Page 115 of Play Fake
I pull it together, wiping my eyes and sniffling. “Sorry,” I say.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No more than I hurt him,” I say, though honestly I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if he’s hurting or not. He doesn’t seem like he is when he stays out all night the way he did,but if he genuinely cares about me and what we built, like he said he did, then he must feelsomethingover the loss of it.
She’s quiet, and she pulls me in for a hug. “You fell for him.” She says the words flatly.
“Very much so, yes.” I’m resting my head on her shoulder, refusing to move because I don’t want to have to look her in the eyes while I tell her how very much I love her big, dumb brother.
“And him?” she asks.
“He fell, too. Or he said he did, anyway. I wasn’t alone. But it’s over now.”
“Did you, uh…” She trails off, and I fill in the blank.
“Sleep with him? Yes.”
“Oh, God.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I had a feeling when I stayed with you for my birthday weekend. I don’t know, you just seemed so…” She trails off again, and this time she pulls back as she looks at me while she says the word. “Aligned.”
I twist my lips. “We were. And then we weren’t.”
“Can I ask why?”
I can’t exactly tell her that it’s because of her father and this illegal underground casino he’s running. We tell each other everything, sure, but that seems off-limits. If her dad wanted her to know, he’d tell her. It’s not my news to tell when it involves so many members of her own family.
So I dart around the central issue. “We just have such different backgrounds. It was never meant to work.”
“You and I have the same different backgrounds, but this works,” she points out.
“Yeah, but we’re not romantically involved. It’s different. And you’re not this NFL bad boy with a history filled with women.”
She presses her lips together. “What can I do?”
We’re still standing in the foyer, and there’s a huge family photograph on the wall. It’s from several years ago, but Dex is in it, and it feels like his eyes are on me as I stare up at it.
“Come on,” she says as her eyes follow mine to where I’m staring, and we head toward the kitchen. She gets us each some water, and we sit at the kitchen table. “Talk to me, Riggs.”
I chuckle a little wistfully. “It’s Bradley now.”
“Right. Not if you ended it. Are you sure about this?”
“He’s a complicated guy. He’s secretive, and he claims he keeps those secrets to protect me, but how do I know I can trust him?”
“I feel like somewhere in that question, you’re admitting it’s not over yet,” she says.
“It feels permanent. But you know me, the eternal optimist.” I roll my eyes.
“I do know you, Ains. And I know you try to be sunshine and rainbows all the time, but those rainbows don’t come without a little rain, right?”
“This feels like more than a little,” I point out. “This feels like thunderstorms and lightning and destruction.” I twist my lips.
“The storm before the calm?” she suggests, and I shake my head.
“I don’t know. He kind of holds the keys, but he has to want to fight back, and I’m not sure he does.”
