The Kiss Game: Dark New Adult Bully Romance (Twisted Games Book 1)

by Esme Devlin

  We start traveling down a long twisty stairwell with steps so steep and worn I have to hold on to my skirt to stop the thing from hitching up my legs.

  The light from the hall fades with every twist and the air gets mustier. Damper. Like fog and mildew. If the house is a castle, then we’re heading straight for the fucking dungeons.

  This is the part in a horror movie where you know the girl is too stupid to live and she’s just about to get her arse handed to her on a plate. The audience doesn’t give two fucks because she should have known this was a bad idea.

  And yet here we are.

  We walk through a long dimly lit hall and stop outside a door, a big dark wooden thing, and he pulls out a key from his pocket.

  “You wait there,” he tells me.

  “I was going to.”

  Fuck getting in a room alone with just him and a lockable door for company.

  I’ll keep my arse today, thank you.

  When I first saw him, I told myself that years had passed, he was a kid then, it was an accident. But the more time I spend in his presence the more I feel like that scared little girl. The more I’m working myself up into a fucking frenzy.

  Now I’m not saying this is a horror film and he is actually about to murder me… I’m just saying he wasn’t a nice boy then, and he is not a nice man now.

  He comes back a few moments later and locks the door behind him. This time, I don’t even bother trying to get a look at what is inside.

  I don’t want to know.

  When he doesn’t hand over the tape, or make a move, I eye him up and down. He’s just standing there watching me, and something about him makes me uneasy. My stomach rolls and it’s not in the cute little butterfly way either.

  I have to break the silence or else I think I might burn up. Clearing my throat, I stick my hand out in front of me. “The tape?”

  He leans back against the wall again as if he’s settling down for a conversation, and I watch as his tongue peeks out and wets his lips. “That’s one too many good deeds I’ve done for you now, and still not a single thank you’s crossed your lips.”

  Fuck would I be polite when there’s not even a lick of manners coming from him? I make a sound that’s like a snort before I answer, “Twice you’ve helped me and twice you’ve done half a job. What am I supposed to be, gushing?”

  Now he’s the one who makes a snort, and he shifts his position on the wall, edging closer. “You tell me, darlin? Or do you want me to check for you?” His eyes flick down to the space between my legs, only for a split second, but I don’t miss what he’s insinuating.

  This isn’t a horror movie though.

  This is real life.

  It’s just fucking games.

  “Give me the tape, I’ll give you a thank you, and we can both get back to whatever we were doing.”

  “Oh, simple as that, is it?”

  I shrug but there’s nothing casual about my tone. “I don’t see why it needs to be difficult.”

  “Nah, you wouldn’t, would you?” He practically shoves the tape in my hand as he barges by me and I almost drop it.

  I spin around and watch him walking down the hallway, hands in his pockets. He walks like his balls are too big for the space between his slightly bowed legs. Prick.

  “Thank you,” I shout after him, but he just raises his arm up and swings it down as if he’s brushing me away.

  Definitely a prick.

  Chapter 4

  Malachy

  The radar screeches from my phone and I press any fucking button possible to make it stop.

  What day is it? Wednesday.

  First day back was bound to be a struggle.

  I’m an early riser anyway, but college means I get up at 4am instead of the usual 6am. Necessary if I want to get a bit of work in before I have to leave the house.

  I shrug a pair of bottoms on and head down the stairs. The sun’s not up yet but I could make this journey with my eyes closed.

  The light is on in the kitchen, and I see Lucia standing over the kettle as I walk past.

  “Mal, you scared the shit out of me,” she shouts after me.

  Aye, very good.

  I keep walking anyway, only stopping to get the key and unlock the door to the workshop. The lights go on eventually, and the familiar smell of varnish cloys at the back of my throat.

  There are no windows down here in these vaults, I usually like it because you can lose yourself for hours without the sun to track the passing of time, but even I can accept the smell gets overwhelming.

  But not too overwhelming to keep me away. I spend a few minutes inspecting yesterdays work, and then I crack on, trying not to look at the measuring tape.

  The measuring tape I gave to the wee black haired witch on Saturday night. It sits out in the middle of the workbench.

  She must have left it outside my door when she’d finished, but the first I knew about it was when I stepped on the fucker on Sunday morning.

  I picked it up, slammed it down on that workbench, and it’s sat there ever since. I should move it, put it away back in the drawer where it belongs, but I don’t.

  And I don’t really know why.

  Every time I look at it, I think about her. I’ve played through the events of Saturday night in my head more times than I can count. She’s a permanent fucking fixture up there now, and again, I don’t really know why.

  She’s got an attitude, and that bothers me. She had an attitude that day too, years ago, when she pushed me, and she’s clearly not learnt her fucking lesson.

  My thoughts go on like this. I’m fighting with myself not to dwell on that day, or the days after, or the days leading up to this day.

  It’s not good for me to dwell on shit.

  The therapist my mum forced me to visit told me that.

  The radar alarm goes off again, and I put my tools down, stretching and cracking my neck. I’ll finish this later.

