Seducing My Ex's Father In Law

8

HUDSON HADN’T CALLED it a game—that was my term. He’d called it experiments. He’d been conducting them for years before I learned about them, before he used me as one of his subjects.

I didn’t realize until much later that they actually were experiments for him. He wasn’t out to play people, though that was the ultimate outcome. He was studying behavior, trying to discover what made them work, what made them feel. What made them love. He was attempting to understand fundamental human emotions that he was certain he lacked in himself.

He didn’t lack them, of course. He was the Tin Man come to life, searching for a heart that he hadn’t realized he’d possessed all along.

Back then, I was just as unaware of his capability to love as he was. I saw him as he’d appeared—callous, cold, and cruel.

I’d envied him.

I’d suffered pain after pain after pain, some of the more recent injuries at his hand, and I’d wanted nothing more than to be numb. I’d wanted to be empty and void. I’d wanted to stop feeling.

And he agreed to teach me how.

I never knew exactly why he chose to let me in on his experiments when he’d let no one in before. Maybe it was because we’d grown up together. Maybe he’d had a sense of responsibility. Maybe he’d thought he owed me—he did, by the way. He’d definitely owed me.

Whatever the reason, he’d taken me under his wing. He’d taught me how to manipulate, how to prey, how to influence and exploit. The first time had been easy. It had been my job to flirt, then to seduce. The affair I’d had with Tim Kerrigan had been free of attachment, but it had empowered me.

I’d set my sights on a stranger, and I’d drawn him into my bed, exactly as I’d planned. That had done quite a thing for my self-confidence. It had been so effective, I’d nearly forgotten the goal of the scheme.

Then, when his wife discovered our indiscretion, as had always been the objective of the experiment, my feelings changed. She’d been devastated. Heartbroken. They’d been newlyweds, and I’d destroyed their happiness. At least that’s what she’d said to me the one time I’d come face to face with her. It hadn’t stopped her from staying with him.

That day, though, when she spewed words of hatred and venom in my direction, I had a moment of anguish. It didn’t feel good to be the b***h. It didn’t feel pretty to be cruel and destructive. The whole point of playing these games with Hudson had been to feel nothing, not to feel terrible.

But as I’d stood in the wake of her attack, as I turned my focus from concentrating on what I was feeling to observing her, the calmer I’d become. My reality altered. Instead of pain being a thing that lived only inside of me, I discovered it could exist elsewhere. Outside of me. Detached from me. Severed.

And that was why I’d played. Not because I’d wanted to see what would happen if but because when someone else cried and fell apart, when someone else’s world was sabotaged, my pain diminished. The scars left by Hudson and Charles and all the others would lighten. The deeper wounds, the ones inflicted by the person I should have been able to trust more than almost anyone, wouldn’t throb with intensity, wouldn’t cripple me with their ache. Every bit of my pain grew smaller and smaller until I’d become numb.

Numb didn’t mean gone, though. It was still there, somewhere, invisible and buried inside, waiting for me. I knew that as soon as I stopped playing it would return and take me over. That was how it had become a game in my mind. The objective was them or me. Someone had to hurt, and as long as it wasn’t me, I won. As long as I was the one still standing, I won.

It was the only way I knew to survive.

Once upon a time I’d hoped that one day I’d overcome it. That I’d hurt enough people and break enough hearts, and I’d be empty for real. That the scars and the wounds would be magically healed, and I’d be new and pure and whole. I could quit The Game, then, and learn to feel again.

But I’d hurt enough people now. I’d hurt people who’d actually meant something to me. I’d turned The Game on Hudson. I’d hurt him. I’d hurt his

wife. Pain very much lived outside of me. I’d seen it close up on the faces of the people I should have cared most for.

And still I felt it waiting for me, lingering in the shadows. A ghost that would always haunt me. A cancer that yearned to spread.