Game Over Boys, page 98
Carmen looks to Maxine again, like neither of them is quite sure what to say to that.
“Take the money—they could use a little less of it,” Maxine whispers.
“Just say yes,” I tell them, and they both look at me with such adoring exasperation that I smile. “Buy something close so we can see each other every day.”
“I don’t know about every day,” Carmen jokes, but the playfulness in her voice leaves as quickly as it came. She’s staring at the table, and I just know that she’s thinking about her daughter, her husband. I know I am. My hand drops to my thigh, to the triple heart tattoo with the ragged scar cutting right through it. “I … okay then.”
I look up to see Tess smiling across the table at my grandmother. Tess can never be a replacement for Saffron, but she can certainly be a bright addition to the Banks family. What’s left of it. I exhale sharply to keep the tears back. Chasm notices. Parrish notices. Maxx notices.
The four of us will be linked together forever—regardless of the direction our romance takes.
“You should eat more,” Tess tells me when she sees that I’m still standing there. Her face shutters slightly as she looks me over. “You can’t heal if you don’t eat.”
“Mom,” Parrish says softly, and then he laughs. “You just can’t resist, can you?”
“Resist what?” she asks genuinely, looking over at him. “Being a mother? Raising you properly? Taking care of you? I’m sure the four of you were hoping that I’d let you continue with your … activities forever. But things around here are going to get back to normal or as close to normal as possible.”
“Which means you’re determined to nag us to death,” Parrish murmurs, but he’s only teasing, trying to turn back the clock and make things feel normal again. We’re all going to have to learn a new normal, but that’s okay. We’ll manage.
“Man, don’t poke the bear,” Chasm grumbles, rubbing at the back of his head again. I still can’t believe there’s a bullet forever stuck in his brain. How insane is that? “I’d love to spend time with my wife later.”
“About that,” Tess begins, looking up at me before glancing to Chasm next. Before Justin died, he filed our marriage license. The ceremony had nothing to do with the legality of it. We are officially hitched. I’m sure Tess doesn’t like it. I’m sure she’d love to get it annulled. But then she looks at Chasm and whatever she sees in his face convinces her to change her words at the last minute. “I’m not going to force you guys apart. Obviously, that isn’t going to work. But there are going to be rules.”
Now she’s looking at Maxx. Glaring at Maxx more like.
He stares innocently back at her before forcing a smile of his own.
“As long as they’re reasonable, I have no problem with that.” He takes a bite of his food as Tess narrows her eyes on him and I plant my face in my hand. Right. Maxx is like, a super overprotective dick now. Not … that he wasn’t before. He’s just more protective toward me than he was before. Didn’t know that was possible, but it is.
“For one, there will be no babies born before you hit legal drinking age.” Tess doesn’t look at me when she says that, but her voice is like steel.
“If Dakota had a baby in high school, grandma would disown her,” Maxine adds oh so helpfully. I give her a look and she stuffs a bit of buttered roll into my mouth.
“I would never.” Carmen meets my eyes, and I flush a crimson color that oddly resembles the cranberry sauce on my plate. “I would just be disappointed.”
“I cannot believe I’m letting my daughter’s boyfriends live in my house.” Tess is grumbling to herself, but something about that statement seems to hit Chasm like a punch to the stomach.
“Should I move out?” Chas asks, changing the atmosphere at the table in an instant. Even Kimber stops staring at her phone to look up at him. His beautiful amber eyes are fixed on the plate in front of him as he uses his fork to move food around without ever taking a bite.
“Is that what you want?” Tess asks, looking over at Paul and trying for a small smile. He smiles back at her, and they both turn to Chasm again. “We were listed as your legal guardians in your father’s will, but you could certainly get emancipated if you’d prefer that.”
“I’m asking what you want,” Chasm says quietly, looking up at her. Not at Parrish, not at me. At Tess.
“Kwang-seon, you know that you have always been and always will be a part of my family. Of course I’d love it if you stayed here.” Tess hesitates. “Just don’t impregnate my daughter.”
Chasm doesn’t say anything, but I can see the relief in his gaze.
