A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)

by Meli Raine

  She and I both nod.

  “Got it,” he replies. “Let me handle this.”

  Before I can ask him what the hell he means by that, he’s up and over to the bar, where Mandy’s settling in on a bar stool. He lifts one leg up and hops into the seat, thigh muscles straining against the cloth of his suit pants, his waistband exposed as his jacket shifts.

  I see his gun.

  I shiver.

  “You cold, Ms. Bosworth? I can escort you out.” From the flared nostrils and clenched jaw on Silas, I am pretty sure he knows who Mandy is. It occurs to me that a network of people hired by Daddy have more knowledge about my own life than I do.

  It’s scary.

  Right now, though, it’s also deeply comforting. Mandy’s outnumbered four to one in this bar. My ex-friend can go to hell.

  I haven’t even had time to digest what Mandy, Tara and Jenna did four years ago. Why they lied. What drove them to betray me. What on earth made them think it was acceptable to go to the press and say that I got drunk and high and asked those three pigs to rape and torture me. Jane’s memory of my broken cheek makes me touch it, fingertips seeking out the smooth contour of my reconstructed eye socket.

  I see Drew watching me, puzzled, and then his face goes completely slack. A simmering rage is underneath, though, because he clearly understands what I’m doing. I haven’t seen him in four years and never, ever wanted to be this close to him again, and here he is, as empathic and intuitive as he was when we were together. When we were happy.

  When we thought we had forever ahead of us.

  He turns back to Mandy at the bar and brushes her hair away from her ear. His mouth goes toward her neck and I see his lips moving. As the words pour out, her entire back stretches up, like an invisible Puppeteer has a string attached to the top of her head and is slowly pulling it up.

  Then she turns to Drew with a murderous look on her face and starts to look my way.

  His hand snaps up and grabs her jaw. It’s not a rough gesture, but it’s a damn powerful one. Mandy’s bright blue eyes widen so much they look like billiard balls. Drew uses his other hand to reach into his jacket pocket and throws a twenty dollar bill on the polished bar.

  Then he lets go of Mandy, stands up, grabs her forearm, and escorts her out of the bar.

  I don’t watch once they’re out of my peripheral vision.

  I’m sick to my stomach. Mandy was always the queen bee of the group, the ringleader, and the one you thought long and hard about pissing off. Watching her manhandled like that by Drew brings a certain kind of delicious enjoyment to a part of me.

  The part that feels like I’m spinning out of control on a patch of ice in a car with no steering wheel is about to throw up.

  “Drink,” Silas insists, shoving a glass of water at me. I look around, blinking, as if I’ve just teleported here. The world disappeared for a few seconds, like it was on pause. I look outside and can see through the glass windows of the bar that Drew and Mandy are having words. Mandy’s having more words than Drew, and he’s pretty much ignoring her.

  Is he actually on his phone while she yells at him?

  Jane takes in the scene and snorts. “Drew never was Mandy’s favorite person in the world.”

  “I think Mandy is Mandy’s favorite person in the world. Always was.”

  “It’s funny,” Jane says thoughtfully. “I always admired her. Thought she was so put together and pretty. And then after...you know...”

  “My attack.”

  “The attack—after the attack, she got up in front of all those cameras and played it up for the audience. Told the world you’d been drunk and high and reached for John, Blaine and Stellan. She said she was speaking out to save the reputation of fine men.”

  I’m sick to my stomach again. No amount of water Silas can bring me will help.

  “She said that?” I ask, looking at her again. She looks like a monster.

  She is a monster.

  “Yeah.”

  “You were there, Jane.” I look at her across the table. “You know the truth. I had one or two drinks. No drugs. I never, ever asked for any of that to happen to me.”

  “I know!” She seems genuinely scandalized that I might think she thought otherwise. “And I told the police the same thing, when they came to our house.”

  “The police came to your house?”

  She nods. “They interviewed as many people as they could find from the party. The only ones who spoke up, though, were Tara, Mandy and Jenna. And me.”

