Page 21 of The Game

Heh. He wouldn’t be. I’d tackled that asshole, too. Not that I could tell her as much or my angel would fly away faster than I could blink.

Chapter 12

Emmeline

For the whole of the walk up to my apartment, little spirals of panic danced through me, as if the evidence of my stalking would be apparent the moment Malachi stepped through the door.

He prowled down the corridor at my side, so big and threatening. To anyone but me. I wanted others to see me with him. I was proud of my catch.

Ahead, a door opened and a man emerged—my bad-parking neighbour. Though he hadn’t done it recently, I was certain he’d slip back into his ways. My indignation rose. I’d never told him off about it, but right now, I felt like I could take on the world.

Probably because I had no underwear on, too.

“Mr Rancide?” I called.

He spotted us, and his eyes widened, jumping from me to the hulking man at my back, then he lifted his phone and pointed at it as if he had a call, vanishing back into his place.

I scowled at the closed door then unlocked mine. “Strange.”

Malachi smirked and followed me in.

I watched him carefully on his prowl around the place. Unlike me at his home last night, he didn’t seem overly blown away by my apartment. I saw it through his eyes. Clean but colourless. No clutter and no real identity. I’d done very little with the place after moving in. It came furnished. I had clothes in the wardrobe and a scattering of personal possessions, but not much else.

In my bedroom, he picked up one of the few pictures I had on my dresser. “Your folks?”

I ducked my head and took down a bag, stuffing clothes into it haphazardly. “They’re both dead. A car accident. I don’t remember them very well. My aunt, Frederica, raised me from the age of nine. She’s a surgeon as well. I mean, she was. She died a year ago. Sudden heart attack.”

He moved on to the next photo, me and Annie in our caps and gowns, then the last, Aunt Frederica with her dog, a stocky French Bulldog named Bess.

“I loved that dog,” I said. “Obviously, I loved Aunt Frederica as well, but Bess and I spent a lot of time together. My aunt might have even bought her for me, I don’t remember.”

A familiar sense of sadness hit me. All my nearest relatives were deceased. Our family dog gone. My best friend leading a different life. It hadn’t troubled me in the past, probably because I threw myself into work, but the yawning gap of a whole month off gave a new and startling perspective.

As if he sensed my little pity party, Malachi came over. He took the bag from my hand and tossed it to the bed then hugged me. I buried my face in his chest, suddenly embarrassed at my wave of emotion. So rarely did I ever get held, that being in his big arms unravelled something I kept tightly held.

“You have kids, don’t you?” I said.

He nodded, though I felt it rather than saw the action. “Two girls. Does that bother you?”

“Of course not. I saw their pictures in your bedroom. How old are they?”

“Fourteen and twelve. Maisie, the elder, is a lot like me. She is fierce and comes across as aggressive, but she’s fearless, too. She’ll be easy to win over if you just tell her your job. She is heavily into women’s rights and indignant about the lack of representation in top careers.”

He continued hugging me. I liked it too much to pull away.

“The younger girl is Petra. She’ll adore you on sight because she is an absolute sweetheart. You’ll see when you meet them.”

I smiled, breathing easier. “They sound wonderful.”

“They are. Maisie came about by accident. I was a new fighter on the circuit, and her ma was a groupie. I don’t mean that to be offensive. My ex would happily call herself the same. She enjoyed her nights working through the different fighters, and no fucker dared judge her when we were all doing the same. I was twenty-one and had nothing in my head but testosterone. When she told me she was pregnant, I asked her to marry me. She laughed me out of town. But we did try to stay together for the sake of the baby, even having a second. We split when Petra was two months old as Lucille told me she’d fallen for someone else. I found myself happy for her which goes to show how deep my feelings went.”

He went quiet for a moment. “Do you want kids?”

“No. Do you want more?” It felt like a bad time to be discussing this after we’d just made a huge commitment by entering the game.

He exhaled, disturbing my hair. “I’d get you pregnant in a heartbeat if you wanted me to, but I’m content with what I have.”

Malachi’s palms slid down me. I’d borrowed one of his hoodies to cover the t-shirt and skirt I’d packed in my handbag, taking Shade’s advice that I’d likely be stripped naked and the implication that my clothes would be destroyed.

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