Love and Other Wicked Games (A Wicked Game Novel)

by Olivia Fuller

  “And danger? That’s just life. You can’t control everything nor should you try. The important thing is that you would never intentionally put me in harm’s way.”

  Cal laughed once. “You say you can read people? Well, you must be lying to yourself more than I’ve lied to you. Because I’m not a good man. Maybe there was good in me once but that’s long since disappeared. I’ve done too many awful things. And I have put you in danger. From the very beginning.”

  Cal slapped his hands at his sides and shook his head. He was having a hard time holding his anguish inside but he knew that he must, or his emotions would get the better of him and he’d once again lose the strength and courage to do what was right. “Bringing you along, asking you to get involved in my work was terribly poor judgment on my part. It was an incredibly dangerous position to put you in and all because I wanted to see you again. This whole thing, Ellie, has been nothing but an exercise in selfishness.”

  “And I thought I was the one who got hit in the head…”

  “This isn’t a joke, Ellie! Don’t you understand? I’m no good for you. I have done nothing but put you in danger this whole time! And I’m too much of a coward to even tell you my name!”

  “Your name? What’s that have to do with any of this?”

  “It has everything to do with it. Bloody everything!”

  Ellie put her hands to her head and rubbed at her temples. “Cal, you’re not making any sense. I don’t understand what’s going on. And now my head is beginning to throb. I just need to go home and rest and maybe you need to rest, too. Maybe then you’ll have calmed down and we can talk this through calmly…”

  Bless her. Bless her wonderful heart. Even now she had hope and it tore him apart inside to know that he was the one who would have to shatter that. Not that he was the least bit surprised. Even in the end he was hurting her. One final slice. But this was it. He had to do it now. He had to tell her the truth. It was the only way he would ever be able to keep her away from him, and keep himself away from her.

  “No. No, Ellie. We won’t be talking this over later because I’m the bloody Du—”

  There was a soft creak as the door to his room opened up and three women stepped inside. He recognized one of them as Amelia and the features of the second women told him she was Ellie’s mother, but the third woman…

  “You!” the third woman hissed as she pointed her finger at him.

  “Me? What about me?” Cal tilted his head. She was looking at him as if she knew who he was and expected him to know who she was. He couldn’t quite place her. Although…

  “I know who you are!”

  “Ellie!” Amelia planted her steps heavily as she came up next to the third woman and put her hands on her hips. “You told Mandy about your prince?” She threw her hands above her head and then crossed her arms in front of her chest, pouting her lip. “I thought you said this was our secret!”

  “Prince?” Cal asked, raising a brow and looking back to Ellie. “Is that what you told her?”

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “I told her nothing of the sort. I told you about her and her books—Oh, that doesn’t matter—And no, Amelia. I most certainly didn’t say anything to Mandy about, Cal. I don’t know how she knows, not that any of that matters rig—”

  “Cal?” Mandy’s voice cracked and she turned white as a ghost.

  “Looks that way to me,” Ellie’s mother chimed in.

  Amelia grunted and threw her hands down at her side. “You knew too?”

  “Oh, come on now. Of course I knew. I’m a mother. I know when something is going on with my daughter. Always tired as if you weren’t sleeping a wink at night, a glow about your face… And besides,” she smiled satisfactorily, “none of you whisper quite as softly as you think.”

  “Fantastic.” Ellie mumbled from the other side of the room. “Well, now that I’m thoroughly embarrassed I would just like to get home and rest. My head is hurting quite a bit.”

  But Mandy shook her head and held out her hands, bidding everyone to stay put and listen to her. “Cal. This is your Cal, Ellie? This… man?”

  Why did she say it in that way? Cal wondered. Man. As if he couldn’t possibly be one. Not that he felt like he deserved that title but who was this woman? She didn’t know him. Or did she? He looked at Mandy once more trying to place her and that’s when he remembered. He was back on the steps of his villa, drunk as all hell, the day he’d learned about Hart’s death when a woman approached him, yelling... His gaze shot between Mandy and Ellie in desperation. “Oh, no…”

  “Oh, no?” Ellie asked. “Oh, no what?”

