Page 115 of Ruthless Game

As I said that, I began to edge around the rock. This wasn’t my brother, or the brother I thought I knew. Whoever, whatever he was though, he wasn’t safe to be around.

No. I needed to run.

“Going somewhere?” he asked. “I don’t think so, Em. I own you, now. I’ve owned you, always.”

I wanted to hurl.

“You don’t own me, Jeffrey.”

“Oh, unlike your sweet ‘Max,’ who tells you he owns you all the time?”

I shook my head. “That’s different, Jeffrey, because with him, I want to be owned. Max and I, we belong to each other. Would do anything to keep the other one safe or make them happy. That’s not ownership. That’s love.”

He glared at me. “I love you.”

Suddenly, I was so, so tired. I couldn’t let myself be, because I needed to get the fuck out of here.

“No, you don’t, big brother. You claim you want me for some sick reason. Probably because you don’t want Max to have me, because it feels like he won and you lost. You think you’re owed me, just because when we were kids, you picked me out. It was our parents who adopted me, not you. You were just along for the ride.”

“Don’t say that,” he warned.

“Jeffrey,” I said again. “We can get you help. I promise. Let’s get out of here.”

“Together?” he asked, his voice boyish.

I nodded, but in that moment, I ran.

Not past him.

Not back up the path. I knew better than that—he’d catch me.

But Max and Jeffrey had something else in common, other than me and hockey. Jeffrey hated water too.

The stream in the gorge below was rushing fast, and there were boulders and logs, and if I wasn’t careful, I could get killed. But I trusted myself here, in this place. I trusted myself to swim and not drown. I didn’t trust Jeffrey not to hurt me, and I didn’t care to find out what way he planned on hurting me.

I was only steps away from the edge.

I was going to have to jump.

But I hesitated too long. As Jeffrey grabbed me around the waist and pulled me backward, I laughed weakly.

“Those PEDs are really helping, aren’t they?”

He pulled me away from the edge, his arms locked around me. Even the heat of him through my shirt felt like being stung by a million bees.

“Peak performance everywhere but the bedroom, unfortunately. Sylvie complained. But then she complains a lot, especially when I made her dye her hair. Oh, yeah. You missed one thing. I was behind that video. I got Sylvie to agree to wear a wig that looked like you, drew your birthmark on her neck, and blackmailed Ralphie into fucking her and pretended it was you. The whole thing got me hard. Unfortunately, those damn steroids keep me from getting hard now, but I’ll figure something out.” He sniffed my hair, and I wanted to die.

“You smell wrong. You smell like him.”

Good, I thought, and headbutted him.

He groaned in pain, dropping his arms to grab his nose. Once again, I ran toward the edge of the water.

Once again, he caught me, lifting me up off my feet and carrying me back toward the rock.

“I don’t need help,” he told me. “I need you to stop seeing him. Promise me you’ll stop seeing him and everything will be better, Starburst.”

Anger burned in my chest. “Do not fucking call me that.”