Player(81)

Shock passed over his face, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Well then, you’re in deeper shit than I realized. I mean it, Haddad. Leave her the fuck alone. Don’t come around. Don’t call. Don’t push her, or you will answer to me. Do you hear me?”

I ran a hand over my face with an ancient weight tethered to my heart. “I hear you,” I rasped.

“Prove it.”

I nodded once.

With every eye on me and the silence of the club pressing me into the dirt, I did the only thing I could.

I walked away, dragging my busted heart behind me.





29





Pizza Cake





Val

A gentle knock rapped on my bedroom door. I didn’t bother wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“Come in,” I said, not really caring if the person on the other side heard or not.

The door cracked, then opened. “Hey.” It was Amelia, bearing a tray of food and a smile.

Katherine followed her with another tray, and Rin was behind her with a third.

I didn’t move to sit. I didn’t speak either.

I hadn’t moved from this spot since the moment I fell into it last night. There had been no sleep. Only a drifting in and out of consciousness between long stretches of tears.

Everything hurt. My raw nose. My thumping skull. My aching body. My shredded heart.

“We ordered your favorite meals from your favorite restaurants to cheer you up.”

“There’s no cake, is there? Because I never want to see another slice of cake as long as I live.”

“No cake,” Katherine assured me. “Drunken noodles, veggie pizza, tacos, lasagna, and gelato, but no cake.”

I peeled myself off my mattress and propped myself upright. They set the trays on various flat surfaces around my room.

“Where do you want to start?” Katherine asked.

I extended a hand. “Drunken noodles. I am not afraid to cry into noodles.”

Rin handed me the paper carton, and I sighed, grasping the chopsticks stuck in the mass of noodles.

“Did you get any sleep?” Rin asked.

“Not really.” I poked around in the carton, wondering if I was even hungry. My empty stomach lurched in answer. So I shoveled a rude bite into my mouth, hoping I could at least make my belly happy.

“I just can’t believe this.” Amelia’s eyes were impossibly big and sad and crystalline blue.

Katherine wore a slight frown. “I never thought Sam would participate in something so asinine.”

I tried to sigh, but my breath hiccuped as I drew it in. “I both don’t believe it and am not at all surprised. I always knew it was too good to be true. I just had no idea how horrible the truth was. I was just a joke. He never had feelings for me. He never wanted to hang out with me. He never wanted to even talk to me, and if it hadn’t been for the bet, he wouldn’t have. Everything we had was triggered by that lie.”

Rin nodded in thought. “But does that make his feelings any less real now? Does it matter how it got started?”

“It was started by a cruel wager—an unwanted girl and the man everyone desires. The man who never dates dating the girl he’d never choose. I hope his feelings aren’t real. I hope it was all a lie, every word. At least that way it’d be easier to bear.”

Katherine gave me a look. “You don’t honestly believe that, do you?”

I fished around in my noodles like the answers were buried somewhere in the tangle. “I don’t know what I believe anymore. I don’t know how to feel or what to think. I don’t know how I’m supposed to g-go to work tonight and see his face. Ian’s face, too. G-God, I am s-so stupid.” My tears fell freely. “I can’t believe I fell for all of it. I can’t believe I played along. Do you think that was always his plan? The tutoring and fake dates and e-everything—that it was all just a way to reel me in?”

“If it was, he’s a sociopath,” Katherine said. “Sam doesn’t strike me as a liar. And seeing you two together? I don’t think he could have faked that. I saw him look at you when he thought no one was watching. A man doesn’t look at a woman like that if he’s playing her.”

Rin nodded again. “He said he was trying to protect you. From Ian, right? That sounds more like the Sam we know. Maybe…maybe there’s some explanation.”

“I’m sure there is,” I agreed sadly. “I just don’t know if I want to hear it.”

“Why not?” Amelia asked.

“Because there’s nothing he can say that will change what he did and how it made me feel to learn the truth.”

Their faces softened, saddened.

“There’s nothing that can erase my humility and shame, knowing he never wanted me in the first place. There’s nothing that could undo the pain of giving my trust to a man who betrayed it in such a merciless way. Did he even think about how I would feel? Did he even consider me at all, or was he only thinking of himself?” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t even want to know.” I stuck my chopsticks into the carton and set it on my nightstand.

The doorbell rang.

We all exchanged glances before bolting out of my room and to Rin’s where we could see the stoop from her window. Amelia reached it first and clapped her hand over her mouth in a gasp. One by one, they reached the window, and I was last, having had to find my way out of my sheets first. And I knew before I reached it what I’d find.