Page 163 of Shattered Silence Duet

Jasper pulls into the parking lot and finds an empty spot to park.

She stares at her bracelet deep in thought, and we stay silent, waiting for her to sift through her emotions.

“So the way you met me had nothing to do with the case. But you still lied to get closer to me.”

“We didn’t lie about anything, well, other than being high school kids,” I say with a shrug.

“What do you think we lied about?” Jasper asks gently.

“Wanting to be my friend. You only wanted to get close to me to see what I knew,” she says, refusing to look at us as she frowns down at her scarred ring finger. Just the sight of that reminds me how much we failed her.

“Not true,” I say, shaking my head.

“But you admitted it, you said it was your job to get close to me.”

“Angel, what you need to understand is we were going to get close to you, even if it wasn’t our job.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, her eyes lifting to Jasper in confusion.

He sighs, turning to face her properly. “Don’t you get it, Angel? We’ve both wanted you from the moment we met you, before we knew your connection to the case. The case was the excuse to get close, not the reason.”

She stares at him for a moment before reaching out and squeezing his hand. “Okay,” she says. I’m not sure what she means by that, but I don’t get to question it as she looks up and sees where we’re parked.

“Are we going to an arcade?”

Chapter 31

Mina

The loud noises bombard me as a look around at all the flashing lights of the arcade machines.

“I’ll get us tokens, why don’t you two go and scout out the games?” Jasper suggests. Max grabs my hand and leads me to the left as I try to take everything in.

“So, we have shooter games like these,” he says pointing at games with guns attached to the front. “You got zombies, aliens, buck hunter and dinosaurs. Then over there you have skee-ball and hoops.”

He leads me around to another section. “These are games of chance, no skill involved, I don’t think you’ll like these so much. Oh! Here’s the racing games.” I peer down the next aisle and see a series of car and motorcycle racing games.

“They look fun. What’s your favorite game?”

He wraps his arm over my shoulder as we stop walking and look around us at all the games. “Me? I like most of them. Skee-ball, hoops, shooting zombies and any of the racing ones and probably my favorites. What do you want to try first?”

“You choose, there’s too many,” I say, noticing other people giving us glances. Or more likely, girls who are checking Max out.

Jasper finds us and holds up a card as he smiles. “Alright I got us a bunch of tokens, what are we doing first?”

We’ve only been here thirty minutes and I've learned two things. I love skee-ball and the twins are so much fun to be with. They somehow manage to egg each other, and me, on, while at the same time, clearly not caring who actually wins or loses a game. They constantly check in with me to make sure I’m enjoying myself, and seem to genuinely care if I’m having fun. They keep touching me softly, on my arms or lower back, or with an arm slung around my shoulders, and my insides warm from their affection and attention.

The banter between them has a constant smile on my face, which is what led me to suggest they race against each other.

I watch from beside Jasper as the two of them twist and turn down the track on the screen, cheering for them both, until someone taps on my shoulder.

I turn to see a girl I vaguely recognize staring at me with disgust.

“Aren’t you that dumb mute girl from school? Didn’t you leave or die or something?” I stare at her with wide eyes, unable to believe someone would actually say such a thing.

“What are you doing here with them, anyway?” she asks, her head motioning to the twins racing behind me as a girl and guy come up to stand behind her, both staring at me with smiles of amusement. “You give really good head or something? Why else would they be with someone like you?”

I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out and all three of them start laughing. My face grows red, but worse, I start to panic. The humiliation at being talked to like that, and not being able to respond causes my chest to tighten and breath to come in hard as I try to hold off a panic attack.