  “There were twenty or thirty people there!”

  “I know. Didn’t matter. The loudmouths won. Mandy got her ten minutes of fame on CNN and MSNBC as the friend of the girl who asked for it.”

  Gut punch.

  “Oh, hell, Lindsay, I didn’t mean it. That’s just...that’s how you were portrayed.”

  “The ER did a rape kit?”

  She nods.

  “And they didn’t analyze it or give me an exam to...”

  “Once Mandy started saying you’d been drunk and high and it was consensual, all the law enforcement stuff halted. Just...went dead.”

  “Daddy,” I whisper.

  Drew walks in through the front door and looks cool as a cucumber. Appearances are deceiving, though. I know he must be agitated after that incident with Mandy.

  My legs start to itch, like there are nerve impulses in them begging to be released. I want to jump up and grab Mandy and beg her to tell me why she would lie like that. All my friends knew I would never, ever ask those guys to...be with three men at the same time like...sleep with them with Drew right there.

  And the beating. The torture. Being defiled in every hole I possessed. It took weeks for my mouth not to taste like blood and spooge. To swallow without the metallic slime of a man’s semen at the back of my throat. My lips had cracked open and the corners had been ripped and bleeding. Every time I moved my mouth, the wound had reopened.

  At least, that’s what I remember through the haze of drugs and surgeries and more drugs.

  So, yeah. I want to run out there and ask her a thousand ugly questions about a million ugly truths amidst the giant, big fat lie she and Tara and Jenna told the world.

  Instead, I jump up and bolt for the bathroom, where I throw up until Jane comes in and calls out my name.

  Chapter 19

  “Lindsay?”

  I say nothing.

  “You okay?”

  I say more nothing.

  “Stupid question,” Jane mutters to herself. “Sorry.”

  “S’ok.” A hand appears under the bathroom stall door. It’s holding a small plastic cup with ice chips in it.

  “Here,” Jane says. “I was pretty sure you were throwing up.”

  I take the cup. “Yeah.”

  “Drew’s really worried about you.”

  I snort.

  “He is,” she says again, as if we’re arguing.

  “About time. Too bad he wasn’t so worried four years ago.”

  The door makes a slight rattling sound. “What does that mean?” Jane asks.

  I say nothing. Suddenly, she inhales sharply.

  “Oh, my God, Lindsay. He was the fourth guy?”

  “Oh, please,” I snap. My mouth tastes like fermented cotton and my head throbs with pain. “Like you didn’t know?”

  “Mandy and Jenna and Tara spread these vicious rumors, but no one believed them!” I can’t tell whether she’s lying or not. I need to believe her, so I do.

  “You mean, people believed their rumors about me, but they couldn’t believe their rumors about Drew?”

  Her turn to go silent.

  “I never thought about it that way,” she finally says in a squeaky voice.

  “I should never have come home,” I groan. My purse shuffles against my hip and I remember my pills. I remember Stacia’s call earlier. Maybe I’m really not ready for all this. The island looks so much better. More appealing. Life was so simple there. I knew what was expect
ed, even if I couldn’t always manage to do exactly what they wanted.

  Out here, in real life, the complexities are so much more convoluted.

  “Don’t say that, Lindsay. You have every right to be home. You’ve suffered enough.”

  “Define ‘enough,’” I moan, sucking on a piece of ice.

  She makes a snort-laugh. “I think there’s a picture of you in the dictionary next to the word ‘suffering,’ Lindsay.”

  Jane wasn’t this sharp four years ago. While I always liked Jane, I’m coming to admire her now.

  “Huh.” I make a sound that’s half laugh, half recognition of the truth in her words.

  “Look. You have a lot to face. Mom and I wish your parents had brought you home a long time ago—”

  “You and Anya talk about me?” I ask, surprised by the thought.

  “Of course we do.”

  “Oh! Because of the..because you found me that night.”

