Play Me #4 by Tracy Wolff

Author:Tracy Wolff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Sebastian

I keep waiting for her to walk out. For her to decide the story I’m telling is too real, too raw, too brutal for her to listen to. Because while I don’t give her the details of Dylan’s death—the catalogue of damage that to this day takes my breath away, I’m pretty sure it’s self-explanatory how I failed him. How he counted on me to take care of things, to take care of him, and I messed up.

I really messed up.

I trusted my father when I knew better. I believed him when he said he’d do what needed to be done—especially since the money was owed to Nico Valducci, the man my father had been in bed with for years. The man whose fingerprints are, to this day, all over the Atlantis and the Tuscany and every other project my father is involved in in this town.

“He could have stopped it,” I whisper when it feels like I’m going to explode if I don’t say it out loud. If I don’t give voice to the deepest, darkest kernel of my shame. “To this day, my father is business associates—friends—with the man Dylan owed money to. Even if he didn’t want to pay, he could have stopped his execution with barely a word. He didn’t do that.”

And Dylan suffered because of it. He died because my father wanted to get me away from him. He died because my father considered him expendable, a toy that had long outlived its usefulness. And because I was too lazy to follow through. I should have checked. Should have made sure my father did what he’d said he would. But there were mid-terms and papers due, parties and the girl I was fucking at the time—a girl whose name I can’t even remember now. I just remember that instead of calling Dylan, instead of checking on him, I went back to her dorm room. Fucked her. And when it was over, when I got back to my own place, it was to find a message from a hysterical Janet telling me that they’d found Dylan’s body.

How I could have fucked up so completely—how I could have yielded control to my father like it was nothing—I still don’t understand. It’s a mistake that will haunt me the rest of my life, a mistake I’ll never in a million years forgive myself for.

I wait for Aria’s judgment, for the disgust she must be feeling to show in her eyes. But for long seconds, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, I’m not sure she even breathes as she stands there staring at me, huge tears glistening in her dark eyes. Turning them liquid and lovely. So, so lovely.

Another time I might appreciate the way she looks—tousled and beautiful and just a little bit ravaged. Like she’s gone a few playful rounds with me and lost. Or won, whatever works for the metaphor.

Except there’s nothing playful about the story I just told, nothing playful about how I’m feeling.

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