A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)

 

We pull away and I see she’s crying. She uses the pads of her fingers to wipe away the tears and preserve her make up.

 

She sniffs. Jane looks a lot like a younger version of Anya, only with long, wavy, brown hair that curls at the ends, right below her waist. She has an ethereal look to her, and is willow-thin, unlike me. I’m athletic and muscular, with a short waist and long legs. We’re a study in contrasts with my blonde, straight hair and brown eyes.

 

Plus, she hasn’t been penned up in a psychiatric institution for the past four years.

 

Details, details...

 

“Let me get a coffee and I’ll be right back!” she says, dashing off to the counter, waving her hands in front of her face to dry her tears as she orders a plain black coffee. In less than a minute, she’s back at the table with me, and she reaches for my hand, her eyes combing over my face, taking me in.

 

“You look so good,” she says, her voice catching. Something about the way she’s cataloging me puts me on alert.

 

“You, too. I love the way you did your eyes.” Jane uses a makeup technique like the singer Adele, to give her eyes a beautiful, bold look. She fits in perfectly here in this coffeehouse, a strange quasi-industrial throwback that looks like it fits in Seattle more than in this fake little elite town, with corrugated steel ceilings and distressed walls, stucco and concrete unpainted and slapped on seams with just enough haphazard precision to be a specific design. Long cords hang from the ceiling, large gears from factories woven in with lightbulbs.

 

She laughs. “I ruined it with my crying!” Her eyebrows turn in and she stares at me. “I just can’t believe—” Quickly, like a wet dog, she shakes her head. “Never mind.”

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Say it.”

 

She waves her hand. “It’s not—”

 

I grab her wrist, maybe with a little too much urgency. Jane cringes and gives me a side glance that makes it clear I should let go.

 

I don’t.

 

“Everyone is hiding so much from me, Jane,” I say softly. My voice is controlled. “Please. Whatever you’re thinking, just be honest. That’s all I want. Honesty. Truth.” I sigh, weary to the bone.

 

I let go of her hand and give her a very vulnerable look. I don’t want to be this raw, but I am. I don’t have a choice.

 

We sit in stunned silence. I grab my latte and down more of it. Jane blows lightly across the top of her hot coffee and stares at a spot over my shoulder.

 

Finally, she says, “When I saw your face the last time, your cheekbone was broken. Your eyeball was sunken in, and your face was swollen. I just am so happy you look like you. That they didn’t permanently scar you.”

 

And then a look of horror consumes her.

 

“Not... I don’t mean that you weren’t...I’m not minimizing what they—oh, hell, Lindsay, I don’t know how to even talk about what happened to you.” She squeezes my hand and gives me a look of such honesty that I feel like my heart’s being ripped out of my chest. “I’m sorry. I’m being so stupid and saying all the wrong things and—”

 

I squeeze her hand back. “No! No,” I say, my voice filled with pain and appreciation. “You’re the first one who’s treated me like a human being who was hurt. Like someone who is real. Like a person.”

 

I tip my head down and feel the tears gather on my lashes, pooling, then dropping, onto the sleek, steel tabletop.

 

We both struggle not to cry. We both fail.

 

“I’m so sorry you went through what you went through, Jane.”

 

“Me?” she squeaks. “You’re the one who—”

 

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard for you, too. Finding me. Calling the ambulance. Trying to write to me and being....well...”

 

“Censored? Yelled at?”

 

Our eyes meet, open and jaded.

 

“We have a lot to talk about,” we say in unison.

 

As we smile through tears and gather ourselves, a new kind of warmth fills my chest.

 

I have a friend.

 

For the first time in four years, I have a real friend.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 16

 

 

 

 

 

“Where do we start?” she asks, direct like her mother. “They can’t shut me up like they did a few years ago. We’re face to face now. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” A shadow passes across her face, like she’s rethinking her words, but it floats off.

 

“I want to know everything.”

 

“You’d need months, Lindsay.” A chill runs through me. I know she’s not exaggerating. The fact that she’s serious makes me realize how high the stakes are here.

 

Someone really, really doesn’t want me to know some dark secrets about what happened after my attack.