to scream at her, to demand to know where anyone had been to protect me all the years of my life until this very moment, but I knew that like most people twice my age, she really believed she was wiser than me. We younger people still felt powerless enough to accept it didn’t do anyone any good trying to tell them the truth. “Please, Ms. Miller,” I said. “Don’t try to protect me from anything. I’ll face my punishment for what I did here today, I’ll be completely gracious about it. I’d do it again in a second, but I’m willing to face the consequences.”

  It clearly didn’t please her as much as it should have, but she just shuddered again and muttered, “At least you have something that looks like integrity.”

  I had a feeling I knew where Steven was going to be when Ms. Miller finally let me go, so I ducked around the quickest route I could think of to the side of the school where he parked his car. I didn’t have any plan to approach him or anything. I just wanted to see him for some reason, see how he was looking after everything that had just happened.

  I was almost there when I rounded a corner a little too quickly and crashed straight into Tyrell’s chest.

  He laughed as he took a few steps back, closer to his friends. “Looks like our resident fighter has decided to try a few rounds with me. How about that?”

  I just stared at him, hoping he’d let me pass if I didn’t make a big fuss. When the lot of them backed off right away, giving me all the space I needed and then some, I was almost too scared to actually go past them. Had I managed to pull off one of those looks the really confident popular girls did, the ones they used to keep the really confident popular boys in line?

  I made myself start walking again. No point in ruining whatever I’d done by showing I couldn’t live up to it.

  I leaned my back against the brick wall facing the end of Burgundy’s property and cupped my hand over my forehead so I could see to the corner where Steven parked his car. I didn’t care so much if he saw me; I didn’t think he’d approach unasked.

  Then I was walking forward, my plans changed in an instant because the first figure I’d been able to focus on over there was a small female, and she was following Steven around his car with a playful, swinging gait while he took big strides to try to keep his distance. The girl was dressed up, but it seemed to be a stylistic choice in regular clothing rather than a uniform. There would be no prizes for guessing her identity.

  And as if I hadn’t learned my lesson from everything that had happened this morning, I was so far over there that Julia had already noticed me coming, and stopped to stare.

  My face heated up. It wasn’t like I thought she was better than me or anything, but I knew she was on a completely different level to me when it came to what she’d already done to get her way, and just the thought of trying to compete embarrassed me.

  I forced myself to speak and hold onto the initiative, though. “Julia, I assume from the fact that you’re hanging around here.”

  “Steven,” said Julia, in a pretty voice that perfectly matched her pretty face. “You never told me you had a new girlfriend.”

  It was like I wasn’t real enough for her to speak directly to me.

  “Julia.” The cajoling way Steven was talking to her really hurt me, because I knew it wasn’t him. I couldn’t imagine him speaking to me like that and I didn’t want him to. “Leave Tamara out of this. Okay?”

  Her pout made her less pretty, and I was glad of it. “I don’t know what you’re even talking about. I’m just here trying to salvage what we once had, except now I’m finding out you’ve been finding someone else while I’ve been thinking about this on my own…”

  “Julia.” I tried to capture whatever energy I’d been putting out on my way there, and even though I thought I was doing a bad job of it, I clearly managed enough that she turned back to me. “It’s no use your coming back around here trying to stir things up. The two of you are broken up permanently.”

  Julia turned her nose up at me. “Steven and I share a history you couldn’t even imagine, coming in five minutes later like this.”

  “I do know about him kidnapping you.” She wasn’t quick enough to cover for her surprise at that one. “I can’t excuse that, but I do wonder why you even want to be here bothering him, if you’re apparently so afraid.”

  Her anger at that seemed real—but so had her fear, to get that restraining order. “Are you the sort of woman who tries to invalidate the experience of other women, just for the sake of a man?”

  It was pathetic. I tried not to let myself get too caught up in judging her, though. I didn’t know what she was coping with at home.

  I glanced at Steven, almost cowering behind his car, and I knew that what I had to say was very simple.

  “No Julia, I’m not that ‘sort of woman’. But I’m not the sort who just takes everything at face value either. If you really were hurt, I’m going to do everything I can to st
op you from being hurt again. That means I’m going to hold you accountable if you get back in these bad patterns where you approach Steven… when you know you shouldn’t do that.”

  What Julia was doing with her face wasn’t pretty at all.

  “Yes, I think maybe people don’t confront you because they’re intimidated by you, Julia,” I said. “But bad things happen to women because other women are willing to take what they see at face value. They don’t ask questions. They’re just happy so long as they’re safe.”

  A strange thing happened: for just a moment, it was like Steven wasn’t even there any more. It was just me and this girl Julia, and what I had to do.

  “I’m willing to put myself at risk for this, Julia,” I told her. “Even if people question why I’m doing it, if they believe the worst. I’m going to be there wherever Steven is, waiting to protect you from yourself. And having another woman by his side is going to make a big difference to the situation, isn’t it, Julia?”

  “Who are you, even?” Julia demanded.

  “Nobody,” I said. “But you know the difference between nobody and somebody, Julia? A whole lot of bullshit, and that’s it.”

  I didn’t think she really got it, but she took one step back, then another, and then she just turned and walked away, crossing the edge of the school property and disappearing down a little laneway I’d never gone down and was now even less likely to want to.

  I turned my attention to Steven, feeling a little awkward after that whole interaction. Had I seriously just gone to the very edge of threatening a girl who, apparently, had parents with serious financial backing behind them?

  “Wow,” said Steven. His disbelief told me it was all real. “You know, Tamara, you don’t have to go in for me like that, not now or ever. You don’t owe me anything, right?”

  “That’s true. Quite the opposite, right? Because of you, I’ve got guys I don’t even know the name of getting their kicks harassing me.”

  He shrank behind the bulk of his car again a little. “I’m sorry about that. I…”

  “You panicked, the other day. I know. Sometimes these big dramatic actions work well for you… sometimes, not so well.”

  “If I could take this one back…” He finally stepped around the car to join him. I hadn’t realised until then that I’d been waiting for him to do it. I flinched a little when he reached out to me. “How’s your hand?”

  I knew he could tell I was shaking when he curled his big fingers around mine, but I couldn’t look at him to figure out how that was affecting him. “Not much to see there. I guess it helps if you just sock the fucker in the nose instead of going for hard bone.”

  I grimaced. “In the nose? I didn’t stay around long enough to find out what happened there.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s probably broken. There was blood everywhere, they parcelled him off almost as quickly as Miller did you. What did you go through with her, anyway?”

  A lot of things I wasn’t going to tell him. “I escaped getting suspended by a hair, but I’m definitely in trouble if I pull any more stunts like that. She wanted to get in contact with my mum to talk about what had happened. I think she drew some unjust conclusions when I explained I wasn’t living at home any more.”

  Steven was squeezing my hand, somehow not quite enough to hurt, but I felt all of his skin all over mine. It scared me, knowing everything he was capable of, but now I knew some of what I was capable of, I thought I could stand it for now, without running away.

  “It made me realise just how different everything is going to be, now. But this is still probably just the start of it. I’m afraid one day I’m going to wake up and it’ll hit me, what’s been done to me… and I don’t know what’s going to happen then.”

  “What will happen is there’ll be some bad days, and some worse days,” said Steven. I wondered how he could be so confident about it… well, maybe he was actually telling me about his experiences with Julia.

  Steven pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked it one-handed, then cocked his head at me. “How about we dip for a bit? I think I might be able to ease some of your worries… unless you think you’re going to end up over the line for skipping classes.”

  “I think being out with you might be more dangerous than screwing with my education,” I admitted.

  Steven shrugged. He was still holding my hand. “Are you coming?”

  “Yeah,” I said, even though the decision made my heart start pounding so hard I could barely hear my own voice.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  She was amazing.

  Definitely trouble for any man who decided to take her on, but compared to the sort of trouble I’d taken on before, she was good trouble.

  Not that it was up to me to ‘decide’ to do anything. I couldn’t even imagine from my own experiences what it would be like for her to find out her father had done—that to her, but I imagined she might not be in a position to make those sorts of decisions for herself right now. She might never want to do it.

  Well, I didn’t need to stalk her around just to get laid or whatever. If she just needed someone at the moment, I could be that.

  I knew from prior experience there were some gaps in Tamara’s ability to function in the world, so I took her around to the bank I used and helped her to open a new account. Apparently her old one was a joint account she shared with her mother, good fucking grief. By the time I was sixteen I didn’t let my mother wash my underwear, let alone get involved with my finances.

  We were both a bit drained after the bank employees tried to sell us ten thousand different things we didn’t even slightly have the money for, so we grabbed iced coffees at a food court around the corner from the bank to warm us up for lunch. It was only eleven o’clock, and high school gets you too used to eating at one. Tamara sat on the edge of her little chair like a princess, her eyes shifting around as she sipped.

  At first I was just enjoying watching her, then my brain made an unwelcome connection to Julia, and then it all started to come together for me.

  “Jesus, Tamara.” I raked my fingers—half of them much clumsier than the other half—through my hair. “You’ve put a few more targets on you today. Julia is going to—”

  Tamara was surprisingly cool. “Julia’s going to what? Keep forcing you to violate the conditions of your restraining order when you have a sympathetic witness to her antics? I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t know what she’s capable of.” But Tamara’s confidence was messing with me.

  “She can claim what she likes, if she wants to get bitchy. But I’m willing to contradict her as many times as necessary.” The way she was pouting was really cute. I wished I could thank her with a kiss, but of course that was not right at the moment.

  I hated that I had to give her a jolt of reality instead. “You know it’s not going to mean much for my life in general, right? I can’t do anything to erase the parts of this that are public record. I can’t try to play footy professionally unless I want to be seeing Julia’s trumped-up trauma splashed across the front pages of the local newspapers. I’m always going to be a little hamstrung by this…” She was frowning at me, twisting a bit of hair between the fingers of her swollen punching hand. “…and any woman who has anything to do with me is going to face a lot of judgement.”

  Tamara shrugged. “I’m starting to think being a woman is all about judgement. Every minute of it. But that’s not such a bad thing. It helps you to work out where you stand in life, what you’re willing to fight for.”

  She gave me a smile I thought was damn pretty because there was nothing behind it. No agenda, just a smile. “Jess adores you, Steven, and I… I don’t know where we’re going from here, I think it’s going to be very difficult. But I think I want to choose to keep you in my life.”

  I didn’t even know what to call the way I felt about her right now. All I knew was that I loved the way it felt.

  Love. Maybe that…

  I’d never reall
y been able to love any of the women around me in the way I’d wanted, there was always so much fear in the mix. I’d always thought that was somehow my fault.

  Whatever this was, it made me want to try to do better. To fight for her in a way that wouldn’t leave so much damage.

  I didn’t want to say any of it to her. Words shared privately between two people could be used so easily to trap someone who was on the edge.

  I just looked at her, right in her eyes, and let her see whatever she would.

  After lunch, I invited Steven back to the room I was sharing with Jess. I wanted to check on her anyway, and I thought Steven might be an even more welcome surprise than me. That was the story, at least.

  I didn’t start feeling nervous until the door clicked shut behind us and it became apparent from the room looking almost as neat as it had when we’d arrived, excepting our slightly chaotic belongings, that Jess wasn’t there. She’d left a note explaining she had decided to go for a walk while the sun was out. To refresh her brain for studying, of course. She’d taken the credit card Steven left for us, and I was pretty sure the housekeeping staff hadn’t decided to pick up her textbooks and put them back in her suitcase.

  I sank onto the couch. “I don’t think I’m ready to be a substitute parent to a teenager. An even younger teenager than me, I mean.”

  Steven joined me carefully. “You know what I think? It’s going to sink in she’s yours, your sister, and then you’re going to be absolutely menacing. Nobody and nothing will get past you.”

  “It’s funny, that’s really the energy I get from you,” I admitted.

  His eyes on me felt almost feline, definitely predatory. “Do you like that?”

  My words were mostly breath. “Yeah.”

  Steven frowned like he was trying to make sense of something he was being told, then he muttered, “Oh, fuck it,” and leaned towards me.

  I stiffened when his mouth pressed against mine, firm but gentle, exploratory, not like he’d ever been with me before.