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

I took control of this situation before she could. “Mum, we need to have a private chat.”

Mike was parked up on their bed reading, but he got up and slunk out when the two of us appeared in the doorway.

We sat down on Mum’s side of the bed with all her ornaments and standing hangers of outfits almost crowding us out of the room, and I told her I’d been off with Brad and his daughter that day, not at school.

It took her several seconds for the words to sink in, and then her eyes started looking very bright, her fingers quivering and coming together in a clawing motion. “Mum,” I said, “I really need you to focus right now. I understand why you really didn’t want me to see him. Why you made up that lie to make sure it wouldn’t happen.”

Mum stiffened. “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing,” I insisted, “I mean, nothing that went beyond basic creepiness, but it was enough for me to get the hint. He’s…” I didn’t even know what words to use.

I could tell from Mum’s face she understood, even more than I understood myself. “I didn’t know, for years. I knew he was manipulative, of course. I knew he could say absolutely anything if it would get him what he wanted. I knew that some of what he wanted, in a—” She shook her head. “You don’t need to know that. The point is, our relationship… we had a lot of arguments, it was very stressful, but my parents had a lot of arguments growing up at least until they left me, it seemed normal to me. He wasn’t hitting me, I told myself, and he was a hard worker, lots of potential.”

I found myself wondering, for some reason, what Steven’s potential would be. He spent all that time around rich bastards like Lucas and it didn’t seem to have increased his motivation to do something with his life now his obvious route upwards was off the table. But he still had this mysterious Julia weighing on him. Maybe, if he could get out from under her shadow…

But I was thinking about Steven now because I didn’t want to think about what had to be coming next.

“Then one day, I found him alone with you…” She shook her head.

“Mum, tell me what you saw.”

“There’s no point in your knowing the details. It won’t help you.” I didn’t agree, but I could see she wouldn’t budge on that. I had to be happy with as much of the truth as she was willing to give right now. “He came up with an explanation for what I saw, but suddenly I could see through all of it. I realised there was something very wrong with him… and I knew if I stayed, I’d keep finding him doing things like that. Any contact at all was going to leave you messed up.”

“But you could have reported him. You could have stopped him for good! And you—”

“I didn’t have a whole lot of proof, Tamara. He’s always been smart. I’m sure you’ve noticed already just meeting him once, the man knows how to make people love him. I was just the woman who stayed at home with his kids and occasionally got caught scowling in the background of photos where he was meeting young female fans with their tits practically hanging out for him.”

It was really something else to hear my mother talking like this. I was so nervous I wanted to start giggling, but too nervous to do anything that might make her not confide in me the way I needed.

“Maybe I was stupid, Tamara. No, I am stupid. I let myself get saddled with two kids by a man who made me—and them—totally dependent on him. So, I was afraid maybe nobody would believe me and maybe the two of you would be taken off me entirely… but I was also afraid maybe I’d get what I wanted, and then… where would we be? In the same place really. I knew what some people would be like. I knew what they’d see in me… a woman who knew her man was a cheater, knew he’d gotten another woman pregnant, but pretended to forgive him.”

This was not a possibility I’d ever considered. My mother was not the sort of woman who would learn there was another woman and just quietly let that go on happening. She wasn’t that sort of woman now, at least. I w

as looking the event that had made her who she was right in the face.

She seemed to be disappearing back into that old self a little now, though, her eyes shifting around like she could picture the judgement coming in from all sides. “They’d say it was my revenge. They’d blame me when he was tossed in prison, they’d say I lied, saw what I wanted to see, that I coached you. And in a way they’d be right: three-year-olds aren’t supposed to have to talk about things like that, to feel like it matters how—” I actually saw her bite her lip. She’d been about to say something she knew she shouldn’t. “It just didn’t seem right to subject you to that, to make it a part of your history. I think they try to keep these things private when it comes to children, but considering who he was it was never going to stay private. And then the thought of having Ryan involved with that as well…”

Mum shook her head. “Maybe what I did wasn’t strictly right, but for you two? I’d do it over again, as many times as I had to. I knew the one bit of leverage I had over him was his stupid football career. If he thought he could still have that, he’d be willing to deal with me. So I promised to keep everything quiet, so long as he gave us enough money to leave and then left you and Ryan and me alone forever. He could have his sport, and his other woman: he just had to leave me and my kids alone.”

“But he didn’t have his sport,” I protested. I could see it was making her angry, my questioning her, but I was desperate to make it all fit. “He said you threatened to expose him if he ever tried to go big leagues.”

“Bullshit.” It was even harder for me to keep my composure after that. I’d heard my mother swear before, of course, but she was not usually so able to spit it at me. “He had someone else on his back. Or maybe he realised the bleeding obvious: you can’t abuse your baby daughter and then expect to just walk away from that situation and not have it come back to bite you. I knew that when I made the deal; I just let him think what he wanted.”

All I could think was that when she said abuse, she was talking about me. Something terrible had happened to me, something far worse than being hit that I would probably never remember—maybe I would never even get Mum to tell me the details of what she’d seen. It made me just want to collapse on the floor, melt, scream… but I couldn’t do any of that. Not now. Not in front of her. And as much as I knew that collapse was the right response, I didn’t feel connected enough to the situation to do it yet.

What I could connect to was anger. “Okay, you protected me, and I will be grateful for that forever… but because you didn’t fight him, he stayed free to hurt Jess.”

Mum put her head down. “Your sister.”

“She got everything I escaped, Mum; I can tell. It would have been me. I don’t know how I can face her knowing that—how could you just walk away knowing there might be another kid related to us who would have to endure things too horrible for your own?”

“Most of us aren’t as bad as him,” Mum said. “But… most of us aren’t as good as we’d like to believe we are, either. It’s not the answer you want, I’m sorry, but it’s honest. I saved the child I knew and loved and I’ve tried not to think of any other. I did try to warn her mother, but I was just as stupid as she is once, I can’t judge.”

It definitely wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, but in a way I needed it. It kept me from getting too caught up in this as a ‘bonding experience’ and telling her everything about Steven… and what Steven had promised to do for me. I wished I could tell her, but I had to remember that even though we’d had this major conversation and she’d admitted all sorts of things I would never have believed she’d ever talk to me about, she was still… well, Mum. She was going to find out about Steven sooner or later, especially since I’d already dropped hints to Mike, but she wasn’t going to be happy for me. We wouldn’t be able to talk about what was going on with Steven in any way that was useful to me.

I needed to get Jess out of her home, as soon as possible… but I needed to get out too. I needed to find a new job and stop listening to my mother’s lectures.

Mum shifted a little closer to me. “I hope you understand now why we can’t have anything to do with him,” she said. Even after everything, she was trying to make sure she got what she wanted out of this.