  “No. Because we like you. We care about you. We hate what happened and wish we could change it. And Mom’s been telling your dad for two years now that it was past time for you to come home. He said the people at that place you were in were telling him you weren’t ready.”

  “I’ve been ready for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  I pause. I think. “About two years.”

  “What the hell did they have you do there for four years?”

  “I knit 126 sweaters in knitting therapy.”

  She laughs. It’s a guilty sound, like she’s not supposed to find that funny.

  “I’m serious! They were insistent on knitting therapy. I finally started to ‘show progress’ when I suggested we knit penguin sweaters for environmentalists to put on penguins under oil slick conditions.”

  “That’s a thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Penguin sweaters?” Her voice takes on a slightly hysterical tone.

  “Yeah.”

  “Like, with little holes for the—the—the flippers?”

  “Yeah.” I can’t stop laughing now. We sound like hyenas.

  Someone knocks on the door.

  “Lindsay? Jane? You okay in there?” It’s Drew.

  “Penguin sweaters!” Jane screeches.

  “What?” Drew calls back.

  “Flipper holes!” I shout.

  “They’re not making any sense,” he mutters through the door.

  “I observed them drink only one and a half alcoholic drinks, sir,” Silas says back.

  “I observed them drink only one and a half alcoholic drinks, sir,” Jane mimics, her voice going high and loud with the effort.

  I can’t stop laughing. My sides hurt. This is worse than throwing up. I’m sitting on the floor of a bar bathroom with my face pressed against the scraped bathroom door, the metal cool and rough, and I’m laughing about knitting penguin sweaters as part of my therapy in a mental institution where I lived for four years after being gang raped on live, streaming television.

  I double up and laugh some more.

  Because, really, what else can I do?

  The outer door opens and Jane screams.

  “OUT! This is the women’s room.”

  “And I’m head of Lindsay’s security detail and need to make sure she’s okay.”

  “What’s she going to do in here, Drew?” Jane challenges him. “Hang herself on a tampon string?”

  Now I really can’t stop laughing. I hear Silas in the background, coughing to hide a chuckle.

  “Fine.” I hear Drew leave and the door close.

  “He’s really insistent, isn’t he?” she asks, slowly opening my door. I roll onto the ground and stare up at her.

  “He’s my security detail.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t have to be an asshole about it.”

  “I heard that!” Drew calls through the door.

  “Good!” Jane and I shout back in unison.

  “I shouldn’t be mean to him,” I say, standing slowly. “He did get rid of Mandy for me.”

  “Yeah.” Jane thinks for a minute. “But he hates her guts, too. So I think he got plenty of personal satisfaction out of that one.”

  “Why does he hate her?” I wash my hands in the sink as Jane leans against the wall and talks.

  “Why do you think? For what she did to you.”

  “Why would Drew care?”

  “Because he—ooooooohhhhhhh.” Jane’s voice winds down like a toy running out of batteries. “Shit. Was he really the fourth guy in the video?” I can tell she doesn’t want to believe it. I can’t blame her. I don’t want to believe it.

  I’ve spent four years wishing it weren’t true.

  Chapter 20

  “Yeah. He was.” I’ve never, ever admitted that to anyone. Not Stacia. Not the secondary therapists. Not Daddy or Mom or...anyone.

  “Fuck,” she says under her breath.

  “Right.”

  “So he just sat there on the couch and did...nothing?”

  Jane gets it. Instantly.

  “Right.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know.”

  “No, Lindsay. It really really makes no sense. Drew loved you so much.”

  I can’t have this conversation. Not now. Not here.

  Maybe not ever.

  This was a huge mistake.

  “Lindsay, after you...after the attack, Drew was hospitalized, too.”

  I feel like my body is too big and too small at the same time.

  “What?”

  “You probably had no idea. No one knows exactly what happened, because he was in the hospital and then suddenly he was shipped overseas for his first tour in Afghanistan.”

  “His first tour?”

