Page 71 of Play Dirty

They share a nervous glance. But it’s quick. Too quick for me to decipher it properly.

“It’s the darkness,” Alexander says.

Which redirects my attention. “What?”

“Inside you. That’s the draw of this place. It’s not the building. It’s the darkness you keep collared and leashed. This place is just a symbol, Jordan. Where you felt safe. Where you could let it out of the cage.”

Is it, I wonder? Is that why I have all these thoughts and feelings about Turning Point Club?

“At least you can admit it,” Augustine says. And then she shrugs. “That’s a really good first step.”

I start thinking about that one game I organized with Finn and his girl, Issy. How I tricked her into thinking she wasn’t playing a game, but of course, she was. It just wasn’t her game. She had a pretty specific sex club fantasy of being watched by strangers. But then I turned the whole thing upside down and yeah. I had other things in mind for that game and she was just the vehicle I used to get where I needed to go.

But I played it off using the sex club thing as an excuse. A way to back out.

But was it? Just an excuse?

“Right?” Augustine says, pulling me back out of my thoughts.

“Admit it,” I say, repeating her question. “What did I admit? I didn’t admit to anything. That was Alexander’s overactive imagination.”

She lets out a huff of air, like I’m exasperating her. “Do you or don’t you have a fucking dark side?”

“Why are you getting pissy with me?”

“Just… do you?”

I shrug. “Maybe. I guess. I mean, fucking more than one person at a time isn’t really dark. But whatever. I like it.”

“You like it with strangers, Jordan.” This is Alexander. “That’s the key with you, ya know.”

I stare at him for a second. “I like it with you guys too.”

“Of course you do,” Augustine says. “Because we’re where it all began, right?”

I have to hold in a laugh. “No. I was always into it. It’s just… you guys… you two and Ixion were the first I did it with more than once.”

“So why is that?” she asks.

“Because I fell in love with you, Augustine. You know that.”

“But not me?” Alexander says.

“No. Not you. You were just there.”

“Like Ixion,” he adds.

“No, not like him, either. He was… he was always there.”

“Do you think he’d bring Evangeline here?” Alexander asks. “If you opened the place back up? I mean, is that what you’re after? Them, with you. So you could have him?”

“He’s not like that. At all,” I say, stressing the word. “We’re just not like that.”

“But you’d want it that way. So maybe deep down your new obsession with this building, with reopening the Club, it’s all related back to what he never offered up?”

I pause. Considering this.

Is it?