Fake Game (The System #3)

Chapter Forty-One

FORTY-ONE

DEER

I keep my lips carefully tilted in a soft smile while making sure that I’m nodding as I listen to Jackson’s sister chatter away about her new friend at school and the history teacher they both dislike.

All night it has felt like there are beetles crawling across my skin, and I’ve had to use every ounce of mental willpower to not fidget every five seconds. The mask I’m wearing to keep my cool is fracturing around the edges, and I’m just praying it stays together until the end of the meal. The very same meal that sits like lead in my stomach.

I believed too much in myself and am falling short. My sanity is splitting at the seams, and I’m just trying to prevent the frays from completely unraveling. I should never have agreed to this, but I was so worried that his parents would judge me for not showing up, that they’d think I was unreliable and not good enough for him. I just wanted them to approve of us as a couple.

Gods.

I want to bury my face in my hands and slump against the table. My mental battery is reaching a critical low.

“Sorry, but I really need to take this.”

I glance up as Jackson quickly dips from the table, phone in hand.

All those nerves dancing across my skin suddenly pause, and the hairs on my arm stand on high alert as I keep my gaze locked on him.

Something’s wrong.

I can tell by the way he’s tensed up, and it doesn’t help that his eyes keep flicking over to me.

“I’m sure everything is fine, honey.”

I smile at Jackson’s mom, but I know it doesn’t reach my eyes.

“Yeah, it’s just…do you mind if I check my phone for a moment?”

“Not at all,” she waves me off.

“Thanks.” I reach under the table and pluck my purse off the bag hook. The second my hands touch the soft leather I feel the vibrations. My fingers quickly unclasp the gold Dior closure, and I pull out my phone, which is buzzing with such ferocity that the damn thing feels like it’s a million degrees.

A premonition of sickening dread crashes over me as I swipe it open.

“Deer, wait.” Jackson’s hand lands on my shoulder as he snags the phone from my hands, but it’s too late.

The news alert sears itself into my eyes.

brEAKING: POPULAR VIDEO GAME STREAMER “THECOZYDEAR” DOXED ON MAJOR SOCIAL PLATFORM.

My entire body is dunked in an ice bath, and frost works its way through my bloodstream, freezing me in my tracks.

What.

The restaurant chatter that’s been steadily streaming around us turns into a cacophony, beating against my ears and drowning everything out.

No. I must’ve read it wrong.

“I’m sorry but there’s been an emergency, and we have to leave.” Jackson announces to the table as he pulls me up, arm around my waist to support my failing body. “I already paid the bill, but—shit, we really need to go.”

I follow his eyeline to the bodyguard who stands at the door to our private room.

“Mr. Lau, we have to go out back. Reporters are beginning to gather out front.”

“All right.”

Reporters? Already?

How did they even know I was here? Are they tracking me?

I barely process the restaurant as we move through it, past the dining patrons and behind the kitchen.

Everything’s too much. The lights are too bright. The noise is too loud. The air feels too hot.

My head swims and the little food I just ate churns in my stomach. I’m trying to keep it together, I really am. But I’m suffocating.

The second we step outside, and the balmy night breeze licks my sweaty skin, the contents of my meal make a violent reappearance.

I vaguely feel someone holding my hair back so it doesn’t get caught in the mess.

Gods, I really hope there are no reporters back here or else this is going to be front page news.

Once it feels like the entire menu of The Bay has exited my body, Jackson lifts me into a waiting Escalade. He takes care of everything, buckling me in, cleaning me up, giving me water, and holding my hand.

“How?” I croak.

“I don’t know yet. I didn’t have long enough to talk to Phoebe.”

My body feels all gross and clammy, and my mind is spinning like a roulette wheel, going round and round and round. This is a fever dream, driving me to the very brink of madness.

I’m living in a haze and everything is blurry. Time passes fast and slow, and nothing computes in my brain.

“Deer, baby, I need you to breathe for me.” His voice sounds all muffled.

“What?”

“Breathe, you’re hyperventilating. You’ll pass out if you keep it up.”

My awareness starts to trickle back drip by drip, and I hear myself, hear the sharp intakes of breath that aren’t enough to feed any real air into my lungs.

Jackson puts a hand on the center of my chest, trying to get me to slow down, but it’s no use.

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

Little black dots poke at my vision, like a screen going static.

And still, I can’t stop.

I can’t stop.

Not until my body gives out.

***

The world swims around me, like I’m underwater but my goggles have a crack, and everything turns murky as the salt assaults my eyes.

I can tell that I’m cradled in someone’s arms and they are carrying me somewhere.

Where?

Panic begins to claw at me like a tiger trapped in a cage, and it’s ripping my insides to shreds. I beg my body to move. I beg and I beg and I beg.

My leg kicks out and hits something metal, pain ricocheting up my shin.

“Fuck. Deer, stop.”

The voice settles over me like a blanket.

“Can someone please hit the penthouse button. I need to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”

The voice continues to calm me, allowing the rational side of my mind to creep back in piece by piece.

Elevator. Jackson. Bodyguards. Me.

The elevator’s ascent sixty stories into the sky doesn’t really help the nausea that seems to have returned, but I pray to myself to hold it in. I squeeze my eyes shut, the fluorescent lights assaulting my senses.

Nothing seems real. Jackson’s touch on my skin feels like a ghost, and whatever words he is speaking sound like they are spoken through cotton balls in my ears. Denial slots itself like a sheet over my brain so I don’t process what just happened.

We start moving again, and I risk opening one eye to see the boys’ familiar apartment. People rush around me, but Jackson doesn’t stop until he gets to his room and lays me on his bed.

He reaches down and moves my hair out of my face, running his thumb down my temple. His inky stare holds me true, and I use what little strength I have to hold onto his forearm in a silent plea.

He crawls onto the mattress next to me, giving me a life raft in the middle of the churning sea. I grip onto that safety for dear life, begging it not to leave me.

Jackson lets me curl against him. My hands grasp the front of his sweater as my head rests against his pec. I seek out his heartbeat, that steady thumping a thread of sanity in the madness pouring through my mind.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, lips on the crown of my head. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

Except, I’m not.

My physical being may be safe right now, back in the confines of the high-tech apartment building. But my mind? My mind is not safe. It is seconds away from a gust of wind coming in to knock that sheet of denial away and reveal all my weaknesses. My mental barriers that I’ve spent so long trying to build up to keep me protected just keep getting beaten over and over, and the boards I’ve put up to stop the cracks are coming loose.

It's everything attacking me simultaneously.

It’s the Deer Hunters tormenting me.

It’s the nightmares that won’t let me sleep.

It’s the SWAT team invading my apartment.

It’s the sports drink that left me roofied.

It’s the messages I pretend I don’t see telling me I shouldn’t exist.

It’s the DMs I try to ignore with gross, sexual fantasies.

It’s the world outside that doesn’t feel safe.

Everything, everywhere, all at once.

I’m not sure how much more I can take before I’m split wide open.

My head begins to pound, like someone has placed a nail on the back of my skull and is trying to hammer it in. I squeeze my eyes shut tightly and dig my forehead into Jackson’s chest, trying to get the pain to go away.

But it won’t.

The pain, the terror, the dread just burrow deeper until they take root, like a poisonous plant latching on and becoming part of me, and I worry it’s too late for me to survive as it begins to feed off the light inside me, dimming my sparkle with each passing second like a vampire draining a human of blood until I’m nothing but a lifeless husk.