Lover on Loop: Her Cruel Revenge Game novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cabinet
At the opening of his show Greer shuts Asa's right hand in a glass case in front of ninety guests. The ninth time. The last cycle starts counting.
Greer Lathrop shut my right hand in a glass display case in front of ninety people, and four of them filmed it.
It was the opening of my show at our town gallery, ten minutes after the doors opened.
She came down the center aisle in a gray dress with a yellow plastic flashlight in her fist.
The flashlight was switched on.
Every light in the room was already blazing, and she carried it anyway, held tight against her chest.
She didn't look at the paintings or at the guests.
She looked at me.
"Asa," she said. "Hold out your hand."
I held it out.
I always did.
The case stood where Darren had wheeled it that morning, in the middle of the aisle, with my brushes laid out on green felt under a heavy oak lid.
I had never seen it in the aisle before.
Greer lifted the lid with her free hand.
I laid my right hand on the felt myself.
She didn't aim for my face.
She never did.
The lid came down on my knuckles and she leaned her whole weight on it.
I heard the bones before I felt them.
Somebody screamed near the wine table.
I made a noise I hadn't planned on making, and my knees hit the floor.
Greer let go of the lid.
She stood over me with the flashlight still lit and her face perfectly calm.
"That one's for my son," she said.
Then her voice shook, only a little.
"Now you know what it feels like."
I didn't know what to tell her.
This was the ninth time I had knelt on a floor and heard her say that.
Every ninety-one days she woke up on the morning of our boy's funeral and hated me fresh.
She had no idea there had been eight times before this one.
"Greer," I managed. "It's all right."
"It isn't."
She turned and walked out of the gallery without looking back.
The flashlight beam swung across the wall of my paintings as she went.
Nobody stopped her.
Darren was beside me before the door finished swinging.
He had his good charcoal suit on, and he knelt and took my wrist very gently, above the break.
"Don't move it," he said. "Breathe."
"Call an ambulance."
"June's already on her way. I called her myself."
His voice was low and warm.
Darren had represented me for eight years, and he had sat in my kitchen the night Benji died.
"Asa, listen to me. She doesn't know what she's doing. It's grief. It will pass."
"It's passed eight times."
"And you've survived eight times." He squeezed my good hand. "Let me deal with the press. Say nothing, to anyone. By tomorrow nobody will remember this."
A woman near us was holding her phone up, steady, her thumb on the red button.
I looked at the case.
Its hinges had never been quiet in the six weeks it sat in my studio.
That night the lid had come down with no sound at all.
Somebody had oiled them.
I said nothing about that either.
June came through the doors in her scrubs and pushed through the crowd with a bag of ice.
She took one look at my hand and said a word I won't write down.
"Eight times," she said, kneeling. "Eight times, Asa."
"Nine."
"This is the ninth?"
"Yes."
She pressed the ice against my knuckles, and I bit down on my teeth.
Darren stood.
"I'll see to the guests," he said. "Take him straight to the county hospital."
He walked off with his arms open, saying something kind to a group of buyers.
While June fought to get me up, the woman with the phone stepped close and held the screen out to me.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "I thought you'd want to see. I posted it already. It's everywhere."
I watched myself kneel on the little screen.
I watched Greer walk down the aisle.
And at the very edge of the frame, behind the case, I watched Darren lift his chin and nod to her once, before the lid came down.
My own phone lit up in my pocket.
I got it out with my left hand.
The lock screen had always held a number only I could see, counting down from ninety-one.
It still said ninety-one.
Under it were two new lines.
LAST RESET.
WHAT SHE HOLDS AT DAY 91, SHE KEEPS.
I read it twice with June's arm around my ribs.
Eight times I had stayed away until she came to me.
So this time I decided I wasn't going to wait.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend