Page 99 of Wicked Games

Tears fill her eyes and her chin trembles. She looks out the window until she can speak. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? Taking care of him when he needed you? He loves you as much as you love him and only Brooke turned that into a bad thing. You said you were my friend. Is that still true?”

She wipes her cheeks. “Yeah.”

“Good. Then I’ll always be yours. I know you want to see him, but give us a minute. He broke up with me. He didn’t mean it, but we need to work it out, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

I lean over the middle console and hug her. “No. Thank you.”

I get out of the car and walk up the wide driveway. I don’t know if I’ll want a house this big. I don’t know if after all this, he will either.

The front door is unlocked and I step inside a huge foyer that opens into an empty sitting room. I don’t know where to go from here and I walk through to another room. A living room, maybe. Den. No, not a den. It’s not cozy enough to be considered a den and there’s no TV in here. Just another room that has couches, a bar, and a wall of windows that looks out into part of the yard. I walk through this one too, and find a study that I bet Seth never used. Brooke would have hounded him if he’d tried to work at home.

Circling around, I reach an enormous kitchen, but not much has been disturbed. I open a massive stainless-steel fridge, but it’s empty except for an old ketchup container, a jug of milk that should have been thrown out months ago, and a few bottles of beer. He isn’t eating, and that worries me.

I walk up a winding staircase, and the landing opens into another sitting room type of space. Rich people like to sit, I guess. I walk down one of the hallways, peering into bedrooms as I go. Theo’s room brings tears to my eyes.

My heart sinks. Maybe he’s not here after all.

I go back downstairs, poking my head into the doors I didn’t before. A dining room that can seat twenty. Christ. I don’t think I even know twenty people. I duck out of there and head toward the back of the house again. That’s when I see him. He’s sitting on a wide patio that’s painted white and decorated with pretty white wicker furniture. There’s a huge play structure in the grass, and beyond that, a small pond.

It resembles the view from our patios in Lakehaven Falls, and my heart breaks. This poor man. What he’s gone through. I open the French doors and step outside.

“Seth.”

He turns to me, his eyes bloodshot and scruff along his jaw. He hasn’t slept since he broke up with me at the cemetery.

“Avery. What the fuck are you doing here? Wasn’t I clear? I don’t want you.” He stumbles to his feet, but it isn’t rage that’s radiating off him. It’s fear. His gaze darts around the backyard as if he expects Rowan to materialize out of thin air.

I know he’s still playing, but it hurts to hear it. “You can stop now.” I step closer and he flinches.

“Stop what? Get the hell out of my house.”

I close the space between us and hold his face between my hands. “Stop now. They arrested Rowan this morning.”

He grips my shoulders, his fingers digging into my skin. He was going to push me away, but he pauses, my words working their way through the alcohol sludge in his brain. “They arrested him?”

“Yeah, they did. They finally broke into Hattie’s laptop. She documented enough that Detective LaSalle was able to find the two guys working for him and they did the rest. He wants to talk to you.”

“What are you doing here? After what I said?” There’s so much misery in his voice, and God. I just want all of this to be over.

I drop my hands from his face. “Do you think I believed it? I knew you talked to Rowan. I’m not good at math, but I can put two and two together. He threatened me. He said he’d kill me if you didn’t stay away from me, right? It was his way of shutting us up.”

“But you cried,” he scrambles, trying to make sense of it, but the haze in his eyes is fading.

Shrugging, I say, “We haven’t known each other long enough for you to know that I wanted to be an actress. I was in all the school plays. So was Hattie. She was better at it though. I had to convince you that I believed it. I had to convince Rowan that I believed it. Violet followed me to my apartment and I told her we needed to stay away from you until he was arrested. Luckily, it didn’t take as long as I thought it would.”

He reaches out and brushes his shaking fingers over my bruised cheek. “You knew I was lying.”

I lift my left hand and show him the ring I put back where it belongs. “I knew you were lying. I always believed with my whole heart that you love me, and that you were only trying to protect me.”

“Christ.” The word comes out as a wounded growl, but he doesn’t give me time to react. He jerks me into his arms and crushes me in a hug so tight my spine cracks. His arms tremble around me, and four months of pain and death ooze out of him. “You didn’t believe me,” he whispers into my hair.

“No, I didn’t.” I don’t know how many minutes we stand like that, him trapping me against his chest, but reluctantly, I nudge him away. “Violet’s out front. She wants to see that you’re okay too.”

“This first,” he murmurs, and kisses me. He tangles his fingers in my hair and devours my mouth. I can taste the despair and the stale booze, and briefly, I think he should stop drinking for a while to give his liver a break. Tears burn my eyes. I know how lucky I am that he didn’t drink himself to death while we waited for Detective LaSalle to arrest Rowan.