Games Untold (The Inheritance Games #5)

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

W ithin the week, I could see: He was getting stronger. A week after that, and I knew: It wouldn’t be long until Harry was ready to make the trek across the rocks.

When he leaves , I promised myself again and again and again, this is over. When he leaves, I’m leaving, too.

And then, one morning after yet another lighthouse night, we both woke with the dawn, and I knew with sudden clarity that I wasn’t going to work that day—and maybe not ever again.

My supervisor would understand. She’d been on pins and needles since my mother’s appearance at the hospital. As for the school, anyone who knew I was a Rooney, anyone who knew what that meant, would understand why I might need to disappear.

And I wanted every minute that I could get.

“What have you been doing all day, every day to pass the time?” I murmured. Harry and I were alone in Jackson’s shack. Jackson was, as was typical for the daytime and more and more nights, out on his boat.

“Well,” Harry told me, “when I get bored, I build castles out of sugar.”

I gave him a look.

“Anything can be a game, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, if you know how to play.”

And from then on, day after day, the two of us played.

The Cracks On The Wall Game. We played it lying on our backs on the floor of the shack. One of us chose a specific crack on the wall and challenged the other to guess which one it was—with delightful penalties for every incorrect guess.

The Boards On The Floor Game. Some boards you could step on. Some you couldn’t. It was a way for him to work on his balance, precision, and control, and it reminded me a bit of The Floor Is Lava… but with penalties for every misstep.

Neither one of us ever touched the loose board, the one beneath which I’d hidden that metal token from his life before. I took that to mean that Harry knew exactly where it was and that both of us wanted it and everything it represented to stay buried at least a little longer.

The Not A Single Glare Game was one of Harry’s favorites. He tried—expertly—to get under my skin, and I did my best to keep my face perfectly blank. As he ratcheted up his impressive efforts, I found increasingly creative ways of putting him in his place… without a single glare.

Checkers. We found an old set of Jackson’s. Harry cheated. I cheated right back.

The Close Your Eyes Game was another test of Harry’s balance and limitations, of his body’s ability to react to the unexpected. I hid somewhere in the room, standing perfectly still, and he had to find me with his eyes closed, walking over and around obstacles, listening for me with every breath.

There was something about watching him move slowly toward me with his eyes closed, something about trying to breathe as quietly as I could, knowing he could hear me anyway. Whenever Harry managed to catch me, he relished saying four words and only four words.

“Turnabout is fair play.”

When it was my turn to find him, Harry went all out. He never just stood anywhere. He climbed or he knelt, twisting himself into an impossible position to lay in wait for me. With my eyes closed, I would listen for the sound of his breathing, his heartbeat, the slightest of movements. And any time I got close, he would move—silently, close enough to me sometimes that I could feel his movements in the air.

There were times when I paced after him—my eyes closed, listening for him, feeling him—that I thought about fairy tales, about the little mermaid without her voice, Rapunzel with her hair shorn. Sometimes, the absence of something you’d come to rely on could be a gift. Tamping down one sense could send the others into overdrive.

On a particular day—what I knew was probably going to be one of our last days—I went very still, sure that he was close. I listened , and when my target silenced even his breath, I inhaled through my nose. We’d both been using the same cheap soap, but somehow, Harry smelled to me of saltwater and the ocean breeze and something earthy, like summer grass.

I turned, then sidestepped. “Found you.” My fingers made their way to the side of his face, then to the back of his head as my eyes opened.

“Cheater,” he murmured.

I hadn’t cheated. “You are a horrible loser.”

He shrugged, then began lowering his lips toward mine. “I’ve never claimed to know how to lose.”