  The college canteen is like a mixing bowl where the chef doesn’t give two fucks that he’s throwing the choicest cuts of meat in beside the rotten potato peelings.

  All fucking sorts of folks come here, from the future CEOs of tech companies getting their diploma in computer science, to the future single mums of tomorrows street-rats getting their Nat-Certs in fucking facials.

  At the table behind sit the wee thirteen-year-old lads, already deemed too bad or too hopeless for high school before they’ve even switched their tea-tree acne treatment for a razor.

  Then there’s the forty-eight-year-old jobless cunts who’ve been sent by the social to learn how to add and subtract.

  Abercrombie wankers, like Scott McCormack, here to study sports science so they can get bored with personal training by the time they’re twenty-five and end up back here, in this shitehole, doing it again, but only next time they’ll study something that might just lead to an actual real man’s job.

  I sit at the table in my overalls with the other trades-folk. The welders wear red, the sparks wear blue — except the wee token bird who wears pink — and the joiners like myself wear black.

  Craig sits next to me, he’s a decorator so at one point his overalls were white, but now they’re just mockit. Josh and Ross are mechanics, so they eat lunch in the annex with the rest of the black-faced gimps.

  I’m sitting there, minding my own business and watching the world go by when I see her.

  Her.

  Ten years no calls and now she’s in my house, my college, my fucking head.

  I put down the bacon roll I was eating and sit back in my chair, watching her.

  Craig notices I’m not listening to a word he’s waffling, and it only takes him a second to follow my eyes and realize what it is I’m staring at.

  “Fuck, she looks different.”

  “Course she does,” I tell him. “She’s got tits now.”

  “Aye, you’re no wrong about that, mate. It’s her face what got my attention though.”

  She’s got a pretty
face right enough, but that’s unsurprising. I always thought she was a pretty child too — scrawny as fuck, but pretty. She’s not as scrawny these days, but she’s not exactly curves in all the right places, either.

  I wonder if she’s poor?

  That would explain why she's borderline skinny, and also her outfit choices.

  For someone who spends her time making dresses and shit, you’d think she’d have an ounce of fashion sense about her. You can spot the girls who make an effort for the first day of college a mile away, and Grace just looks plain in comparison. Not scruffy, just not your typical try-hard seventeen-year-old either.

  I turn around and see Craig ogling her and my already black mood takes a turn for the worse.

  But I know I’m being ridiculous.

  I don’t even like the wee lassie.

  We both go back to eating our piece’s in silence and I try not to pay her any more attention. She doesn’t seem to notice me, she’s too engrossed in a conversation with her pal, and now she’s sitting down with her back to me, she’s not going to either.

  I’m rummaging around in my pockets trying to find my snouts when I spot her brother and his wee goofy pal, Jamie, stroll over to her table.

  Jamie bends down when he gets to Grace, squeezes her shoulder, and then pulls her in for a hug that lasted longer than a friendly one.

  She’s smiling at him?

  My eyes dart to her brother, Scott, but he’s not batting an eyelid. He’s mid-joke with her pal.

  So they’re a couple.

  Jamie Gallacher.

  Jamie fucking Gallacher.

  Room’s full of cunts, and she had to end up with the biggest cunt of them all.

  I sit there, eyes glued to them, watching them laugh and joke like they’re oblivious to the world outside them.

  Meanwhile my world is splintering into a thousand tiny pieces.

  I told myself I was fine, just as long as she wasn’t.

  But she’s happy.

  She’s fucking happy with him.

  She’s the reason I am the way I am. She sucked every fucking bit of happiness out of me ten years ago, and she’s not even sorry.

  I can’t sit here looking at them.

  My chair scrapes back against the linoleum and I’m away before Craig even realizes what’s happening. The tables fly past me in a whirl and I dodge other cunts as I weave my way through them, heading for the exit.

  I need a smoke. Fuck, I need something stronger than a smoke.

  But I don’t go to the smoking shelter — fuck the smoking shelter. I go to my car. I need to be alone.

  I need to stare into space and not see her face in it.

  Slamming the door shut behind me, I take a snout out of the packet and spark the match against the edge. The thing ignites straight away and I wait for the rush of nicotine to calm me down, to make it all better.

  It does fuck-all.

  How the fuck can I be better when I have to come here every day and watch the four of them live out their wee fairytale in front of me?

  Where the fuck is the justice in that?

  The universe will right itself.

  My mum tried to drill that into me, back when she was still trying to pull me from the dark abyss that was eating me up from the inside.

  That was before she gave up trying.

  My throat tightens as her face drifts into my head.

  Well, the universe isn’t righting itself, is it Ma? The universe is taking the cunt out of me, and so is she.

  And now I can’t be fine anymore. Not unless she’s sorry. Not until she knows what even a tenth of that abyss feels like.

  I take a long, slow, drag of the smoke and it fills my lungs. Letting it out again in rings, I watch those rings grow, like a universe, as they drift towards the windscreen.

  She ruined my life.

  Now I’ll make her live in those ruins.

  I’ll make her fucking dance in them.

  Four pairs of eyes look up at me as I take the fifth chair and sit down on it. I don’t tuck it in, I don’t even bother sitting up straight.