  “Yeah. He did two tours. Came home with a bunch of medals and started his security company with some guy from the service. Now he provides security for a ton of politicians and my mom says he’s a big deal in the field.”

  As Jane goes on about Drew, my mind tries to wrap itself around what she’s saying. I hold up one hand.

  “Wait. He was hospitalized after my attack? Why? What’d he do—strain his neck trying to get a better look? He’s on the video doing nothing. Just sitting there. Watching. Watching them rape me.”

  Jane’s face twists with grief and distaste. I know it’s not directed at me, but a plume of self-consciousness and shame fills my blood. My bitterness is seeping out in my words.

  Jane sighs. “I know. It’s still a mystery. And you know Drew.”

  “No. Actually, no. I don’t. I thought I did, but clearly...”

  “I meant how quiet he is.”

  “Quiet?”

  “Closed up. Shut tight. Like a drum.”

  That’s actually not the Drew I knew.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was always the strong, silent type.”

  “Not with me,” I say softly.

  “With the rest of us he was. You don’t get to be a West Point student for nothing. He had it all, Lindsay. Brains, looks, athleticism, and the officer’s commission after he graduated. And then you were attacked, he was hospitalized, and poof! No one saw him for three years.”

  “He was in Afghanistan for three years?”

  “Most of it. I heard through my mom that he came home briefly. Went back. Some awful incidents happened there. Then something about a big success his unit had, and how he was a hero along with his team. They did something strategic and received a bunch of medals and accolades from Congress and the White House. But you’d never know. Drew never said a word. And then his parents died.”

  I feel like Jane just threw a brick at my head. “His parents what?”

  Jane groans and shoots me an apologetic look. “I keep forgetting you don’t know so many things that happened. It’s been about a year.”

  “It’s new to me.”

  “Yeah. it would be. I’m sorry, Lindsay. Drew’s parents died in a car accident. Single car. Went off a canyon road while he
was in Afghanistan.”

  “Oh my God!” Jim and Donna were good people. Really great parents. Warm and loving, sweet and kind. Drew and his older sister adored them. I went on family vacations with them. I’m speechless.

  “How is Sarah taking it?”

  “She’s married and has a toddler now.”

  “Whoa.” I wonder if coma survivors feel like this. “Wait. Did they ever find out what happened with Drew’s parents?”

  “What do you mean? The car went off the road. They think maybe Drew’s mom swerved to avoid hitting an animal? They went down a huge ravine. Crashed. It took more than a day for a group of mountain bike riders to find them. By then it was too late.”

  “Drew was in Afghanistan?”

  “And Sarah was back home in San Diego with her baby. It was a big mess. The whole community rallied to try and help. Not financially—the Fosters were fine, of course—but poor Sarah really bore the brunt of it. She had to get Drew back home from overseas, manage the funeral stuff, and the press....”

  Just like that, some kind of switch flips in me.

  I am done with this day.

  Done.

  “You know, Jane, I think I need to go home.” I press my palms into the countertop around the sink and let my head drop.

  Her hand is warm as she gently sets it between my shoulder blades. “I understand. Of course. Let me get you back to the Grove.” Daddy named our house The Grove a long time ago, christened by the planting of tiny weeping willows that now tower over the estate like sentries.

  “That’s my job,” Drew says through the door.

  Oh, crap. Was he listening this entire time? The door opens and in walks Drew again, eyes flat and still. If he’s feeling anything underneath that placid exterior, it’s well hidden.

  “You’re sick,” he declares, reaching for me. “You need to go home. I’ve already called your—”

  “Oh, sure. Call Daddy the second Lindsay doesn’t do exactly what she’s told to do,” I snap. “The minute she doesn’t act like a programmed robot, we have to get the senator on the line and make her behave!”

  “—doctor,” he says, finishing his sentence. “I’ve already called your doctor, and she’s meeting us at the Grove.” Drew gives me an even look that says nothing. He’s being very patient.