“What about Maxx?” Parrish asks, trying to lighten the mood. “Can we kick him out? He’s a legal adult.”
“He’s welcome to stay as long as he wants,” Tess says, giving her son a harsh look in response. For his part, X just shakes his head and then flicks some mashed potatoes on Parrish’s sleeve when Tess isn’t looking. “Provided you all behave.”
It’s the most normal day we’ve had in a while, albeit tainted with sadness.
But grief isn’t a static thing. It’s right there staring at you after a tragedy, but it doesn’t walk as fast as time runs. As the hours pass and then the days, the weeks, the months, it stays where it is, watching you. It may never go away, may always be visible in the distance, but with each step you take away from it, it becomes a little smaller, a little harder to see.
We all just needed time.
And time, we would get.
Not everyone who passed away in our lives is buried in the same place, but we’re here at the Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve today for a reason. I’m feeling good. I’ve packed food and drinks. I’m wearing a pretty dress that Maxine ordered for me from BlackMilk. This one is a Totoro tee dress that I’ve paired with lime green boots, to match my hair (obvs).
The scars on my body are bothering me less and less every day. The more I think about them, the more I realize that they’re simply reflective of the scars decorating my heart. People can see on the outside what happened to me on the inside.
Justin stole nearly a year of my life, shattered my happy-go-lucky views of the world, and punished me by taking away people that I loved. By stealing my innocence. By turning me into a killer. I still wake up some days with nightmares wracking my brain, sitting in the back of that limo and watching my veil drift as we spin, feeling the knife puncture Heath Cousins’ skin, finding JJ’s cold, dead body in the box.
I think about the people who aren’t here with us when they should be. Walter. Saffron. Danyella. Delphine. Seamus. Hamilton. Nevaeh. Takahashi. Sam. Veronica. Philippa. Gavin. Antonio. Judge Rossi. Laverne. The Hearsts. There are too many victims to name.
But after considering the danger we were truly in, it could’ve been even worse. Luck and togetherness played their parts in keeping us safe. Luck that my grandparents were at the house to rescue my siblings. Luck that Maxx visited the burning ice palace and saved my family from the fire. Luck that Delphine was on my side in the end.
Togetherness.
Justin never did understand why we kept coming together. He tried to make me believe that Chasm and Maxx had cheated on me, showed Parrish that he’d been cheated on, turned me against Tess when it was as easy as squirting lighter fluid onto a raging fire.
Yet … here we are.
“Let me help you,” Chas murmurs, taking my arm. I don’t need the help, but you try explaining to three overprotective guys that the bedrest you’ve been on is over, that you’re getting back into the swing of life, that nobody is going to take you away from them.
Virtually impossible.
“I’m not the one who was shot in the head.” I glare at him, but he shrugs, reaching up to trace his scar again. It’s nothing short of a fucking miracle that he’s still alive. A bullet was literally fired into his brain and yet, here he stands. He’s the sort of person that medical journals are written about.
“I knew I had to wake up,” he told me after those first few groggy days when he was coming to and couldn’t speak. I will forever remember the hot heat of his fingers as he wrapped them around mine with surprising strength, the glint in his feverish amber eyes, the shape of his perfect mouth. “Because I could hear you talking to me, and I knew you needed me. Wife, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to exist without you.”
Although the memory is months past, my breath catches strangely and Chas notices. His lips make a shape that’s at odds with the depth of grief in his gaze. He’s smirking at me on the outside—maybe a little on the inside, too—but he’s still not over losing Seamus. Of course he isn’t.
I allow Chasm to take my arm and guide me into the grass. Maxx is right behind us with the picnic basket, the blanket, and an umbrella slung over his shoulder. Parrish carries nothing because, well, he’s Parrish Vanguard and he doesn’t do manual labor. Or so he said when X tried to hand him the umbrella.
None of them knows why I invited them here or what the plan is exactly.
Maxx thinks we’re here to hike, but, ah, LOL. No.
“The trail is only a half-mile,” I explain as Chasm holds onto my arm and looks down at me. Our eyes meet as the wind picks up. It is January after all, and the air tastes like a storm. It might rain. That’s what the giant umbrella is for.
