Wicked Game

by Michelle Betham

  “She didn’t tell me. She told me you’d called her, but she didn’t tell me you were here.” He slips his hands into his pockets, starts pacing the floor, his head down, and then he raises it; looks directly at me. “Why are you here, Noah? Because, it’s a long way to come just to put ideas into your ex-wife’s head.” He holds my gaze for a beat or two, and then he smiles, laughing quietly. “Ex-wife … how does that feel, hmm? Hearing Kari described as that?”

  “You don’t deserve her.”

  “And you do?”

  He raises an eyebrow, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from punching him. Smug to the end, but he hasn’t won yet.

  “Have you come here to tell her not to trust me? Is that it? Why shouldn’t she trust me, Noah? Because you don’t? Or, have you come here to try and win her back, because I’m telling you now, that really would be a terrible waste of time.”

  “She doesn’t like secrets.”

  “You think I’m keeping one?”

  “I think you are.”

  “Well, you say Kari doesn’t like secrets, but she’s actually pretty good at keeping them. She kept my child a secret from me, until she had no choice but to tell me the truth. And now I have no choice but to tell her the truth, about what you did.”

  “What I …? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You still have no idea, do you?”

  “No idea about what?”

  “The woman you slept with. The woman you cheated on Kari with. Who was she, Noah?”

  “No one. She was no one …”

  “She was my wife.”

  It takes a second for his words to hit home. And then suddenly, everything starts to make sense. All the pieces of the jigsaw start to fit together, slide into place, and now it’s fucking obvious why Joe Millar did everything he did.

  “You deliberately set out to destroy us.”

  I’m not asking a question, I’m telling him that’s what he wanted to do, and he won’t deny it.

  “That’s exactly what I set out to do.”

  “I had no idea who she was …”

  “Did she tell you she was married?”

  “Yes …”

  “And you still went there? You still thought it was okay, to sleep with another man’s wife? To cheat on your own?”

  “It was a mistake …”

  “Yes. It was

  “I didn’t know …”

  “I don’t give a shit what you knew or what you didn’t know, the fact is you slept with my wife. You destroyed my marriage, so you – you didn’t get to keep yours.”

  “Even if that meant hurting Kari, too?”

  “Kari was nothing to me in the beginning. I didn’t care about her, or the fact she adored the ground you walked on, because she did. She loved you, and you pissed all over that by fucking my wife.”

  “You cold bastard …”

  “She left me, because of you, did you know that?”

  “I never meant for that to happen. It wasn’t supposed to go that far.”

  “She fell for you. Were you aware of that? No? Yeah – she actually thought there was something there, something between the two of you, because you couldn’t leave it at one, pointless night, could you? You had to go there again. And again. What did you tell her, huh? To make her think there was something there?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything …”

  “She changed, that’s how I knew something was wrong. She changed, she didn’t want me anymore, she wanted someone else, something else, and none of that involved me. So, whatever you said to her – whatever you did …”

  “I did nothing to make her think anything like that could happen. It was just …”

  I stop talking, drop my head and breathe in deep. I had no idea, no fucking idea who she was. I didn’t know, I swear. Would it have mattered, if I had? Back then, Joe Millar was nothing but a vague acquaintance, someone I knew only through Albie, I’m not sure it would have made any difference.

  “Just what, Noah? A fling? A bit of fun? She meant nothing to you?”

  My head shoots back up, and I stare at him. “She didn’t, mean anything to me.”

  He takes a step towards me, invading my space, but he doesn’t intimidate me. He’s not doing that.

  “But she meant the fucking world to me.”

  “I’m sorry, for what I did, Joe, believe me …”

  He shrugs, and again I’m having to use all my self-control to keep my balled-up fist from connecting with his jaw.

