The Game Series (81 page)

He looks the way I feel. Angry and confused and hurting.

“But you still don’t believe in me,” I say softly.

“Jesus, Rox. I do, okay? I do.” He frames my face with his hands. “I know you can do it.”

“What if I can’t? What then, Kyle? Will this happen again and again until we finally get it?” I step back. “What if this is me now?”

“This isn’t you. We know it.”

“No, we don’t. We think we do. I don’t know who I am. Do you get that? I don’t know if I’m the old Roxy or the new Roxy or someone entirely different. Right now I think I’m the new Roxy and you hate her. You hate everything she is and everything she does and this,” I gesture between us, “This wouldn’t work.”

“I could never hate you. You know that.”

“No, I don’t.” I swallow. “You said yourself the person I was before is your Roxy. This person isn’t, is she? Maybe we’re just kidding ourselves. You don’t want this Roxy, do you?”

“Fucking hell, Rox. I want
you.
I don’t get how we’ve gone from a simple misunderstanding to you deciding I don’t want you!”

“But you don’t want
this
Roxy!” I yell, not caring there are faces pressed against the windows watching us and everyone in the yard is quiet and listening in. “This could be the person I am. It probably is. I guess…” I pause for a moment. I need to hold these tears back. Why does the truth have to hurt so much? Why does it have to break my heart even more?

Why can’t the truth be beautiful for once?

“You guess what?”

I drop my eyes to the floor. “I guess if you don’t want the person I could be, then you don’t really want me at all.”

I can’t look up. I don’t want to see his eyes as he realizes what I’m saying is true. Because it is. He said it himself – the old Roxy is his Roxy. I’ll never be her again, not even if I try hard enough.

“The Roxy I know respected herself, she respected others, and she looked down on the kind of person you are right now. The Roxy I know? She had the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen and never failed to make my day, even when she was just my best friend’s kid sister. That’s the Roxy I want – the Roxy you’re trying to hide,” he replies softly.

“I can’t be the person you want me to be.” My eyes fill and my heart cracks. Not just a little, it’s a booming crack I feel right through my body. It’s a shattering motion that could destroy my composure in seconds.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

I shake my head.

“Then I guess… I guess I’m done here.”

Now I look up.

“If you want to destroy yourself this way, Rox, I can’t stand by and watch it. I can’t spend another night across a house from you while you drink yourself into oblivion. Keep it up and you’ll be the one getting into a car because you’re too drunk to think straight. Your parents will have to bury another child.” He starts walking. Backward. Away from me. “If you wanna fall, you can, but I’m not going with you. I’m not going to watch you do this to yourself anymore.”

He’s going.

He’s really going.

“I was right. You don’t believe in me at all.”

“Oh, I believe in you. The problem is that you don’t. You don’t believe in you, you don’t believe in me, and you sure as shit don’t believe in us. If you believed in us you wouldn’t be here drinking tonight. And I wouldn’t be walking away from us.”

“Like you don’t care. You wouldn’t be walking away like you don’t care.” My voice breaks on the final word. My stomach knots and I feel sick. He’s walking away.

But isn’t this what I was trying to get him to do?

Yes.

No.

I was trying to get him to see what I see.

I didn’t think it would end this way.

I didn’t think it would hurt so much.

“I care, Rox. I care about you too much – so fucking much it hurts. You think I wanna do this? You think I wanna turn my back on you and leave you here? I don’t, but you don’t believe. You don’t believe and I can’t believe in us if you don’t.”

He turns and walks away.

“Kyle,” I call his name.
No no no. Don’t go
. “Kyle!”

“You’ve made it clear, Rox.” His voice is sad.
Fuck don’t do this!
“You said yourself you can’t be my Roxy. In fact, you couldn’t have said it any more times.”

He disappears around the corner. I hold my hands against my stomach and bend down. The tears in my eyes threaten to escape and I shake my head.

He’s right.

I said I can’t be his Roxy anymore.

I said I can’t try.

I said I don’t believe in us.

He’s right, and I’m wrong.

I’m naïve and impulsive and that’s my stupidity. I don’t think before I do things. I let my temper control me and now look at me. I’m standing here staring at a black hole where he should be.

“What the fuck are you all looking at?” I yell at the people staring at me and run away from the house. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere near here. There’s only one place I can be right now.

Cam.

I run toward the graveyard, holding my tears in the whole way, and crawl through a hole in the bushes. My feet take me to Cam’s grave and I collapse on the floor there.

I let them go. I let the tears spill over and fall to the ground, and I rest my head against the headstone.

“I fucked it, Cam. I finally got what I wanted and I fucked it all up. Now I’m worse than I was before, because I still have neither of you, but this time I have twice the broken heart.” I hold onto the cold marble. “I’ve made a mess of everything, and it’s all my fault.”

The tears are falling hard and fast. I’m alone. I’m so alone in everything, and I know it’s all my own doing.

“What am I supposed to do?”

