Page 62 of Ruthless Game

“What, suddenly you don’t have anything to say? You can lob all the accusations, but you can’t take any? And I saw you cheating on me with my own two eyes, Lawson. And you admitted to it.”

God, I was oh-so-fucking tired. Bone tired. Was there something more than bone tired? Deeper? Soul tired? I was tired of this fight. Of Lawson’s conviction. I wanted to curl up in a ball and escape all of this.

“I—” he swallowed. “I⁠—”

“You, you—what, Lawson. What are you trying to say?”

“This is why I want us to let the past go, Emma,” he said, changing tactics. “Because it gets us nowhere.”

“Maybe we need to stop this, then. Let me go back to Oxford. To my internship. To my life. You wanted to torture me? Great fucking job. Ten stars. You can be satisfied you’ve basically broken me—all over again. Let me go.”

“No.” He stood, scooping me up in his arms and carrying me back to the bed like a bride. “Never. We can get past this. I promise. You made a good point. I ch—I cheated, too. We hurt each other. We’re even.”

“It’s not about being even.”

“We cross each other’s fuck ups out, then. Let’s go to bed, Starburst.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said, voice so small.

“Angel, then.” He lowered me to the bed, climbing on after me and tucking us both under the covers. Gathering me into his arms, he said, “As angry as we both are, I love seeing your hair all over my pillow. This room never felt like home until you got here. I only sleep well when I’m with you.”

“Lawson …” I said, stymied again, because he somehow could break my heart in one second and begin to mend it the second after.

“Please, Emma,” he said, and it was the tremble in his usually strong, solid voice that made me waver. “Please go to sleep with me. Please try to make this work with me. I need you.”

And so I relaxed against him, let him stroke my hair as I stared at the too tight ring on my finger, and let myself pretend, even for a moment, that we could make this work.

Because deep down, I’d never wanted anything so badly in my life.

22

Lawson

After that night, things between us began to feel normal. A new normal—we weren’t the people we’d been in high school, and there was still obviously pain between us, but it was obvious we were back together. And if part of that togetherness was because I was still blackmailing her, then so be it. Better to have Emma unethically than to not have her at all.

She spent every night with me at the hockey house, sleeping in my arms. Her parents, instead of being upset, were thrilled we’d “worked the past out.” And I actually slept well. She came to practices and games, and I learned to behave during swim class, even getting in the pool and sticking my head underwater when she told me to. We did dinner at her parents’ house on Shabbat under Jeffrey’s watchful, annoyed stare, which I purposefully ignored, because if I started shit with him, I wasn’t sure where it would stop. Emma and I studied together in the library—I was doing better in my classes, thanks to her encouragement. And, whenever I could, I snuck away to the pool and practiced swimming.

For her.

We didn’t have sex. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was waiting for at this point, but it didn’t feel like the right time, and Emma didn’t push it, either. I edged her a lot, though. I still hadn’t let her come, and it became obvious that Emma loved the torture.

More, she’d beg. Not make me come, you fucking asshole. Just more, Lawson, please give me more.

But as pretty as her words were, the only word I wanted to hear from her mouth was Max, and she never gave it to me, no matter how creatively I touched her, no matter how many times I demanded she say it. She was holding back from me, and I wanted—needed—all of her.

And I didn’t know how to get it.

The day of our game against Tabb, I handed her a jersey I’d had specially made for her. It was mine, except instead of saying Lawson on the back, it said Max.

“Lawson, no,” she said immediately, crossing her arms and refusing to take it from me.

“Emma, yes.”

“You can’t make me wear that. Besides, no one will know who Max is. Don’t you want your …” she uncrossed her arms and waved a hand around, “… whatever I am to you, to be wearing the jersey with the name people know you by? Isn’t that the whole point of the ‘I hockey player. You hockey player’s woman. Wear jersey so I, hockey player, can make claiming public.’”

She’d put on a silly version of what she must have assumed a man’s voice—or maybe my voice—sounded like. I snorted. She wasn’t wrong.

“They’ll know it by the ten,” I said, referring to my jersey number. “And you’re my girlfriend.”