We’re having this picnic today, rain or shine.
“We drove two hours for a half-mile trail?” Maxx asks, still confused as to why we’re here. I’ve kept mum about the whole situation, but they’ll find out soon enough.
“As if she could walk a longer trail than that, for shame,” Parrish admonishes, dropping his arms by his side and adjusting his jean jacket. Paired with his Baphomet necklace and black joggers, he looks a little more casual and a little less preppy. Maybe he’s gearing up for his future career as a tattoo artist? Tess has been on both him and Chasm lately, asking what their plans are for after graduation, where they plan on attending university.
Parrish hit her hard and fast with a fact: he’s not going to university.
Tess was genuinely upset for the rest of the evening, but I think the Justin situation really impressed upon her how not-serious this declaration was. In the scheme of what we’ve been through, Parrish’s decision to skip additional schooling is a drop in the vast ocean of life.
Not only that, but he’s the sole inheritor of Laverne’s vast fortunes—her properties, the vault, her businesses, her bank account. She did almost get me killed by drugging me and letting Volli kidnap me. That’s when Justin and I played Russian roulette together, so … yeah, I hate the woman but I’m still sorry that Parrish is hurting over her death.
Even if he still refuses to admit it.
“Do you think they’ll ever catch him?” I ask Chas as he escorts me along the trail, the feel of his hot hand on my arm a reminder that things are better than ever in the romance category. Almost dying really revs up a person’s lovers. They’ve all been so incredibly attentive, so sweet, so … not sweet. Last night, I would hazard to say that Chasm wasn’t sweet at all. In a good way. A very good way.
“Mr. Volli?” he asks, but he doesn’t need to clarify because he knows. I’ve shared the note with everyone and handed it over to the authorities, so they’re more than aware of his interests. Whenever I write anything on Google docs or store it in the cloud, I come back to find critiques from Mr. Volli. I’m not sure how he’s doing it—I always got the idea that Justin was the hacker and not him—but he’s doing it. And the FBI hasn’t been able to track him down either. “Probably not. I’m sure he’ll come back to haunt us one day.” He rolls his eyes like he’s being sarcastic, but I’m not sure that he is.
I lean into Chasm, the shine of the winter sunlight on my ring a reminder that he’s my husband. It’ll be interesting, going back to Whitehall with everything that’s happened, with the deaths of Veronica and Antonio, Gavin and Philippa on our shoulders. With Danyella’s death a pall that I will never be able to shake.
“What is this place anyway?” Maxx asks, moving into the grass so that he can walk beside us while we traverse the trail.
“Four-hundred and forty-five acres of national natural landmark.” I gesture with my arm in the direction of the strange mounds decorating the grass on either side of the trail. “These are the Mima Mounds, and nobody’s ever been able to discern where they came from.”
“We drove all the way out here for grass mounds?” Parrish asks, playing with his necklace as he stares out at the rolling brown grass, the gentle mounds, and the woods beyond. “I love you, Gamer Girl, but wouldn’t you rather be at home playing the new Nioh game?”
Oh, that’s tempting. A game series filled with Japanese lore. It was hard to pull myself away, won’t lie. I’ve been gun-shy about technology lately, but like, not that gun shy. You try spending months in bed after spending months being hunted by a serial killer. It’s a weird transition. So, yeah, I’ve been gaming. I’ve got a lot of social media followers, too, like even more than I did for being a kidnapped daughter of a millionaire crime novelist, all of which was revealed by a Netflix doc. Think about how juicy that is? Like, and now I’ve survived being killed by a serial killer on livestream.
Yeah, I’m lit. I’m viral. I’m in influencer god territory. Cosmic level content creator.
“We drove all the way out here for something else,” I tell them mysteriously. I’m working on that, trying to be mysterious and everything. It hasn’t been working thus far, but surely, I’ll get there, right? I can’t stay awkward and weird forever. Or … can I? “Would you guys still be with me if I kept wearing Pokémon clothes and loving video games and Ashnikko until I was like, fifty? Eighty? Forever?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Parrish drawls, waving his hand around like royalty. “I’m assuming you’ll be doing those things long into the afterlife. Longer than that. Your headstone will read Gamer Girl, She Lived and Did Some Stuff, What a Weirdo. In your next life, you’ll be reborn on some distant moon with extra arms and a tail.”
