Games Boys Play: A Dark High School Romance (Troubled Playthings 2)

This whole scene was already too weird for me and I wanted to leave, but Aileen and I were now in the spotlight with Ashleigh extending a hand to us at the entrance to a big room beyond. “Tamara… uh, Ailey, welcome, nice to see you.”

Aileen leaned towards me as soon as we’d gotten past that unsettling roadblock. “She’s never even noticed I exist before, has she?”

“I had the strange feeling we were at one of those parties where, like, the Prime Minister is hob-nobbing with a whole bunch of important people and needs to crib off notes to actually know who they’re saying hello to and why they should care.”

Aileen groaned. “I already want to leave.”

I was feeling her pain. Callie had been (almost) completely wrong: unusually clean venue aside, the scene in front of us looked pretty much like I had always expected a teenage party to look. Early in the night, at least. There was a sound system pumping out music I didn’t really like, and a bunch of kids I knew from school—as well as some I didn’t know at all—milling about drinking.

As predicted, Lucas started waving to someone at the oposite end of the room and was soon lost in the crowds. Axel hung back and chatted to Ashleigh, who was already looking pained.

Aileen started to move closer to Callie—and before I could follow her, Steven was in my path.

He extended a hand to me. “I was hoping I’d find you here. Come on.”

“I’m thinking of just leaving,” I told him.

Steven scowled at me. “You just got here.”

“Yes, and I don’t like these sorts of parties. I just came as a favour to Callie, and I don’t really know now why I thought that was a good idea.”

“Good,” Steven said, “let’s leave.”

He grabbed my hand and started walking, but a grip on my other wrist stopped me from moving anywhere.

Aileen was holding onto me. “Tamara, are you okay with him?”

“Fine,” I told her. I was far from fine, but if I explained I was terrified at that moment she’d react in all the wrong ways. I’d never be able to explain to her how I was scared of something because I really wanted it. That didn’t make sense to me yet.

Aileen nodded and dropped my arm. “Okay, well if you—” Steven yanked me away before I could hear the rest.

I glared after him even though he was facing forward and couldn’t see at all. “It’s quite rude to just grab someone and drag them off like that, Steven.”

“You said you wanted to go.” Sumptuous rooms streaked past my vision, and then I stumbled on a back step and found myself in an unreal outside fairyland. “And you don’t want everyone staring at the two of us together, do you?”

I shook my head, even though he still wasn’t looking at me. I was mostly glancing behind too, trying to catch sight of the house again. We’d turned a corner on the path (whose backyard had a path?) and it was like we were in a completely different world.

Then something white caught my attention up ahead. A little building was tucked up against the rear fence—and when I said ‘little’, it was probably not that much smaller than Callie’s whole house.

Steven led me right up the steps, opened the door without hesitation, like he knew it would be unlocked, and then once we were inside he turned a bolt behind us. When he flicked a light switch, a whole living space in one room was revealed to me: kitchenette, a couch and coffee table in front of a big wall-mounted TV, a low bed base with a plush-looking mattress. I tried not to look too much at that.

Steven flopped on the couch and somehow instantly had the remote in his hand to

switch the TV on. He started scrolling through Netflix or some other streaming service. I made my wary way over to sit next to him. I was certain he hadn’t just brought me out here to watch TV. This was an unexpected diversion, and I didn’t entirely hate it.

“Um.” Steven finally turned to me on my awkward attempt to start a conversation. “I guess you’ve come out here a lot?”

“Only a few times. Ashleigh has absolutely no interest in me as a person, so I only come to her place when Lucas has an excuse to bring me along.” He glanced down at the remote in his hand and smirked as he wiggled it. “But I’m pretty quick at learning my way around things.”

Had he intended that to have a double meaning or was it just me? It was hard for me not to think of everything he said with some sort of subtext, because…

I ended up saying what was in my head. “You are really very sexy, for a meathead.”

His laugh was loud and I think scared him as much as me. “I’m a meathead to you, am I.”

“You’re a pretty good meathead,” I allowed. “Except for that massive chip on your shoulder.”

“On my shoulder? What about your own, huh?” He slung an arm across me, dragging me closer, and started squeezing the shoulder nearest to him. “The girl who decides to storm out of a party ten seconds after she arrives.”