  “Ellie!” Mandy yelled before Cal had a chance to act. “Answer me. Please. Is he your Cal?”

  “Yes. He is. But what’s it to you?”

  “You can’t be serious. This can’t be happening…” Mandy raked her hands through her hair and looked around the room. “I can’t be the only one who recognizes him…”

  Cal looked to the three women in front of him. Mandy’s face was turning a vibrant shade of red, Amelia’s eyes were wide as dishes, and Ellie’s mother held a peculiar and almost knowing look on her face, but none of them said a thing.

  “Recognize… who?” Ellie asked.

  “The Duke!”

  “Duke?” Amelia’s eyes lit up. “I knew it!”

  “This is not the time, Amelia!” Mandy roared.

  Ellie sat upright. “Duke?” she asked first looking to Mandy and then to Cal.

  “You filthy piece of trash!”

  “Mandy!” Ellie yelled. “What are—”

  “It’s your fault. Yours!” Mandy spat out as she stepped in closer to him, her finger flying about wildly. Cal was paralyzed. “You and your whole family. Bastards. Garbage is what you are. All of you!”

  “Mandy, not now. Not like this…” Ellie’s mother laid a hand on Mandy’s arm, trying to calm her down, but Mandy just shoved her away and continued on.

  “My family… so many of them gone too soon. Much too soon. You did that.” Mandy jabbed her finger into Cal’s chest, making him wince. “Murderer.”

  Amelia gasped. “Murderer?”

  “Murderer?” Ellie echoed.

  “Might as well be, seeing as you’re the reason they died. You and your bloody selfish family.” She jabbed her finger into Cal’s chest again. All he could do is stand still and absorb the truth of her words. “You deserve that title much more than the one of ‘duke.’”

  “Mandy, what’s going on? What do you mean ‘duke’?” Ellie asked again. “Are you saying he’s a duke? But he’s…”

  Ellie’s voice trailed off with thought. Before long, her thoughtful stare transitioned into a look of wide eyed disbelief. Cal realized she was finally putting the pieces together.

  “Cal…” She said softly, shaking her head from side to side. “Tell me that… no…”

  Dammit, dammit, dammit. Everything he touched turned to ashes. He couldn’t even tell her his name without it all falling apart. It was too late to repair the damage he’d done, but he could at least finally tell her the truth. He owed her that much. It was now or never. Cal’s voice rose up, acid burning every inch of his insides and then—

  “He’s the Duke of McAlister!” Mandy yelled at last.

  Cal heard his title echo through the air and reverberate through the now deathly silent room. It was too late. All too late. His last chance at salvation was snatched from him like food from a dying man. Not that he deserved salvation. He didn’t. But this truth was the only thing he had left to offer the world and now he didn’t even have that. Now all he had was the sting of silence and the burn of eyes eating into his soul. If he even had one of those.

  God. He couldn’t do anything right. And now Ellie—

  Ellie. God. Ellie.

  His eyes flew towards her in a desperate panic. She sat perfectly still except for the slow rising and falling of her breast with each breath. She shook her head from side to side as if that would somehow make the last
few minutes disappear. As if that would somehow erase the truth and make everything right again.

  But nothing changed.

  Nothing was alright.

  After some time she stopped shaking her head. Her face was calm and even. She pushed her lips to the side and then in one flowing motion she removed the blanket off her body and stood up. She wobbled slightly and when Cal took an involuntary step in her direction she held up a hand to stop him and composed herself. Picking up her belongings from the side table, she walked in a measured pace to where the three women were standing near the door. Ellie’s mother patted her daughter’s back and then wrapped her arm around her shoulders as she opened the door. Ellie nodded and the women began to walk outside.