  “What you did caused everything that followed, Noah. All of it, everything, it’s all on you. But you fucked with the wrong man. And your guilt, that was a gift to me. A tool I used to bring you down. You wanted your wife to sleep with another man, to ease that guilt? I made sure I was that man. The man who made Kari think twice. Caused her to wonder, to dream, to want someone other than you. That man had to be me, because I needed payback.”

  “You didn’t have to take her from me.”

  “No, you’re right, I didn’t. And it was never my intention to do so, I just wanted to pull you two apart. To destroy you. To make you feel the same pain I’d felt, and I didn’t care that your wife would be nothing more than collateral damage, not at first. If innocent people had to get hurt to make sure you suffered, that was fine by me. But Kari got to me, in a way I never expected. She became more than a pawn I needed to play, just so I could get to you, she became so much more than that; someone who didn’t deserve any of the shit either of us were putting her through. I fell in love with your wife, Noah. And she eventually fell in love with me.”

  “You wore her down. She didn’t stand a fucking chance.”

  “You need to give her way more credit than that. She walked away from me so many times, put you above all else, until she couldn’t do that anymore. I got under her skin, I became a part of her she couldn’t let go of, and now we have a child and a life I am not going to let you destroy. So, whatever you’ve come here to do, I’d think very carefully about moving forward with that. Whatever you’ve come here to tell her, I’d keep quiet. She’ll hear the truth, but she’s going to hear it from me, not you. You don’t get to twist my words or paint me as the bad guy, you don’t get to do that.”

  “You lied to her, all this time. Used her in the most sick and twisted way, and you think she’s just gonna shrug that off?”

  “No, I don’t. She’s not going to like what I tell her, it’s going to open old wounds, and I regret that I have to be the one to do that. That I have to be the one to bring the past back to the forefront …”

  “Would you ever have told her? If I hadn’t come here? I mean, you must feel threatened, right? Why else are you here, warning me off, if you don’t feel threatened?”

  He takes another step towards me, he’s almost right up in my face now, but I’m still not letting him intimidate me. What I did was wrong, on so many levels, but what he did – how he gained his twisted payback – that was worse. That confirms everything about the kind of man I thought Joe Millar was. Is.

  “I don’t feel threatened by you, Noah. And no, I probably wouldn’t have ever told Kari the truth, because I had no need to. We were happy. Settled. We have a child now, and she doesn’t deserve to have her life fucked up over any of this. But you’ve left me no choice. When I knew you were here; the second I knew you’d contacted Kari, I knew she had to know everything, before you had the chance to fill her head with lies and twisted truths about the kind of man you think I am.”

  “Know you are. You systematically set about wrecking my marriage because you believed I’d wrecked yours. What kind of man does that, huh?”

  “A man who believes people need to pay for their mistakes.”

  I laugh, I can’t help it, he’s acting like some kind of movie villain. He doesn’t fucking scare me, he’s not warning me off, he isn’t winning this shit. Kari needs to know who Joe Millar really is – a powerful, controlling, twisted freak of a man who thinks he can have anything he wants at
any cost.

  “Aren’t you scared, Joe? That when you tell Kari all of this she won’t understand what you did? That she’ll start to question everything you have …?”

  He moves closer still, his eyes are blazing, he’s fucking angry, but, right now, I think he has way more to lose than I do. Kari may never come back to me, I get that. We broke us too much to fix us, I lost her. But Joe – he has everything to lose. I came here to tell her not to trust him, to be careful of him, and what’s happened here, that’s only proved that I was right, to think those things. Right, to come here and warn her. She may never come back to me, but I don’t want to see her hurt, she doesn’t deserve any of that. All this shit, it was caused by me and Joe, nobody else is to blame. Kari just got caught up in the fallout.

  “After I’ve left, you don’t call her. You don’t get Jenna to call her, you don’t speak to her. You tell her shit, do you hear me? You don’t get to destroy my life a second time.”

  He backs away and leaves the room. That’s it. He’s warned me off. Do I heed that warning?

  What do you think …?