  While I wait for one of them to say something, I watch Grace. Maybe she’s put a bit of makeup on to cover those dark circles under her eyes, or then again, maybe she’s just had a good nights sleep.

  “Can we help you?”

  It’s Scott who speaks up. Thought it would be — Jamie wouldn’t dare. I look over from Scott to him, and he looks like he’s sitting on a coal fire. He looks like the room is too hot for him.

  Good.

  “Got that wee present you left for me, Grace.”

  She stares at me, they all do, but she’s the only one whose stare doesn’t have an edge of discomfort to it.

  “Didn’t want to disturb you again,” she says with a shrug.

  I smirk at her, deciding to sit forward and stick my elbows up on the table across from her, like we’re the only two people sat at it. “You wouldn’t have disturbed me darlin, I was waiting for you.”

  Grace swallows — there’s the discomfort — and glances between Jamie and her brother. Good, but she’s not the one I’m trying to make feel uncomfortable.

  I want Jamie to say something, I want Jamie to snap so I can say the words he’s praying for me not to say.

  “Really.” It’s not a question, she sounds too disinterested for it to be a question. She doesn’t want to engage because her little boyfriend is sat right there, but at the same time she’s trying not to provoke me either.

  She’s scared of me.

  At least, I think she is.

  Maybe she’s not. Fuck knows. Either way, she should be.

  “Really. You only thanked me the once, and that hurt me.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get over it,” she says dismissively, standing up and lifting her water bottle. “Kate, we should get to class?”

  Kate nods while she stares at me cautiously, tucking her chair in behind her.

  “I’m not someone who gets over shit too easily, Grace.”

  She’s walking away, but she lifts her arm and swats it down behind her, mimicking me. She’s fucking mimicking me. I’d almost chuckle if it wasn’t for the two cunts eyeballing me around the table.

  I wait until her little arse is through the door and round the corner before I give either of them a lick of my attention.

  “What was that all about?” Scott says.

  I sit back in my chair again before I answer him. “Private joke.”

  He shakes his head. “You’ve no business sharing private jokes with my sister.”

  “Oh right, my sister is it?” I flick my head towards Jamie. “Did you give this cunt that speech when he started setting about your sister?”

  He clears his throat. “That’s different.”

  “It is? Why is it different?”

  “Jamie didn’t…”

  He trails off, and I want to ram his head against my knee for not even having the balls to say it.

  “Jamie didn’t what? Slam a rock into her pretty little skull?”

  “Malachy…” he shakes his head again, and I turn around to look at Jamie.

  If he was hot before, he’s fucking boiling now. His cheeks are beaming and the red flush goes all the way down to his neck.

  He swallows and blinks once before he opens his mouth. “That was a long time ago. We’re all passed it now.”

  I chuckle at him. “Little Grace wouldn’t have been passed it if I’d listened to you though, would she?”

  He stiffens and glances nervously over to Scott. “I was nine.”

  “Aye, Jamie, so was I.”

  I get up from the table and they both watch every move I make.

  We’re done here.

  The three of us were done ten years ago, and I’ve no intention of giving them another second of my time.

  I just wanted him to know that I remember.

  I remember it like it was yesterday.

  Chapter 5

  Grace

  “Gr
ace?”

  Kate is shouldering me, as if somehow just by making contact she’ll be able to keep up.

  “Grace?”

  I stop and turn around to face her. “I’m okay.”

  “No, you’re not,” she insists.

  Swallowing, I turn around to look out of the full height glass wall that spans the length of the corridor.

  Outside, people smoke and vape in the shelter, even more of them smoking and vaping in the bike racks.

  There’s been a few times the thought of taking up smoking has crossed my mind. Not the real sort — I hear you can get stuff that tastes like banoffee pie and shit now. People say it suppresses hunger, and when the month stretches further than the money, everyone needs banoffee pie, right?

  Now though, I’m considering it because I heard it relieves stress.

  “Honestly, I’m alright. He just makes me feel uneasy, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, you failed to mention he looks like the grim fucking reaper when you told me he came into the shop.”

  I tear my eyes away from the gang of smokers and chuckle at her. “Didn’t want you getting yourself ideas, you have a track record.”

  She snorts as if she’s offended, but it’s true, Kate loves herself a man with some ink, doesn’t matter how many times she gets hurt. “I like a cheeky wee half sleeve, not a white face on a black and grey body,” she says with a giggle. “Besides, even my broken red-flag radar was going off like a klaxon back there.”

  “He’s just trying to intimidate me,” I tell her.

  “Well clearly, but why? What have you ever done to him? If anything he should be crawling at your feet after what he did to you.”

  I shrug. Kate is much grudgier than I could ever be. I don’t expect him to grovel on his knees, but I’d appreciate it if he was either civil or he left me alone.

  “I think he probably feels guilty and is lashing out. He likely thinks I hate him, so maybe he’s hating on me first, you know? I thought about telling him that I didn’t hold a grudge, but at the time it seemed stupid.”

  She nods her head. “Maybe you should just speak to him, tell him it’s all water under the bridge.”