Page 63 of Twisted Little Game

The greatest difference between me and everyone else in my family is simple.

We all have killed people.

Some of us love it, some see it as plain duty.

But I am the only one who has never wanted to take another human life.

It gives me no pleasure. The only times I have killed, it has been in pure self-defense, or because I was forced. When I was fourteen, I came close to dying, when the tip of a Maletti grunt’s blade connected with the space in my rib cage just above my heart, and if I hadn’t plunged my own knife into his throat I would have been dead three seconds later.

His blood spilled out from his neck slowly.

I held firm. I didn’t twist the knife.

And most importantly, I didn’t have a single moment when I was afraid.

Father was so proud.

Mother’s eyes went misty when I told her, but she smiled at me, as always.

It’s not normal to feel no fear when a man dies above you, choking, drops of his blood falling in warm, wet little thwacks on your chest.

But I thought the only thing I’ve ever thought, when a person dies.

It didn’t have to be this way.

I do feel fear, incandescent and white-hot in my chest, the first night that Tate spends in my room.

I wake up with a start and the first thing that shoots through my mind is the comforting memory of Tate’s voice, low and pleading, when he begged me hours earlier to kiss him.

It rips through my mind, reality rushing back in like a bucket of water to the face.

I pull in rapid, shallow breaths.

I was having ugly dreams.

My eyes snap to the glowing blue numbers of the clock on my desk. 3:40 in the morning.

My spine presses into the blankets I laid out on the floor. I gave Tate my whole queen-sized bed.

But when I sit up, the sheets are rumpled.

And the bed is empty.

“Blyat,” I whisper in the dark, standing immediately as blood rushes through me.

The window is still open wide, letting in the cool air as I left it before we slept. My heart races after the sudden awakening, and already I’d been dreaming of threats, as I often do.

I pick up my phone and there are no messages.

I turn and push through the door out into the hallway, but he isn’t there, or in his room, or in the bathroom.

I pace down the floorboards in the hall, lit only by one small nightlight near the end by the staircase. And when I reach it, my pulse finally relaxes.

I catch a glimpse of his blond hair at the middle of the staircase, walking back up toward me.

“Shit,” Tate whispers when I see him, sneaking quietly up the stairs with a giant glass of ice water in his hand. “I was afraid you’d wake up.”

“Scared me,” I tell him.