~

It should be raining. The sky should be dark and grey to match my mood, but it isn’t. It’s blue and bright and fucking sunny.

At least it’s quiet in the café. I don’t know if I could deal with having to be all sugar and sweetness today – I can barely smile.

“Well don’t you look happy today?” My cousin’s voice travels across the café. I glare at her as she sits in front of me. “I heard about what happened.”

“No laptop?”

“Finished last night. I’m having a day off.” She shifts in her seat. “Nice try, by the way. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I grab a mug and flick the coffee machine into action.

“Right. I get it. You don’t want to talk about it.”

I sigh and pour her coffee. “I don’t know, Lou. I don’t know what I want to do.”

She takes the mug from me and looks at me sympathetically. “Apart from go home and have a good cry?”

I swallow and nod slowly. “That’s pretty much it.”

“Why don’t you just apologize? You both made a mistake.”

“It’s not that easy.” I rest my elbows on the counter and lean forward. “I mean, yeah, we both said shit we shouldn’t have, but it’s done now. It wouldn’t work. He’s walked away and I’m okay with that.”

Louisa raises her eyebrows. “Wow. That’s what you’re telling yourself, huh?”

I have to tell myself I’m okay with it. If I don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do.

“Roxy,” she says softly. “Do yourself a favor and ask Aunt Myra if you can leave early. Just go home, cry, and go to sleep. You’re allowed to do that, you know. She’d understand.”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t want to do that. I just…”

“Roxy, baby, go home.” Mom comes out from the kitchen. “Lou, can you help out until Selena comes in later?”

“Are you paying me?” Louisa grins.

“Depends how good you are,” Mom teases her.

“Okay. I’ll take over.” She turns to me. “See? Go home.”

Mom strokes my hair. “You’ll feel better. We’ll talk later, okay?”

It doesn’t look like I have a choice. I untie my ribbon strings and hand it to my cousin.

“Okay.” I wave bye as I leave the café.

This is one of the times I’m glad Verity Point is so small. Sure, half the people that live here are probably watching me walk home right now, but at least I can get there quickly.

I close my bedroom door behind me, lean against it, and look around my room aimlessly.

Even being here reminds me of Kyle. Everything is him, from the photo on my dresser to the lingering scent of him on my pillow
.
I can’t stay here any longer. I can’t be in this room for another second.

I stuff some clothes into a backpack and get out of the house.

If there’s no belief, there’s no reason to stay.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Iz, I’m fine. Just go, will you?”

She sighs. “Okay. I’m going to the café.”

I’m not replying to that. I know why she’s going, and I already have too much Roxy on my mind to be able to think about anything else. And knowing how she’s hurting is the last thing I need.

Seeing the look on her face as I walked away near damn killed me. Her eyes held a sadness and shock I’ve never seen before. The pain in her voice when she called after me made me feel like the biggest dick in the world, but I had no choice.

I still have no choice.

This is my last option. Walking away from her, breaking both our hearts, it’s all I have left to convince her to stop. One stupid little misunderstanding – one that we’re both to blame for – and she jumped straight back into her old ways.

Yet I still can’t believe I actually walked away from her.

If I’d been another guy, I would have punched me in the face by now. Shit, who am I kidding? I wanna punch me in the face anyway.

I get up and take the stairs to my room. Fuck everything today. Fuck everything that doesn’t involve following my sister to the café to grab Roxy and apologize I’m blue in the face.

Nothing I do can save us from this fall out. I’m not stupid. The only thing that could is her coming to me, not the other way around. If I go to her the way I want to I’m forgiving her for everything she’s done. I’m forgiving her for giving up on her, on us, and right now that’s out of the question.

I never stopped believing in her. I never stopped believing in us. Not even for a minute.

Maybe I could have tried harder to make her believe me. Maybe I could have been honest with her. “I care about you” is such an understatement. It’s the understatement of the goddamn fucking millennium!

If I could go back I would. If I could tell her how I really feel, if I could stay in her room instead of walk away, I would. I’d do everything differently and we wouldn’t be here right now. She wouldn’t have a broken heart, she wouldn’t have had those tears in her eyes on Friday night, and she wouldn’t have had to watch me go.

The irony of this situation is everything I’ve done this summer is to mend her broken heart… And now I’ve broken it all over again.

I never honestly thought I’d have to walk away from her. I thought – although I never planned it – us just being together would be enough. I thought I would be enough to make her stop the way she’s been acting. I thought everything between us would be enough to make her give up the bad girl act.

Because she’s not. No matter how many times she tells me she’s not the person she was, that she’s a different person now, I know otherwise. I’ve seen the person she was before Cam died. I’ve seen that smile and heard that laugh and seen that sparkle in her eyes. I’ve heard that teasing sarcasm and wit and seen that playful eye roll.

I’ve also seen the hurt and confusion. If she really didn’t have any of the old Roxy left, she wouldn’t have been hurt when I walked away. She wouldn’t have cared. She can try to convince us both otherwise, but she’s still my Roxy.

But that wasn’t the Roxy I fell in love with.