  Thirty-Two

  I’ve just managed to get Hollie to sleep when my phone rings. And when I see that it’s Noah calling, I hesitate, I wonder whether speaking to him is a good idea. But even I’m not stupid enough to think that ignoring him will make him go away. That isn’t going to happen. I should talk to him, Jenna’s right.

  “Noah …?”

  “Kari, just listen to me, okay?”

  He sounds agitated, and that immediately puts me on my guard. “What’s happened?” Because something has, it’s obvious just from the sound of his voice. I should’ve known his turning up here wasn’t going to be without trouble.

  “Don’t trust him, Kari. He’s gonna tell you things, and you have to believe me, I didn’t know – at the time, I didn’t know …”

  “Didn’t know what? Noah …?”

  “He’s gonna tell you shit, and he’s gonna make you believe he isn’t the kind of man he …”

  He stops talking, and I lean back against the wall. I look outside, and I try to make sense of this call.

  “What’s going on, Noah?”

  “Just be careful, Kari. Okay? Just – just be careful.”

  “You told me not to trust him. Why would you say that?”

  He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t say anything.

  “Noah? You’re scaring me …”

  “What I did, it was stupid, and ultimately, it destroyed us. But I didn’t know, you have to believe that.”

  “Didn’t know what?”

  Another few seconds of silence pass, and all I can hear is the heavy hammering of my heart. All I can feel is nausea rising.

  “I still love you, please, please remember that. I still love you, so fucking much. And what I did destroyed us, in the end, but I wasn’t alone in killing our marriage. I didn’t do that, alone …”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, his voice is unsteady, rambling, almost, and that just scares me even more.

  “What I did destroyed us, but it didn’t destroy how I feel about you. So, when he tells you what he’s gonna tell you, you need to remember that.”

  “Noah …”

  The sound of a door closing downstairs makes me jump, but I know it’s just Joe. He’s back. And with that realisation comes a flood of fear. This call, it’s put me on edge, I’m confused, afraid of what I’m about to hear.

  “Joe’s home,” I say quietly, to myself, for a second I forget Noah’s still on the other end of the phone. “I should go.”

  “Kari … be careful.”

  He ends the call and I stare blankly down at my phone. I don’t know what to do, so I stay where I am, I don’t move. I look over at my daughter, sleeping soundly, oblivious to all the confusion surrounding us. And then I hear Joe’s voice, calling me, and I close my eyes, I take a second. I breathe in deep and I quickly compose myself before I go downstairs.

  “Hey.”

  I look at him, this man I thought I was finally beginning to understand. Finally getting to know. “Hey. You weren’t long. Did you manage to sort everything out?”

  He frowns slightly, I think he can tell I’m not right. He can tell, that something’s wrong. “Where’s Hollie?”

  “Asleep, upstairs. Where’ve you been, Joe?”

  “You know where I’ve been …” His expression suddenly changes, and I see a glimmer of something akin to anger cloud his features, a touch of frustration there in his eyes. “He called you.”

  It’s not a question. And once again I feel nausea start to rise up from the pit of my stomach. But I stay calm. I sit down on the couch, and I watch as he sits down opposite me, dropping his head, clasping his hands together between his open knees. I watch him. I don’t take my eyes off him.

  “You’ve been to see Noah, right?”

  He raises his gaze to meet mine. “You didn’t tell me he was here. You should’ve done.”

  “I didn’t want this to turn into something it isn’t.”

  “You don’t know what this is, Kari. You really don’t.”

  I hold his gaze, my stomach’s a knot of nerves. This doesn’t feel right, there’s an atmosphere between us I don’t like, don’t feel comfortable with, and there’s a part of me that wishes Noah was here. “That call, the one you took just before you went out. It had nothing to do with work, did it?”

  He just looks at me. He knows he doesn’t have to answer that.

  “Who was it, Joe? Who were you talking to?”

