Love Games (Revenge Games Duet Book 2)

by Sky Corgan

  Yes, I shelved my feelings. But just because you shelve something doesn't mean it goes away. I loved him. Part of me knew I always would. But I had to move on with my life.

  So I dated. Dated guys that I didn't care about. Dated guys that I thought I cared about but didn't. No matter who I was with, I always had one eye on Bobby and his relationship. If he was jealous whenever I got with someone, it didn't show at all. That hurt me more than I liked, but I tried not to let him see it.

  We were friends. And though we weren't as close as we had been the first month we met, we still hung out regularly. With our friends, of course. There was no just me and him after Christine.

  As fate would have it, there eventually was trouble in paradise with their relationship. It could not have come at a worse time—a time when I was in a relationship with one of the sweetest boys I'd ever met. Darryl Hoover wasn't the best-looking guy at our school, but what he lacked in looks, he made up for in heart. He wrote me love poems, brought me flowers, and was the perfect gentleman.

  File under: guys I thought I cared about.

  It was the end of junior year, and we were three months into our relationship when the bomb dropped that Bobby and Christine had split. My stomach twisted with nauseating desperation. This was, by far, the best relationship I had ever been in. For the first time ever, I was genuinely happy with a guy, but that all went to shit when I got the news about Bobby. I rushed to his side for support, playing the part of the dutiful friend. The kind of support I wanted to give him was more than platonic, though.

  Bobby wasn't stable, but he wasn't a wreck either. If anything, he was just frustrated. I had thought he'd want to cry on my shoulder, to use me to fill the void that spending time with Christine had left. I think I forced myself on him. Not sexually, but my presence. I wanted to be around him...and he wanted something else. Things that had been denied him for three years. Carnal needs that teenage boys get.

  The more I pressed to be with him, the more he pushed me away. He spent the vast majority of the month with new friends he had met at another school. I grew distant with my own boyfriend, always in the pursuit of Bobby.

  If there was one thing that Darryl was beside sweet, it was perceptive. He saw what was going on. Noticed the distance. Heard the pain in my voice every time I spoke of Bobby. Heard the longing.

  Despite the fact that Bobby didn't seem to want me around at all, I conjured up a story in my mind that he couldn't be around me yet because he loved me and was afraid to move on so quickly. I wanted to go to him and tell him that he didn't need to push me away. That I loved him and always had and would be there for him in whatever way he needed. As time passed and he slipped further away, the need to be with him grew. Darryl was willing to weather the storm, but the ship of our relationship was already sinking, and I was ready to jump off onto the Bobby lifeboat.

  I conjured up the nerve to spill my feelings to Bobby. He needed to know that I was in love with him. Years of watching him with someone else hadn't changed that. If anything, I loved him more because I knew he was dedicated.

  I threw caution and logic to the wind and broke up with Darryl. The guy was torn apart. It was the nastiest breakup I'd ever had. He cried. Tried to reason with me. Practically held me hostage explaining why we were perfect together. I left him anyway.

  That same night, I showed up on Bobby's doorstep ready to tell him everything. He wasn't home, though. His mother said that he had gone out for the night. I was disappointed, but there was always tomorrow.

  I spent the night with an aching in my chest. An aching because I had just dumped the best guy I had ever dated—someone who had never deserved to be hurt by me. An aching because my thoughts and feelings about Bobby were eating me up on the inside. I was like a water balloon filled too full. My emotions were overwhelming me. One small prick and I could explode, completely fall apart—be destroyed.

  That prick came the next day, but not how I thought it would. Bobby was in class bragging to our friends about how he'd banged one of the chicks from his new group. The unabashed way he talked about it in front of me told me that he didn't consider my feelings at all. Part of me wanted to think he was just fucking away his pain. He could have used me for that, though. I would have slept with him. Willingly. Happily.

  A week later, he was back with Christine.

  I could have crawled back to Darryl, but I didn't. Who was I kidding? He deserved better than me. I had dumped him for a guy who hadn't even given me a second thought.

  Depression weighed heavily on me. Hell, I'd even say that I hated Bobby for a time. I thought he had led me on. That was bullshit, though. In truth, I had chased him around like a lovesick puppy. He had been as friendly as he always had been. Maybe slightly distant, but not cruel. But most importantly, he had been platonic.

  There were no looks exchanged between us like there had been the first month we'd known each other. No level of interest outside of friendship. I was like the paint on the walls. Normal. Boring. Always there. Nothing new.

  He had broken me.

  For a while, I thought it was a permanent break. I thought that knowing he had been with someone else—someone who wasn't me—was enough to make me swear off of caring about him. My feelings dwindled to a low simmer. There seemed to be a fissure in our friendship, mostly on my side, and that helped too.

  Eventually, things returned to normal. The sting of not being his first choice for a rebound went away as I observed him from afar like I used to. There was the charming way that he smiled. The lilt in his voice when he said certain phrases. The way that he opened his arms wide every time he came in for a hug. Yes, there were definitely still things about him that I liked. Things about him that I desired. And fuck my life, those feelings came back. Maybe they weren't as crazy obsessive as they had been before, but they were definitely still there.

  I convinced myself that I could make peace with his relationship with Christine. That we could just be friends. Friends. Friends. Friends. Yeah, friends. That sounded good. I could deal with that.

  But towards the end of senior year, Bobby and Christine broke up again. And this time it looked to be permanent. And the flame of desire rose to the ceiling and scorched my good senses.

  I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice, though. No siree. I didn't desperately try to get close to Bobby. I didn't smother him with texts and phone calls, checking up on him daily to make sure he was alright. I let him do his own thing. I was just there. There if he needed me. And like with the last breakup, he didn't need me. Not really.

  We stayed friends. Friends was good. Friends was better than not friends. We talked and hung out from time to time...and when I found out where he was going to college, I kind of sort of begged my parents to let me go to the same school. I kind of sort of got them to agree. And I kind of sort of decided to follow Bobby to a different city, because damn it all to hell, I was convinced that there was still something between us—that there could still be something between us.

  Without our friends around, we would need each other. He would need me. And that meant we would get closer. And if we got closer, he might see what he'd been missing out on all of those years.

  Our new life together was about to begin.

  Like what you've read so far? You can get the rest here: Bully