I smile at him, and he catches the genuine affection in my expression. I don’t force smiles anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever force smiles again. Between Justin and Tess, I’m done with it. I’m going to be honest with myself about my emotions, but I’m also going to sit with them. Because emotions can amp up quickly, but they can fade quickly, too. That’s why I’m taking my time with everything from now on.
If I hadn’t judged everyone here in the beginning, I might’ve gotten to know them sooner and saved myself a lot of heartbreak.
Parrish wets his lips as I stop walking. He doesn’t because he’s turned around and he’s staring at me. He takes a few too many steps backward and slams into a picnic table, nearly falling into the gravel with his arms pinwheeling. Face burning, he brushes off his jacket and scowls, those gold-flecked brown eyes of his fixed on the distant mounds and not on my face. Parrish shakes his jacket out, schooling his pretty lips into a flat line.
“You’re not as cool as you think you are,” I tell him, and he smirks at me, moving close to bend down in front of me. Our noses are nearly touching as he reaches out and gives my own necklace a tug. It’s a Totoro Catbus necklace because … why not? Life is so fucking short. I’m going to be happy while I can.
“Think I am? Gamer Girl, I know exactly what and who I am.” His eyes flick to my mouth like he might kiss me, but then Maxx stabs the umbrella into the ground and opens it suddenly, nearly knocking Parrish in the back of the head as the blue fabric spreads wide, protection from any future rain drops.
“An asshole? Is that what you know you are?” Maxx asks, setting the picnic basket on the table. Chasm is currently staring out at the mounds, a distant expression on his face. He smiles as he turns back and notices that I’m staring at him. But it’s a hollow, sad smile.
That’s why we’re here, to hopefully help us all feel better.
“I’m okay,” he tells me, and then because I’ve been practicing Korean a lot, he tries it in his language, too. “Gwaenchanha.” His smile gets a little more real. “Daijoubu.” That last one is in Japanese. Now that the boys have realized that my Korean is getting better, they’ve switched over to Japanese. I wasn’t aware that anyone but Chasm spoke it well-enough to carry on a conversation. Color me surprised. We are all well on our way to becoming polyglots. What should I learn next? French? Spanish? Czech? I would so take a trip to Prague.
“One day you guys will have to learn something weird like Klingon or High Valyrian to talk behind my back.” I snort and cross my arms as they all stare at me. Chasm is the first to tease me about what I’ve just said which is, admittedly, pretty nerdy.
“Klingon? Like what? How old are you?” he asks, poking me in the cheek as I swat his hand away defensively. “You’re a Trekkie, too? Since when? And High Valyrian? That’s a Game of Thrones made-up language, isn’t it? Jesus H. Christ.”
“Alright, enough of teasing Dakota Banks,” I declare, and then I hear a twig snap. All four of us go completely still, looking in the direction of the woods to see a squirrel scrambling up the trunk of a tree. Doesn’t mean there’s not somebody there. Also means that we’re the only car in the parking lot and probably alone.
Being paranoid isn’t a reaction that fades quickly. It might stick with us for life. Did I mention that we all left our phones in the car? Yeah. It’s still like that.
“Pray tell why we’re here,” Parrish says, and I look over to see him lounging on the surface of the picnic table, stretched out like a king and propped up by his elbows, one leg thrown over the other, face lifted up like he’s trying to absorb the cold, slim rays of the winter sun. “Before we get stabbed or shot by your sophomore app teacher.”
I clap my hands together and move up to the picnic basket, assuming Maxx will move out of the way, so I have easier access to it. He doesn’t. He stands right there so that we’re close, so that I can feel the heat of his skin through the bomber jacket I’m wearing. It, too, has a depiction of Totoro on the back. I’m on theme for today. Having a super-rich mother is not exactly the death knell that I acted like it might be. I’ve been taking advantage of her offer to buy me new clothes.