  Cal forbade himself to blink. This was the last time he would ever set eyes on her and he didn’t want to miss even a millisecond. He needed to see it all, every detail no matter how small. Her soft waves of hair, the color of a shiny copper pot, the alabaster pureness of her skin, and her eyes—God, those eyes—more brilliant than a turquoise stone with which they shared their shade. But he couldn’t see her eyes from here and now he would never see them again. God, that he might see them one more time. He hung his head.

  And Ellie turned around. He gasped, though he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was his surprise that his silent prayer had actually worked, or perhaps it was because her eyes were dry as the desert. He’d expected her to cry. To feel something; something for him. A hot twinge struck his stomach. What kind of monster was he? He should be glad that she wasn’t crying. But instead he was thinking about what it meant for him: that she had already mentally severed their ties. It hurt more than he had expected or more than he could have ever imagined. Now he just wanted her to turn back around. But she didn’t. She took a step closer to him and looked him dead in the eye.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I was lying to myself. Maybe I was desperately naïve. Maybe I was a lot of things that I’m now going to have to figure out. But there is something I need to know…”

  Cal swallowed, slowly. “What?”

  “What was I to you? Was I just… a game?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was all of this just a game? Helping the workers, needing my help to collect information… kissing me…” She swallowed the crack in her voice. “…telling me you love me?”

  His heart was breaking. He wanted to tell her, No, No. Never! This was never a game. You were never a game and I love you more than I’ve ever even loved myself. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t give her any reason to hope or change her mind. So he forced out one pained word.

  “Yes,” he said. But he couldn’t bear to look at her face.

  “Were you ever planning on helping anyone?”

  “No,” he lied once more as the word raked through his throat.

  She paused for a second, gears turning, searching. “If I was just a game, then why didn’t you… make love to me earlier, when you had the chance? Or was that all just part of the game, too?”

  “Yes.” No. No. Never. That was the only thing I did right.

  Ellie scrunched up her nose and her mouth, nodding a few times. “I guess my parents were right, then, when they took me from this world. I’ve never believed in stereotypes but what am I supposed to think after what you’ve done? You’re all the same. All of you in that world.” She lifted her right hand up, gesturing towards him dismissively. “Nothing but another wicked Duke playing another wicked game.”

  With a sigh, she turned back around and walked to the women waiting for her by the door. “Let’s go,” she said as her mother once again wrapped her arms around her daughter and ushered her out the door. At the last second Ellie’s mother looked to him, with something almost like sympathy in her eyes but too soon it was gone. And so was Ellie.

  Cal was alone now, just as he’d always been.

  And he’d never felt anything lonelier than his own company.

  Chapter 15

  Ellie had given up counting the days. There was no point in doing so when nothing ever seemed to change. Time was blurred for her and each day now flowed into the next as if no time had passed at all. And this made the hurt so much more difficult to bear.

  Time was supposed to heal anything, mend any wound of the body, heart, and soul, but when time never seemed to pass then neither did the pain.

  She knew, factually, that nearly a month had passed since the day when she’d learned the truth but it still felt like yesterday. It was still raw and fresh in her mind. The truth about Cal had incited more difficult questions than answers. Right before the revelation she’d been so confident that she’d finally figured out her life and who she was as a person, but in an instant it had all been taken away. The Duke of McAlister. Just four simple words. Now, she was afraid to trust her own judgment about anything. She didn’t know how to handle that feeling or how to move on.

  Ellie exhaled slowly as she leaned against the table resting her head on her hand. From here she could see the throngs of people passing by on the street—talking, walking, laughing, living. This practice, watching others, had become routine to her in the several weeks since… that day. There were days now when it was all she did. Watch others. Sometimes it was the only way she could convince herself that time was passing by, seeing other people go on about their days. It didn’t change the way she felt about Cal, the truth, or herself, but it was comforting to know that her own personal crisis was not the end of the world.

  Even though it felt like it was.

  Even on the darkest days when she wished it was.

