Page 11 of The Game

I couldn’t get over that.

My obsession with him had reached towering proportions. I’d read all there was to know about the man and watched countless interviews. He had two daughters from a previous relationship and spent a lot of time with them. He was often pictured with his parents at his matches. I had to confess to myself that I’d built a fantasy world around him catching me.

If he wasn’t here, it couldn’t happen.

For God’s sake, even if he was, would he ever have picked me? I was delusional.

Yet I wouldn’t walk out of here unclaimed. The rules made that perfectly clear.

The lawyer rolled her eyes. “Being here tonight is the very definition of doing things we’re not meant to do. Yes, I watched them. I picked out the top two I wanted. Stay the fuck away from me once we’re moving, and see you on the other side.”

The rest of us stared at her.

A buzzer sounded, and everyone jumped.

The lady at the door exhaled excitement. “That’s our signal. The cameras are on and the siren will go off in a minute. I feel like I’m going to puke.”

She sprinted away, the others going, too. I held back.

Never in my life had I felt this out of control. All this over a fantasy of a man I’d never see again becausehe wasn’t here.

Panic tasted sour on my tongue. I needed to get out.

At the exit, I turned left and ran to the basement door. Smacked on it with a balled fist.

“Let me out! I don’t want to do this anymore. I changed my mind.”

No one answered, but the camera blinked down at me, capturing every moment.

“Help me,” I yelled.

I swore I heard a dark laugh through the thick metal door.

A siren pierced the space.

I jumped a foot in the air and ran, back the way I’d come and down a corridor that led past the open space where the cages clanked open. Men poured out. Most only in jeans and a skeleton mask, some with black paint across their eyes, others already bloodied. All big and clearly enraged.

Terror filled me.

Angry shouts followed and, on the rough concrete, footsteps pounded that matched the out-of-control thump of my pulse. For a petrified heartbeat, I scanned them, searching for him. It was no good. As the lawyer had stated, he hadn’t come.

Disappointment marked my hasty retreat.

The basement was a huge, open space bisected by a thick wall with metal steps that ran up to a suspended walkway. There was a kind of overseer’s office above the action, but I didn’t attempt to reach that. I didn’t have time. Two men already stalked up the steps.

Instead, all I could do was put distance between myself and the mass of bodies.

A scream rang out. I chanced a peek over my shoulder to see the shy pixie-cut woman caught between two men. She was a foot shorter than both. One threw a punch that connected with the second man’s jaw, and he spun away and howled, clutching his face.

Another took the first man by surprise, hooking him by the throat and grappling him to the floor which was already speckled with shiny blood. The majority of the men seemed concentrated in that one spot, another of the women at the far back, fending one off with a startling and accurate kick to the gut.

I winced at the violence.

This was awful. Not the thrilling event I’d anticipated, where I’d overlaid the action with Malachi. With him here, I’d have felt safe.

The opposite was my reality.

I didn’t stick around to witness any more.

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