Black Number Four (42 page)

His eyes grow wide and he crosses the room to sit on the bed with me again. “What? No, baby. Are you kidding me? You’re the only thing keeping me grounded right now, the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning.” His eyes are pained and his jaw tense. “I don’t deserve you, Skyler.”

“I don’t understand, why do you keep saying that?”

He opens his mouth to say something, but then stops himself, shaking his head. “I can’t get into it tonight, okay? I love you, Skyler.” My stomach still flutters at those words. “I do, so fucking much. But I’m going through a lot right now. And I want to tell you, I
will
tell you, but I can’t tell you tonight. I know that’s not fair, but I’m asking you to be okay with it. For me.”

Kip lifts my hand in his to his lips and kisses my fingers, waiting for me to reply. I nod softly. “Okay.”

He smiles and pulls me in for a long, slow kiss, making my thoughts go fuzzy. “I’m going to jump in the shower real quick. Want to join?” He winks and for just a second the playful Kip is back, but even still he’s hidden behind sad, hooded eyes.

“I have to turn in that paper before midnight. Let me finish and submit it real quick and then I’ll be there.”

“Don’t keep me waiting too long.” He leans up and kisses me again before turning toward the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

I sigh, leaning over the bed for my bag and retrieving my laptop. I don’t like that he won’t tell me what’s going on, but whatever it is, it’s something he’s not ready to deal with just yet. I can respect that. When he is ready, I’ll be here.

When I open my laptop and click the power button, nothing happens. I try a few more times and curse under my breath when I realize it’s dead. I didn’t bring my charger with me and this paper is due in twenty minutes. I scan the room for Kip’s laptop and find it set up on the small desk pushed against the far wall. Quickly, I grab my computer and take it to the desk, pulling the cord from his laptop and trying it in mine.

Nothing.

Shit.
I knew it was a long shot that it would work for mine, too, but it was worth a try. I have the paper in my email, I just need to format it and add a few sentences in the conclusion. Why didn’t I just do this before I left the house?
Idiot.

Can brunettes have blonde moments?

“Kip?” I call out over my shoulder, opening his laptop. “What’s the password on your laptop? Mine’s dead and I forgot my charger.”

He doesn’t answer, the shower muting my question. I go to open the door to ask him again when his home screen pops up without asking for a password.

“Perfect,” I murmur, double clicking the Internet Explorer icon. I log into my email and pull up the paper before quickly formatting it and typing out my final thoughts. By the time I send the email to my professor, there’s less than two minutes left until midnight.

Talk about a close call.

“Sky?” Kip calls over the shower.

“I’m coming!”

I exit the browser window and start to close the laptop screen again when a folder in the right hand corner of the desktop catches my eye.

It’s labeled with my name.

I glance back over my shoulder at the bathroom, but the door is still closed, the shower running. I know it’s wrong, snooping through his stuff, but my curiosity overwhelms my conscience and I double click the folder until a list of documents pops up. There are a few photos of me playing poker and the video that he took that night I blew the tournament downtown. I breathe a sigh of relief, it’s just the research he’s been doing to help me prep for May.

Wow, he made an entire folder for me. He wasn’t kidding about wanting to help.

I click on the Word document labeled FILE and when it fills the screen, one large photo pops up. It’s the headshot I took for a blog site last year. Written above my head in bold letters is my name in all caps.

This is weird.

I scroll through the file, reading the text under each category.

CLASS SCHEDULE.

PAST RELATIONSHIPS.

HOME LIFE.

HOBBIES.

TOURNAMENT STANDINGS.

BLOG ARTICLES.

SOCIAL MEDIA.

VIDEO RESEARCH.

LIVE FEEDBACK.

The more I scroll, the faster my heart races. Under the regular text in each category, there are short notes written out in red.

Wears sunglasses to hide eyes – possible tell? Lip quivers slightly when she has a pocket pair. Easily distracted by emotions – work her up before tournament? Bothered by blogs referring to her looks. Pay blogger for racy interview/find pictures? Main reason is for family – parents not well off. Cares a lot about what other people think.

What the hell is going on?

I scroll and read and scroll and read until I feel I might throw up. When I reach the end of the document, there’s a small line of text written in bold.

Remember, Son – head in the game. Get her close, but don’t get caught up. Break her down, find her weaknesses, and beat her in May or give it hell trying. You help me with my dream, I help you with yours. UCLA is waiting. – Dad

I stand so fast I knock the top of my thighs on the bottom of the desk, but the pain is masked by the panic racing through me. I cover my mouth, shaking my head as tears rush to my eyes.
No.

Oh my God, please, please no.

“Sorry, Sky, but I was turning into a raisin in there,” Kip says, opening the bathroom door as steam floats up around him. He’s relaxed and smiling, a navy blue towel wrapped around his waist.

But the only color I see is red.

Kip stops short when he sees my face. “What happened?” He moves toward me but I back away, shaking my head violently. “What’s going on?”

