A Game Of Three: Between Love And Death

Amber

“Nice to meet you, Caden, I’m Amber,” I grate out as pleasantly as I can, stepping forward and offering a hand.

His are covered in tattoos, literally drenched with ink. There are matching sunbursts on the backs of either hand, letters decorating his knuckles. Both arms are covered, too, and much of his chest.

I know he’s a bit older than me—seventeen as opposed to sixteen—but I can’t imagine how he got so much ink so fast.

He stares at my hand for a moment and then takes another swig of milk. I notice he doesn’t get a single drop of white stuck to his lips. My hatred for him doubles. Triples.

Quadruples with each subsequent swallow.

“Ben’s coming over in a few,” he tells Elizabeth, and she bristles with irritation.

“Caden, shake your sister’s hand,” she snaps, her voice stretched thin with fatigue from the long flight.

We flew business class—of course we did—but she’s still tired, and so am I. Drained. Empty. Emotionally destroyed. “And tell Ben he can spend a few nights at his own place. We have family stuff going on here.”

With another chug of milk, Caden turns and shuffles back into the living room, barefoot and wearing plaid pajama pants and nothing else.

Against my will, my eyes glide over the smooth muscles in his upper back, traveling down the curve of his spine and finding a taut, trim waist.

A drip of lust mixes with my newfound fury and turns it into something … weird. Like my emotions weren’t already in a tangle from finding out that I’m a goddamn kidnap victim.

As if he can sense me looking at him, Caden throws a lazy, arrogant glance over his shoulder.

“As if, little sister. In your dreams.”

Caden pads off, leaving me gaping, a violent, achy feeling shooting from my heart to my fingers and toes. What the … hell? My hands clench into fists at my sides, nails digging crescent marks into my palms. Did he really just say that? Really? Fucking really?!

I have to slow-blink away the shock of his casual insult before I can close my lips, turning back to look at Elizabeth.

She’s now halfway up the stairs and doesn’t seem to have heard.

Loneliness spreads out from my chest, an icy balm to soothe away the fire of my frustration.

It doesn’t make me feel any better though. Instead, I hurt worse. There’s nothing more devastating than the cavernous chill of being lonely.

“Like I was even looking,” I murmur lamely, almost a whole minute too late, and far too quiet for Caden to have heard anything at all.

Caden. When Elizabeth and I first met—and she’d finally stopped kissing my forehead and crying—we sat at my grandparents’ kitchen table, and she told me all about her other children.

Caden isn’t Elizabeth’ biological kid. Instead, he’s the son of her husband, Doctor Gabriel Vanguard. She met Caden when he was three, and I’d been gone for just a few months. She told me she threw herself into being his mother for want of missing me.

I’m not sure how to process that.

Apparently, I have four biological half-siblings living in this house, too, siblings that I share with Caden.

Heaving a defeated sigh, I follow Elizabeth up the stairs and find her waiting, wringing her hands in nervousness. The curved staircase deposits us in a bit of hallway floored with pale bamboo, a wall of windows facing toward the lake.

On either side of us, the hallway continues. Elizabeth gestures for me to follow her to the left.

“Your room is right across from Caden’s,” she tells me as I struggle to rein in a groan.

Fan-flipping-tastic, that’s exactly the restful, private space I need: one with a doorway that’s three feet from his.

Elizabeth glances over her shoulder to gauge my reaction, so I force a smile I don’t feel. Her hair is bouncy and dark like mine (before I dyed it anyway), thick espresso-colored curls pinned into a loose bun behind her head with several stray ringlets brushing against a pale freckled neck.

My own hand strays to my neck, and I flush, hoping Elizabeth won’t guess the direction of my thoughts.

“Look at those toes, kiddo. Long and curved, just like me and your mother. Your great-grandmother used to call them witch toes." My grandfather’s voice sounds in my mind, and I choke a little on my feelings. I looked just like them, like my grandparents, like Elena, like Saffron—the woman I thought was my mother, but was really just my … kidnapper.

“Awesome,” I reply belatedly, wondering how I’m going to survive living across the hallway from that tattooed prick.

Back home, I would’ve openly hated him while Daisy and Fanny would’ve secretly lusted after him. Oh, who am I kidding, I probably would’ve lusted after him, too. I almost choke again.

He’s supposed to be my brother, right? Or … stepbrother, I guess. Gross. I’ve never liked stepbrother romances, never. Good thing we’re as likely to see Yellowstone’s super volcano erupt and end the world as we are to see a romance between me and that horrible boy.

Elizabeth opens the door to a room on the right which surprises me. That means I have the lake view and Caden doesn’t. Interesting.

I stop short in the doorway as Elizabeth turns around, crossing one arm over her chest and clutching at her elbow with her hand.

She’s nervous, not something a famous true crime novelist is used to being I’ll bet. She’s written over twenty New York Times bestsellers. Her first novel—Abducted Under a Noonday Sun—launched her career.

It was semi-autobiographical.

It was about me.

The irony is that I’d read that book—more than once, actually—and never once made any sort of connection.

Stupidly, I’d even written an English paper analyzing the content and the deeper meaning in the story without ever getting it through my thick skull that I was dissecting a story about myself.

“Well, what do you think?” Elizabeth asks proudly, chest expanding as she takes in a deep breath and gestures around the room with a hand decorated in a diamond ring and tennis bracelet.

The day we met, she gave me a matching bracelet.

It’s in my bag; I can’t bear to wear it.

I force yet another smile. If there were a counter for it, I think we’d be at about nine-hundred and ninety-nine forced smiles in the six weeks since I met Elizabeth.

“It’s great,” I say, trying to keep my voice from cracking the way my heart is.

I almost miss the hot, angry feeling that Caden gave me. It was a shit-ton better than feeling the way I am right now, like a ghost, a shell, a shadow of my former self.

The room is … nice. I mean, it’s got those light-colored bamboo floors, stark white walls, and modern light fixtures that look like abstract metal sculptures.

There’s a bed in the center of the room, decorated with silver and faux fur pillows, and it faces out on a magnificent view of the water.

It’s just so cold and sterile in here. There’s no color, no art on the walls, no creaky floors.

There isn’t a dent in the wall from that one time Elena and I were wrestling. There isn’t a deep gouge on the baseboard molding from that day Grandpa and I bought an antique dresser and struggled to get it up the stairs and pushed into place in the corner.

“You can decorate it however you want,” Elizabeth says eagerly, stepping forward.

She’s so happy, I’m trying my best not to rain on her parade. I can only imagine what it must feel like to find the child that was stolen from you fourteen years prior. “We can hit the shops tomorrow, get you whatever you want.”

“That’s really nice of you,” I respond, our interaction stiff and forced. Elizabeth’ eyes—the same raven-black as my own—crinkle at the edges as she struggles to smile back.

We’re both trying here. It’s just … not a situation any normal person would ever find themselves in. “If you don’t mind, I’m a little tired from the flight …”

Polite code for please get the fuck out so I can die in peace.

“Oh, of course,” she says, shaking herself and falling right back into that famous novelist role she wears so well.

When I first saw her, I thought she might very well be the coldest person I’d ever met. But then she started to cry, and I could tell that she was just a master of locking away her emotions. She’d have to be, right? Considering what she’s been through.

Will she?