I fell in love with the person she is right this second.

The Roxy that’s lost and hurt, confused and alone, and most of all, heartbroken. Yet she’s the Roxy that’s not afraid to grab you by the balls and twist them. The one that’s playful, sexy, and challenging one minute, then she’s soft and gentle and quiet the next. She’s a mixture of so many things, so many contradicting things, and I fell in love with all of those things.

I didn’t walk away from the bad girl Roxy.

I walked away from the mixture of good and bad, the mixture of her past and present self.

I walked away from the girl I fell in love with.

And that makes it worse. That makes this whole clusterfuck of emotions running through me stronger. It makes it so much fucking worse because now I’m not thinking I need to do this for her own good. I’m thinking I need to get off my ass and go and get my girl back.

I have to remind myself walking away from her was my third and final option. I didn’t expect it to hurt this way. I didn’t expect us to fall in love and tear our own hearts out.

I guess the third time isn’t always so lucky.

“Kyle!” Iz screams through heavy steps on the stairs. She flies through my bedroom door. “Kyle!”

I jump up and look at her. “What? What’s wrong?”

“You have to do something.” She swallows and blinks harshly, but I can still see the tears brimming in her eyes.

“What?”

“No one’s seen or heard from her for three days. She’s gone.”

And just like that, everything stops. My heart pauses and my breathing ceases. Every muscle in my body tightens and I stare at my sister, hoping to fuck I’m thinking something different to what she means. Hoping the twisting and turning feeling in my stomach isn’t telling me what I’m suddenly so scared of.

“Who?”

Iz puts her hand over her mouth.

“Iz. Tell me who!” I yell.
Fuck. Please don’t say it. Please don’t say her name.

A tear spills from my sister’s eye.

Please.

“Roxy. She’s missing.”

“Missing?” I repeat. My hands come up to my head and my fingers sink into my head. “What do you mean, she’s missing?”

“She disappeared on Saturday afternoon. Myra called everyone in case Roxy was hiding there. She thought she’d be with Selena, but she isn’t. She hasn’t heard from her either.”

“Layla?” I choke on her name.

Iz shakes her head. “Hasn’t seen her since before… You know.”

I nod. I know. “Why didn’t she tell us? I’ve been sitting here feeling sorry for myself and she’s been fuck knows where!”

“She didn’t want to worry us. She thought she might have just taken off for a day or two to calm down. Apparently Roxy did that just after Cam died, but now she’s worried. She’s never disappeared for four days before.”

I sink back to the bed and bury my face in my hands. “Has she called the cops yet?”

“No. She wanted to talk to us first… See if we might know where she is.”

“Let’s go then.”

“Wait,” Iz calls, running after me. “Kyle! That’s not all.”

“What? How can it get any fucking worse than the girl I’m in love with being god knows where?” I yell. “How?”

My sister grabs me and holds me in a way she hasn’t since we were little. I clench my whole body, biting back the tears burning in the backs of my eyes.

I’m real fucking mad she’s gone and no one knows where she’s been. But I’m worried. And I’m scared. I’ve never been so scared about anything in my whole life. I thought I was scared of losing her before, but that fear was nothing compared to the one running rife through me right now.

The fear I could lose her for good.

She could be anywhere. With anyone. Doing anything.

I need to know Roxy is okay.

Nothing else matters except for that. Nothing else ever matters.

“Myra’s broken down,” Iz tells me when she releases me. “Really broken down. She’s locked herself in the bedroom and is refusing to leave. She’s just… God, Ky. She’s just crying. She can’t fight anymore and I’m worried about her. She won’t let Ray in. She won’t talk. All she’s doing is crying.”

I don’t answer her. I pull the door open with all my strength and run toward her house. My feet pound against the asphalt as I run faster than I ever have.

Without Cam here, the only person that can be the strength in that family is me. I’m the only person left that can hold it together – and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I burst through their front door and up the stairs, only just registering Iz panting behind me. Ray’s leaning against Roxy’s door, his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched at his side.

I spent half of my childhood looking up to this man as my second dad. I’ve seen him in every mood, from raging mad to laughing his ass off, but I’ve never seen him look so vulnerable. I’ve never seen him so broken.

I tear my eyes from him and bang on Myra’s door. Once. Twice. Three times.

“Open the door, Myra!”

Nothing.

“C’mon, it’s me.” Bang. “Please.”

Nothing.

Bang bang bang. “I swear, I’m not going anywhere until you open it! If I have to sit here until you open it then I will!”

Nothing.
Nothing except the sounds of desperate sobs creeping through the gaps around the door. Nothing except the sounds of complete and utter despair.

Of surrender.

Of heartbreak in the purest, rawest sense of the word.

“Fine,” I call through. “I’ll just sit here until you come out.”

I turn my back to the door and slide down it. Ray turns and hits me with destroyed, pale blue eyes full of questions. I meet his gaze and hold it steadily despite the shaking of my body.

“You lost your son, but you still have me.”