The Emotion Game

Chapter Twenty-Six: Tread Lightly

Jack scanned the hallway, his blue orbs soaking up his surroundings like a saturated sponge. He glanced down at the hat hanging from his fingers. The band where it touched the forehead had some discoloration; Reynold must wear it a lot.

His gaze lifted back in front of him as he walked, his pace a strange gait as his unsteady mindset acted as a guide. Crimson said the rec room was the third door down. Had he passed one or two? Jack stopped dead in the hallway and bit his lip, turning to see behind him. His lungs squeezed at what met his eyes. Noir. Jack's jaw tightened as their gazes met and he flung his eyes forward again, avoiding eye contact with the guy. Noir was in the lane behind him—approaching him. Where was he going?

Jack inhaled a smooth breath as he drummed up the guts to glance over his shoulder again. He could almost feel Noir's presence behind him. In one sudden move, Jack flung his body and his eyes in a 180 degree spin, narrowing his gaze as he stared at Noir's position. He was gone. Jack let out a word of frustration under his breath and slapped his hip, his hand clenching around its grip of Reynold's snapback. "He'll always be Griffin to me."

Jack's mind resurfaced the phrase. Noir and Reynold were brothers. Reynold Noir. Jack let the name soak into his brain. He needed to get rid of that anger. It wasn't Reynold's fault Greg died—Was murdered. Jack inhaled a breath. He needed to think. But knowing that Reynold was related to the guy who held a gun on him didn't set well with his Jack's mind. His heart begged him to take it out on someone. He knew it wasn't good to keep these emotions bottled up inside, but where else could they go?

Jack blinked the thoughts away and stepped back into a walk. Remembering that he'd only passed one door, he eyed the second and kept walking, putting his hand to the knob of the third, shifting his eyes around to see if he was still alone. The doorknob sent chills up Jack's arm as he gave it a twist and he pushed the barrier in, gingerly poking his head inside the room. He let his eyes whirl along the walls and floors, trying to find that chocolate head of hair like a radar scanning for signs of life, "Reynold?" Jack's voice came out in a whisper. Why was he whispering?

He glanced down at the hat before stepping fully into the room, easing the door back into its place in the wall. Treadmills, pullup bars, a ping-pong table. Why would they give them use of a rec room? Jack's brows lowered as he stared at the space. Where was Reynold?

Jack stepped up toward the table-tennis and dropped the hat upon the surface, eyeing the paddle. He let his gaze drift away and settle on the water cooler next to the door and the stack of paper cups beside it. It seemed he was alone in here too.

"Up for a game?"

Jack whirled around at the voice and blinked in shock. No one was there. But it sounded so real. Jack's lips parted and he squeezed his eyes shut as his mind faked another phrase.

"If you think you can beat me."

Greg's casual laughter bounced around Jack's brain making his stomach flip, and an image of his smile popping into his frontal cortex. It was so real. They always played ping-pong together—their favorite pastime at the EMT station's break room. Shut up, Greg. Jack ordered his mind back into place. He couldn't think about Greg. Not now. He needed to let it go. There was nothing he could do about it. Greg was dead.

Jack's posture wobbled as the realization of those words hit him like a freight train. He slapped the table with both hands and let out a yell of frustration into the air. He gripped a ping-pong paddle and slung it across the room, watching it slam into the wall and slap against the floor. The little carton of ping-pong balls went next. Not as satisfying though. They were like little pockets of trapped air that bounced every which way.