Page 33 of The Player
“I should’ve known he wouldn’t play fucking fair,” I told myself. Then I looked up to see Bryony staring at the guy, tears welling in her eyes as she saw what we’d done.
“Don’t look,” I told her, walking over to her and using my body to shield her from it all. “Just look at me.” I took her face in my hands, stroking her cheeks as I forced her to look into my eyes. “We did it. We’re alive and he didn’t deserve to be. You know how it goes. You know how this works.”
She nodded, but those tears still clung to her eyes, threatening to break free at any moment.
“I know,” she uttered quietly. “I know.”
I knew she was repeating herself to make it sound right. To come to terms with what’d been the most stressful two minutes of both our lives.
“Let’s go,” I said, pulling her to me and leading her past the body so she couldn’t see it, guiding her to the door that’d just slid open.
Holding her up and close to me, we walked back down the corridor to our room. With each step we took, the protectiveness I always felt for her morphed into so much more. If I could’ve cut myself open and pulled her inside of me to keep her safe, I would’ve. I wanted to hold her in my arms and never let her go. Let my air be the air that kept her alive. I wanted to give her life. Because in that moment, I realised something I’d been ignoring for a long time. Something I’d been kidding myself about for months.
Bryony Masters wasn’t a girl I wanted to fuck.
She wasn’t a girl I wanted to date.
She was the girl I’d fallen for.
I loved her. Had done for months, and I’d do anything for her, anything to make her happy and keep her safe. She was everything. And as I walked back into the cell, holding her close, I knew she’d make it out of here. Even if it meant I had to die to make that happen.
ChapterFifteen
BRYONY
“You don’t have to hold me up,” I told him, even though having him wrap his arm around me gave me a warm feeling inside, something I really shouldn’t have felt after what we’d done back in that room. “I can walk on my own.”
“I know you can,” he said but didn’t remove his arm from my shoulders. Then, leaning his head to speak in a whisper, he added, “Maybe I’m the one that needs the support.”
He was being sweet. I knew that.
As we arrived back in our cell, the door behind us closed, the seam so tight you could barely make out that the door was even there.
“So that’s what he wants us for. To kill for him in the most fucked-up ways he can think of.” I moved to sit on the mattress and Will joined me. “But why us?” I turned to face him. “Why were we taken and not Adam or Devon? He targeted us for a reason. I want to know what it is.”
“We might never know. That’s just the way it is.” He let his arm fall away from my shoulder, but he kept it behind me, resting it on the mattress. “We might never find out why he chose to take us, to bring us here, to do all this.” He smirked sadly and added, “Maybe it’s because he knows I’m the best.”
“At killing? That’s not something to brag about.”
Will had been a vigilante with his friends for years, protecting the streets of Brinton Manor. But choosing your own mark and being forced to kill the way we just were was something else entirely.
“Do you know who that Wilson guy was?” I asked. “Have you ever met him.”
“Never,” Will stated, shaking his head.
“Then how do you know he deserved to die like that?”
“Call it a hunch. And the fact he was called needle dick. It’s not the best nickname.”
“There’s more to this,” I replied, ignoring his comment about the nickname.
“You’re probably right but try not to read too much into it until we know more facts. You’re gonna drive yourself crazy. He said that guy deserved it. We have to believe that. We did the world a favour. If you see it that way, it makes what we did feel a little better.”
“And if he didn’t deserve it? I mean, it’s not like that masked fucker tells the truth all the time. He tried to fuck us over with a fucking knitting needle.”
“That’s not our problem. Our problem is surviving. Living another day so we can get out of here. To me, that’s all that counts.”
We sat for a while on the mattress. I wrapped my arms tightly around my knees, rocking back and forth, and he chatted away, trying to distract me. Trying being the operative word. I couldn’t seem to shut down my emotions or my panicked thoughts. I needed to make sense of all this, but nothing was clear. None of it made sense.
