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

“Tamara, just hear me out for one fucking minute, okay? Privately.”

“No.” I needed to work out how to make him leave without making Mum aware of just how close we’d been. I decided to try keeping things simple. “We’re not friends. We’re not anything to one another. So I want you to go before I have to take any drastic action to get rid of you.”

“Fine, Tamara.” I relaxed a little, but when I heard him clear his throat I realised I’d messed up completely. “Look, I know you’re planning to meet your dad again. I just needed to tell you not to do it. He’s not a good man, Tamara, no matter what he said to you—”

Mike peeking in from the dining area and calling, “Everything all right out here?” turned my head. When I turned back, Mum was slamming the door in Steven’s face.

He started pounding on it again, so hard the entire house seemed to be trembling. “Tamara! You need to fucking listen to me! You need to listen to your mother this once! You can’t—”

“You don’t know shit about what I intend to do,” I shouted back at him through the door. Trying to scream him down seemed to be the only defense in my panic. “I have absolutely no plans to see him.”

“You’re lying, Tamara. I know it. You’re a fucking liar.”

But I knew I had him. The only reason he’d come to my house like this, trying to spill my plans to my mother, was because he didn’t know enough about exactly what I had planned to stop me himself. He was hoping to get Mum on the case so she could stop me, using her the way Mum had used Callie basically.

I was so sick of it. Why did everyone have to have an agenda?

“I’m calling the police,” Mum announced. “I’m not going to have this.”

It was what he deserved. Mike was nodding… but neither of them knew how much trouble Steven would be in if he got tangled up with the police.

Maybe trouble was exactly what he deserved, too. He’d told me nothing useful about the situation that had led to that restraining order. I didn’t know if he was sorry, if he regretted whatever he’d done to that girl. What he was doing to me right now certainly suggested otherwise.

Still, I put my hands up. “Wait, I know this g

uy, I don’t want to take things too far too quickly.” I had to raise my voice to be heard over Steven’s yelling and banging.

When Mum turned her full attention on me, I knew I should have let him fend for himself.

“Why are you defending this man who is harassing your whole family? I just don’t understand, Tamara. You’re usually so much more sensible than this.” Her eyes lit up. “Is it true, what he’s saying? Are you going to meet with him again?”

Ryan burst out of his room. “Who is that little fucker who thinks he can bother my sister, I’m going to go out there and smash him.”

“Leave it, Ryan,” I begged. But Steven had stopped his noise outside already. In the silence, I could hear him jogging away. He knew, of course, he’d done enough.

“I can still catch him if I start—” Mike put a hand on Ryan’s chest, and on this one blessed occasion my stroppy bitch of a brother actually listened to him.

Mum didn’t care about Steven at all now he was out of the scene. “Are you, Tamara? Are you going to see him?”

“I don’t have anything planned,” I said, which I thought I could play as the truth well enough. Technically, it was the truth… Brad had told me he would let me know when and where to meet his car the next day.

I just had to get there.

Mum was rubbing my shoulders. “You’re shaking, Tamara… I think you need to stay home from school tomorrow. We can take some time to talk about this properly, I think it’s necessary.”

This had to be exactly what Steven had planned, what I was dreading. If she got me alone and said enough words, history showed she could get me to do anything. Quit my job, avoid my friends… “Can we do it on the weekend, maybe? I just… I want this week to finish up normally.”

“This man, though… he goes to your school? He’s in your classes? He’s going to harass you more if you show up tomorrow, isn’t he?”

“Mum, please calling him ‘this man’, he’s just another kid who goes to my school, yes I know we’re all legally adults here but he is seriously not on a higher level than me. No, he’s not going to bother me at school. I’ve already talked to guidance at school and he knows if he tries any more stuff, he’s going to be in deep trouble.”

“This isn’t an isolated incident.” Mum’s eyes had lit up. “I just don’t understand why you’re willing to let this man harass you. It’s not how I’ve raised you to be. Was this related to that other incident you talked to me about before?”

She could miss or wilfully ignore so much that was happening in my life, but remember things like that. “It is, but only a little bit. And I remember what you told me then, too: you said Callie had to decide to sort that situation out for herself, that I couldn’t go trying to step in for her. So can you please extend that same courtesy to me? Taking this completely out of my hands is not what I want from you right now.”

Mum was silent for a moment.

“Getting yourself involved probably won’t help to get this behaviour under control, Sue,” Mike spoke up. Something about the way he did it made me look at him. It felt… choreographed. Like he’d been standing at the edges of a skipping rope game, waiting for the exact moment he should leap in. “We have to let this run its course.”