Inside Game

by Collette West

  My heart starts to race when I realize that that's not the only booby trap out here as Dwight guides us through a virtual minefield of obstacles while we make our way up the hill and toward the house.

  "We're not here to cause any trouble," Drake grumbles, following Dwight's exact movements and jumping over a branch-covered pit.

  "Then what in tarnation are you doing back here in Kentucky? You know it's not safe for you to be showing your face around these parts. Not after the little stunt you pulled down on the island." Dwight stares down his cousin, his blue-green eyes turning steely.

  "I'm here to put the past behind me." Drake puffs his chest out. "I'm telling Mama I'm out."

  "Good luck with that." Dwight rolls his eyes before tossing a glance at me. "Were you the one who put him up to this, sweetheart?"

  "The name's Eva, and no, I did not put him up to anything. Drake came to this decision on his own." I reach for Drake's hand and clasp it in mine.

  He squeezes it back, and I know I did the right thing. It's clear that his family is not going to support his decision, but he needs to know I'm behind him a hundred percent.

  "Well, your timing couldn't be worse. Trevor made the run up to New York but got busted outside of Rosewood, so she's down another ace in the hole." Dwight smacks his tongue against the inside of his cheek. "She made zippo, nada, nothing this week, so she's in a right foul mood at the moment."

  "Rosewood?" I turn to Drake. "You mean—?"

  "That's where we make our exchanges. The HGH, the coke, you name it," Dwight brags. "I even dealt to Jessica Wallace once, and her boobs are even perkier than they are on the big screen."

  My head starts to spin at the implications of this. The members of Drake's family are his suppliers. The nightclub where he hangs out with members of the team is where he goes to get his fix. It's probably where he hooked them up with the PEDs to begin with, right in plain sight, just like that two-bit dealer in the motel parking lot.

  I think I'm going to be sick.

  "Yeah. Drake even got that boy wonder hooked on them over the winter. He brought him up for New Year's Eve, giving him a belated Christmas present, so to speak. I never saw a kid so shit-faced. He would've done anything you told him to." Dwight grins broadly at Drake.

  "Boy wonder?" I shift my gaze from Dwight to Drake.

  "Let's just go on up to the house and get this over with." Drake takes my arm and ushers me forward.

  "No, you're going to answer me." I dig my heels in, forcing him to stop.

  Dwight mutters, "Oh shit," behind me, but I ignore him. I'm too focused on Drake, whose eyes are looking everywhere but at me.

  He's going to lie to me. My stomach clenches. We've come so far, and now, he's going to lie to me. Maybe I did make a mistake. Maybe he wasn't strong enough to come back here yet.

  We stand stock-still, neither of us saying anything, until Dwight fires a round into the sky, making us both jump.

  "What the hell, man?" Drake snarls.

  But Dwight doesn't answer. Instead, he charges into the undergrowth, leaving us just as unexpectedly as he arrived.

  And suddenly, I don't feel like I'm with a baseball player anymore. I thought I knew who Drake Schultz was, but now, I have no clue who this man standing next to me is.

  "Sanders was my insurance policy," he finally grumbles, still unable to look at me. "It was leverage I could hold over his head to keep him in my back pocket. I had to take the necessary precautions to secure my career after I implicated Terry. No one was looking out for me anymore. I had to protect myself."

  "And it really helped you, didn't it?" I spit back at him. "You still got rung up."

  "But don't you see? It's my only way back onto the team," Drake says, getting excited. "Everybody's just rooting for Sanders because he's the underdog, the young kid with the spotless record who came out of nowhere. But they won't be able to sell him as my replacement if he's taking PEDs just like I was."

  "Why would you do that to someone after what Terry and your mama did to you?" I blurt out.

  "It's called survival, Eva. You've seen enough of life on the streets to understand that," he fires back.

  "But it's all about making the right choices. You don't have to keep on making the same mistakes."

  "Well, that's what you're here for, isn't it? To be the little angel sitting on my shoulder, urging me to do the right thing." He snickers, and it makes my blood run cold.

  "You're so much better than this. If you could only see it." I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. I tremble, having an even greater idea of what he's capable of.