  Because I don’t think it was Noah. I’m remembering the look on his face as I watched him take that call; the way he was talking … I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought much about it at the time, but thinking back, now, something wasn’t right.

  “It’s time this mess was sorted, Kari. Once and for all.”

  “I wasn’t aware there still was a mess.”

  He stares at me, and the look in his eyes chills me to the bone.

  “I told him not to call you. Not to speak to you.”

  “You told him? What the hell went on between you two?”

  “What did he tell you, Kari?”

  I wait a second before I answer him, because I’m still trying to get my head around this. “He – he told me to be careful. He told me not to trust you, that you were going to tell me things … He told me not to trust you … Joe, what did you do? What happened …?”

  “He needed to know the truth.” His voice is low, verging on monotone, and that does nothing to calm me. “And so do you.”

  “What truth?”

  He drops his gaze; looks down at his clasped hands.

  “Maybe I should’ve told him sooner. Made him face up to what he’d done, it would’ve stopped him coming here. Stopped him from trying to …” He raises his head, his eyes once more locking on mine. “He wants to warn you, Kari. About me. He doesn’t trust me, doesn’t think you should either. He didn’t say as much, but I know he wants you back, why else would he come all this way to fill your head with crap? Because that was his intention. And he thinks if he poisons your mind against me enough, that’s where you’ll go. Back to him. He came here with a plan, but I’ve just killed that dead.”

  That knot in my stomach tightens, I feel sick, but I keep my eyes on him, I don’t shift my gaze. “What truth, Joe?”

  He rakes a hand through his hair, looks away, but only for a second or two. “It’s time I told you everything, Kari.”

  I curl my legs up underneath myself, sitting back against the couch cushions, and still I don’t take my eyes off him. “Everything?”

  “There are things you need to know – should know. Things I should’ve told you sooner.”

  His words are unsettling me, I don’t know what he’s about to tell me; what he’s been keeping from me, how Noah’s involved in all of this, but I’m trying to stay calm.

  “You should’ve told me he was here, Kari.”

  “I wanted to handle thi
s without bringing you into it, Joe. It’s got nothing to do with …”

  “Me? No, you see, that’s where you’re wrong, it has everything to do with me.”

  I stare at him, I try to read his expression, but he’s giving nothing away. “Was it Jenna? Did she tell you he was here?”

  He shakes his head. “That phone call he made, to you – he didn’t make that for no reason. After all this time? No. He had a reason, I just needed to know what that reason was. And at first, I thought he’d found out for himself, the true extent of his betrayal. I thought he’d come here to get payback of his own, but he still had no idea …”

  He laughs quietly, shakes his head as he once more drops his gaze, and I just feel numb, terrified of what I’m yet to find out.

  “He came here purely to plant seeds of doubt in your mind.” He raises his gaze, and when he looks at me I feel a cold shiver race up my spine. “It was time he knew.”

  “How did you know he was here?” I’m asking a question I don’t really need to ask, I know what Joe’s capable of. If he wants to find someone, he can do that, he tracked me down, over and over again. He always found me.

  “I knew, Kari.”

  That’s all he says, but it’s enough for me to know that he hasn’t really changed. Somewhere in there, he’s still the same Joe Millar I pushed away. The same man I was once scared of.

  I think I still am, scared of him.

  “I kept telling you that night had to happen, and it did, have to happen. I had to be the man who took you while your husband watched. It had to be me.”

  I feel that knot in my stomach pull tighter. “Why?”

  I knew he’d never really told me the truth about that night. Now he’s about to. And I’m not sure I want to hear it.

  “The woman Noah slept with? She was my wife, Kari. Your husband fucked my wife.”

  His words are like the biggest punch to the gut. They floor me, I can’t take them in, can’t believe what he’s saying. I didn’t even know he was married, but then, how could I have known? He’s a man who’s kept all kinds of shit hidden from me, and now he thinks it’s time to tell me the truth?