  The bell at the shop entrance rang and Ellie looked up, half dazed, at the older gentlemen who walked through the door. There was something about him that struck a chord. The peppery hair, the ill-fitted and rumpled jacket and trousers, the splotchy complexion and broken veins in his cheeks. Her stomach dropped when she made the connection.

  “I recognize you. You’re—” She cleared her throat trying to decide how to refer to Cal. Just the thought of his name made her insides burn. “—you’re his uncle.”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.” The man frowned, confused. “How did you know that?”

  Ellie stood up and walked towards him, crossing her arms. “I saw you once, outside of his residence. You were—you were... kicking the door down...”

  “Oh, yes.” He cleared his throat as if he remembered, though Ellie got the impression that this type of scenario was rather common place for him and so while he could imagine the way it had all looked he couldn’t place it with a specific time or date.

  “What do you want?” Ellie asked, turning to the table next to her and busying her hands by folding and arranging fabrics.

  “You.”

  “Me? Oh, my...” Ellie hadn’t expected that. She slapped her hands against the fabric stack, smoothing it back and forth. “You know your nephew once said something very similar...”

  The man exhaled deeply and pinched his nose. “No. Not like that...”

  “Of course not. But you do want something from me.”

  “Your help. Nothing more.”

  Ellie turned around and saw the man wringing his hands together and then wiping at his damp forehead with a handkerchief. Shaking, his hands searched inside of his coat but found nothing which only served to make him more upset and anxious than he already was. He licked his lips as his eyes darted around the room, searching.

  “We have no alcohol here. Not downstairs in the shop anyway.”

  He cleared his throat and held up his hand in invitation. “Perhaps if you could—”

  “Absolutely not. Which I can already tell you will be the answer to whatever it is that you’ve come here to talk to me about.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Is that so?”

  “What about Cal?”

  Ellie snorted. “What about him?”

  “What about the workers?”

  “What about them?”

  “Well,” the man rubbed his f
orehead, “Cal’s work. His work helping them.”

  Ellie scoffed. “He’s not helping them. He’s not helping anyone...” She ran her hand over the fabrics, smooth and cool and serene. If she could just fall inside of it right now and hide from the world then she gladly would.

  “No?”

  “No.” She gritted her teeth.

  “Well, I don’t know who gave you that impression—”

  “Your nephew, that’s who.”

  The man’s puffy eyes showed alarm. “Did he now? And what did he say?”

  “That it was all just a game—that he had lied to—” The words grated inside of Ellie’s throat. The thought of reliving that moment and the pain she had felt was almost too much to bear. She shook her head.

  “Well, whatever he said I can tell you with absolute certainty that it wasn’t the truth. That he lied.”

  A knot formed in the center of Ellie’s belly, tight and strong. She’d learned a lot of difficult and confusing truths lately. But this this was something else entirely. The lie was a lie? What did that even mean? Why would he have done that? She stopped toying with the fabrics and turned to look at Cal’s Uncle. “He’s trying to help the people is he? The workers? Tell me—tell me what he’s been doing and—and for how long…”

  “It all started more than a year ago after he learned what happened with Hart—he did tell you about Hart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before that he never took an interest in what was going on. But he never had any reason to, I suppose. Oh,” Cal’s uncle waved his hand, “he was brought up in a much different world than you—”

  “Was he now?” Ellie mumbled.

  “Not all people in that world are cold, just as not all people in your world are kind. But Cal’s world… it was one of the colder ones. He just didn’t know it because growing up almost everything was given to him. And he never realized that others didn’t live the same way. Not even Hart. But why would he?” He pointed his finger. “Because what he had wasn’t as important as what he lacked: love and truth. Hart gave him both of those things. And ever since Cal learned what happened to Hart, he’s dedicated his every waking moment of his life to these reforms. And it didn’t matter what anyone said or did, he wouldn’t waiver. Not when I begged him to let it all go, not even when they started having him followed as they—as they’d once done to me…”