  "We should get on up to the house," he says, pushing his way by me. "Time to get this over with."

  "If you're not doing this because you want to, then don't do it at all." I train my eyes on his back, watching the muscles in his shoulders stiffen. "It's not going to do you any good. You're only cheating yourself if your intentions aren't coming from the right place."

  "Come on," he says brusquely. "It's not safe for you to stay out here by yourself. Let's go."

  I shoot him a wounded look, and he waits for me to pass him before marching along behind me. I don't know what I'm more upset about—what he did to Sanders or that he's still lying…to himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Drake

  I head straight for the front door.

  Stepping over the barbed wire fence, I ignore the No Trespassing signs littering the dirt patch that can in no way be called a yard. Chickens peck at my feet, squabbling at me for disturbing them. I don't wait for Eva. I'm too embarrassed at having her walk by the fire pit overflowing with the semi-charred remains of last week's garbage. I breathe through my mouth, trying not to gag.

  It's even more run-down than I remembered it. There's no excuse for this. Mama has money now. It's not like she has to live in such squalor.

  She chooses to. It's all she knows.

  I avoid the mud around the outdoor shower spigot and climb the rickety planks that serve as porch steps. The shutters are hanging crookedly off the front window, splintered and weather beaten. I kick aside an abandoned beer keg that's holding the screen-less door ajar. I don't even knock. I barge right in.

  And there she is, cigarette in hand, curlers in her hair, the garish makeup she always painstakingly applies making her features appear even harsher than they naturally are.

  I cringe as her predatory gaze lands on me. It's like she lured in the biggest catch tugging on her line and there's no way she's throwing me back in the water.

  Despite the major blow-up we just had, Eva's protective instincts kick in as she positions herself in front of me. Her being with me on this makes me feel so much better—that and the fact that she's wearing my shirt. Something about seeing her in my clothes makes me realize how close we've gotten to each other. I don't have to take Mama on alone. She's right here with me, backing me up.

  There's drug paraphernalia spread around everywhere, even though I told Eva that Mama doesn't use. Syringes are scattered on the table, a wad of latex tourniquets crumpled up beside them. The room is an absolute pigsty. There's shit everywhere—pill bottles, water jugs, and coffee cups clutter the top of every surface. Tattered, unwashed clothing hangs off the furniture. I kick my way through half-eaten snack bags and empty pizza boxes, my skin crawling at the caked-in mud ground into the carpet. There's even a filthy mattress propped up in the corner.

  But I have to look away when I see the chipped, thrift-store vase Daddy gave her for their fifteenth wedding anniversary—right before he collapsed outside the door we'd just walked through.

  The past and the present are painfully merging in my head, and it's almost too much to bear. My skin is crawling with the temptation of being back in this room again, remembering how I'd get high inhaling line after line, measuring them off the jagged crack in the glass-top table in the back. She'd be watching me from the faded chair she's sitting in now, urging me toward my own destruction, her way of keeping me close and ut
terly dependent on her after Daddy died.

  She blows a ring of smoke out of the side of her mouth. "Jerry Lee told me you were coming, but I almost didn't believe him," she snickers. "Go ahead. Take a hit, son. You sure look like you could use one."

  When I don't immediately refuse her offer, Eva shifts uneasily next to me. My mouth starts to water—I know that relief is so close at hand. It's the quality of coke I'm used to, the kind I grew up on. It's practically calling my name.

  But I've already let Eva down big time today, and there's no way I'm going to dash her hopes again.

  I glare back at Mama, finally finding my voice. "No, thank you."

  She laughs, narrowing her eyes. "This little good-for-nothing has you wrapped around her finger, does she?" She bats her mascara-coated lashes at Eva. "But can't you see how much he's struggling, honey? He's sweating up a storm because he can't take his pretty, blue eyes off that drawer in the corner. He knows I always keep a little something special stashed inside there."

  I step in front of Eva, furious that Mama would mention the drawer Daddy broke into—the one whose contents he overdosed on. She's so cold, so heartless, acting like his death meant nothing to her.