My eyes find his computer and he follows my stare, swallowing hard when he sees the file pulled up on the screen. For a moment, he says nothing, and it feels like the entire world has stopped – like everything and everyone is waiting for what will happen next. My heart drums loud in my ears, my hands shaking, my eyes blurred from tears.

“Skyler,” he finally says, moving toward me with his arms outstretched, palms facing up like I’m a wild animal and he knows the slightest move could scare me away. “I can explain.”

“Don’t.” I shake my head more, the room spinning as my stomach lurches. My voice is low,
too
low. Scratchy. Weak. He takes another step toward me and it’s like he crossed over the force field that was holding me back. I back up to the wall, doubling over as I scream at the top of my lungs, “Don’t fucking touch me!”

My breaths are ragged, strained under the pressure of my world collapsing. When I look back up at Kip, his jaw is clenched and his eyes laden with pain. “I wasn’t going to go through with it, I was going to tell you and call the whole thing off. Yes that’s why I came to Palm South but when I met you, I knew I could never do what my dad was asking me to.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

He swallows. “It’s complicated.”

“Are you serious?” I ask, incredulous. Shaking my head, I lift myself from the wall and stand straighter. “Whatever, I don’t even care. Just tell me you aren’t registered for the tournament. Tell me this was something stupid you were involved in when I was being stupid with Erin. Tell me we can put all this stupidity behind us and move on.”

Kip doesn’t respond, his nose flaring as he presses his lips together in a hard line. I watch as the muscles over his abdomen flex with every breath. “I can’t.”

My heart slows, the beats coming at a reduced pace but with more force than I’ve ever felt. Every thump knocks me forward a little, jerking my body with it. “What?”

He swallows. “I am registered for the tournament.”

“But you’re not going, right? Not anymore. Not after you promised me you wouldn’t hurt me. Not after you told me you loved me. Not after we became
us
. Right?” I ask the questions without breathing. Breath doesn’t exist in my body at this point. “Right?”

Kip doesn’t move. He doesn’t swallow or blink or flinch, but one single tear rolls down the left side of his face and under his cheek.

And I know that one tear is saying more than any words can.

“I’m sorry, Skyler.”

He doesn’t look away from me or hang his head. He just kills me with his baby blues, keeping me locked in their glare as he waits for my next move. And I don’t know what to do. I want to throw something at him, I want to kill him, I want to cry and scream and rip his apartment to shreds.

But more than that, I want to run to him. I want him to hold me and make the pain tearing my chest apart disappear. I want him to fix it. To fix
me
.

But he won’t.

Because he can’t.

Because he never loved me enough to care in the first place.

The reality of everything crashes down on me in one large, soul-crushing wave. I start breathing faster, panic washing through me as the wave takes me under the current, pulling me down, down, down.

I look at him one last time, memorizing the words I read in the file and relating them to his face. His beautiful smile ties into his lies, his lips into his broken promises, his eyes into the pain I feel right now in this moment. Without another word, I turn and run out of his apartment, flying across the parking lot and onto campus. He doesn’t come after me and I don’t wait to see if he will. I just run. I know I’ll have to send someone back to get my stuff tomorrow, but I couldn’t stay in that room one second longer.

When I reach the house, my legs are burning and my feet are raw from running on the concrete. I put my hand on the doorknob but don’t turn it. Everything hits me and I fall to my knees, leaning my forehead against the door as I give in to the flood of tears escaping my eyes. I squeeze them tight, trying to will the tears to stay away, but they seep through the cracks and pull me down further into the dark hole Kip shoved me in.

Everything was a lie.

Helping me with poker, asking about my past, about my dreams. Kissing me, touching me, making me want him and making me think he wanted me, too. The words, the promises, every single feeling.

This is the game changer. This is the part where everything I thought I knew about the game gets shattered into tiny pieces and I’m left reeling trying to pick them up and glue them back together, to force them to make sense to me again. I thought I had it in the bag, I thought I was sitting on Lucky Street with nothing but good days and smooth sailing ahead.

But I’m in stormy water.

Deep, treacherous, Kip-infested water.

And I don’t think anyone is strong enough to survive this storm.

Running has only ever been cardio for me. But right now, it’s so much more. It’s the distraction from life, the pain I need to feel to keep my mind off the torture that is reality. I’ve been running for at least two hours now and I know I’ll wake up in the morning and barely be able to feel my legs, but right now they’re burning and aching right along with my ribs and arms and that’s just enough to draw a little bit of the pain from my heart.

But it won’t last for long. I know that because I ran one night when I was back home. I flew home to see my dad immediately after I got off the phone with my mom when I got back from the cruise. After the first night of being in the house with Dad, listening to him tell me things no son should have to hear his dad say, I went for a long run just like this. But it was only a temporary numbness. My mom said it so simply, she said that my father was sick, like he had a cold or the flu or a fucking headache. But the truth is so much worse – it demands so much more than that measly four letter word.