  "I don't want anything you have to offer."

  "Then why are you here, son?" she drawls, playing up some nonexistent mother-child bond between us.

  And that only angers me more. "I'm here to tell you that it's over. I'm done. I'm done with all of it, but most importantly, I'm done with you."

  "Is that right?" Her heavily-lined eyes widen in mock astonishment. She takes a long drag of her cigarette before flicking the ash into a nearby soda can, belching loudly, proving she's as white trash as it gets. I've always known it, yet my cheeks still flame in embarrassment from having Eva witness it.

  Mama sulks, pretending to examine the chipped nail polish on her big toe. "I don't think so, Drakey, my boy. You know I'm expecting you to move the next shipment of PEDs into New York just as soon as you're reinstated."

  Eva sighs deeply. Mama's obviously getting to her, and I'd much rather Eva remain a silent party to this conversation. But before I can reach out and stop her, Eva marches across the burn marks in the carpet, placing herself directly at Mama's feet.

  "Didn't you hear what your son just said?" Eva asks, her tone low but lethal. "You're done controlling him. He's going to be making his own choices from now on."

  "Funny. It sounds like you're already making his choices for him." Mama swings her legs off the tattered footstool, tossing her cigarette butt away and letting it sizzle at the bottom of the can. "I haven't laid eyes on my Drake since he was eighteen. So I know he wouldn't even be here right now if not for you. You're the one who somehow put the notion into his head to destroy the HGH supply. It certainly wasn't him. He's always needed someone to tell him what to do. It's how his daddy raised him to be—weak and scared of his own shadow."

  "Don't you dare say another word about my daddy!" I move Eva aside, locking in on Mama. "You killed him just as much as if you'd held a gun to his head. And you're not going to do the same to me!"

  I turn the table over, breaking the glass where I watched my reflection turn into the addict I am today, harming myself just to get away from her for a few hours and escape into some false sense of bliss inside my head. Yet here I am, years later, still tethered to her side—the drugs that used to course through my system forming more of a viable connection to her than the blood in my veins ever could. I'm just as much an orphan as Eva is, only my birth mother wasn't kind enough to turn me over to someone who'd actually love me. Oh, no. She held on, draining every last drop of goodness out of my heart until this beautiful, intelligent woman at my side showed me what it meant to love again—and I'm not about to give that up for anything.

  Eva grabs my hand, and I take a deep breath, knowing that, no matter what happens, everything's going to be okay because I have her now.

  "Ah, ain't that sweet," Mama mumbles sarcastically, still perched atop her throne. "A hussy's touch is always so convincing when there's a big payout waiting at the end."

  "You couldn't even show your son the slightest hint of compassion when he needed it." Eva confronts her, shaking with rage. "Yet you were there to milk every cent you could get out of him when he made it big, involving him in things he never should've been involved in."

  "In case you've forgotten, I'm his mother." She swings her callused feet to the ground. "If not for me, this boy would've grown up without a roof over his head. His daddy was a lazy, drunken lout, and when he wasn't drinking, he was stoned out of his mind. I'm the one who had to provide for us. Me—nobody else. So he can very well pay me back for all the sacrifices I made for him. You, on the other hand, have done absolutely nothing for him but stir up a hell of a lot of trouble."

  "She's done more for me than you'll ever know."

  "Go ahead. Let your head be turned by yet another pretty, brown face. It's just going to mean more money out of your pocket when she up and leaves you like all the rest," Mama says, brushing her hands off.

  "I'm not leaving him," Eva declares, and my heart thuds wildly in my chest. "I'll never leave him."

  Mama humphs loudly, but Eva keeps going.

  "See, that's the difference between you and me. I haven't given up on your son, and I never will. It breaks my heart that he's always questioning if he's good enough to be loved. He deserves to have some happiness in his life, the kind you never gave him. All you've done is manipulate him, playing on his fears, holding it over his head that you have the power to make his career go away by exposing him. You think you own his dirty little secret because you're the one who created it, but he left you in the dust a long time ago. He's never coming back here again, and I think you know that. You just don't want him to be independent enough or strong enough to see that you can't control him anymore."

  "Oh, no?"

  Mama snaps her fingers, and two hulking figures appear at the kitchen door.

  Dwight and Jerry Lee.

  My heart sinks. I should've known—Mama's boys always finish the job.

  Eva shoots me a panicked look, and I consider my options. I'll take the two of them on if I have to because I'll die before I let either one of them hurt her. But maybe I can still reason with my mother.

  "Mama, you're going to let us walk right out of here with no trouble," I say, my voice deadly. "You got that?"

  "I don't think so," Mama simpers at me. "My boys could use the exercise, and you'll make a good enough punching bag for them both." She throws a sly glance over at Eva. "Well, maybe one of you will hold up for a few good rounds."

  All I see is red.

  I quickly pull Eva toward the door, but Dwight and Jerry Lee immediately move in that direction, effectively penning us in. The only way out is going to be fighting my way through what's bound to turn into a vicious cage match.

  The only advantage I have left is the element of surprise, so I'd better use it.

  Letting out a roar, I charge them both, knocking them back into the kitchen. I swing hard, clipping Jerry Lee's chin. My fist stings, my knuckles cut open and bleeding. I stagger backward and catch a glimpse of Eva, who's taking cover in the corner.

  Damn it, she's still here. She must've tripped or something, because she's on her hands and knees, scrambling to get away.

  The next thing I know, Jerry Lee tackles me from behind, blindsiding me and forcing me back into the living room, closer to Eva.

  Mama lights up another cigarette with her heels propped up, clearly enjoying the show as Jerry Lee pulls my head back before landing an uppercut to the jaw. I see stars as my head snaps to the side, knowing I'm going to have to fight just as dirty if I'm going to put an end to this.

  I grunt, using all the strength I have left to throw Jerry Lee off me, hurling him in the opposite direction. He collides with the closet door, and I go at him, unleashing punch after punch until blood is oozing out of his mouth. But Jerry Lee's not about to go down that easily. He grabs my col
lar and pins me up against the wall. I gasp frantically as he chokes the air out of my lungs. I bat at his big, beefy hands, but it's no use. I'm losing consciousness while Mama cackles uproariously in the background.

  I can't let Jerry Lee's victorious smirk be the last thing I see. I have to hold on for Eva's sake. God only knows what Mama will do to her. Black spots begin to speckle my vision, and I pry at his hands, digging my nails into his skin, but I can't get him to budge.

  "Let him go, Jerry Lee. We have a much more effective bargaining chip now," Mama proclaims when Jerry Lee finally releases me.

  I fall to the floor in a heap, taking in as many ragged breaths as I can manage even though my throat feels like it's on fire. I cough and sputter, trying and failing to understand what's going on, the awareness of my surroundings fading in and out.

  It's not until I hear Eva let out a terrified gasp that I begin to get a handle on the situation.

  Dwight is holding her by her hair, his hunting knife positioned across her neck.

  "Now, either you can agree to transport the first shipment of Terry's PED vials back to New York or you can watch Dwight slit your girlfriend's throat right in front of you," Mama states calmly. "Tell me, son. What's it going to be?"

  "Drake!" Eva cries out, wincing when Dwight yanks her hair back and sticks the point of the knife into her skin.

  My nostrils flare like a caged bull. "Let her go!"

  "Not until you answer me," Mama snaps. "Are we back in business or what?"

  "Yes…if that's what it's going to take," I mutter through clenched teeth, glowering at her. "Now let her go. You got what you wanted out of me."

  "So, you think you can tell me what to do now, is that it?" Mama snarls, finally getting off her duff and stepping toward me. "Well, think again, because Terry Bloom knows that you destroyed his entire PED supply with this little hussy here, and in case you've forgotten, you work for him, not for me. We all work for him."

  That old flicker of dread tears through my insides.

  "Terry called me from his GM desk all the way in sunny San Diego, and he's not very happy that we weren't able to move his product for him a whole lot sooner. He's been forced to take a substantial loss since, so far, we couldn't deliver to the players who were counting on him. It was a dumb move on your part, considering that he knows you for the junkie you are."