Page 24 of Dirty Roulette

Chapter seventeen

Payton

Crab: What are you wearing?

Payton: Seriously? Lol

Crab: Oh shit! I want to take you somewhere. I didn’t mean it like that.

Payton: So you don’t want to see me naked?

Crab: Oh no I do, and I have.

Payton: Charlie is about to leave. Trouvez-moi in 20?

Crab: Xoxo Always.

For a second, I’m melting into my pillow, the smile on my face hurting my cheekbones as I stare at the messages on my phone.

I have feelings for him. I seriously have feelings, but I keep telling myself I don’t when I do.

I bite my bottom lip, scrolling with a thumb up on hundreds of messages we had sent throughout the entire week.

They have my legs feeling completely on fire.

Charlie goes through her usual routine, and by six in the evening she throws her purse strap over her shoulder and looks expectantly at me sitting on the bed with my computer and textbooks spread across the bed.

“Who are you texting that’s making you smile like that?” Charlie’s voice startles me and I click my phone screen off while I straighten myself up on the bed.

“No one...” I turn the phone upside down on the bed just in case Ryder messages me again.

“You’re totally giggling and biting your thumb like you wanna fuck someone. Who is he?” Charlie raises a brow as her nails tap along her purse strap.

“It’s no one. Just a friend sending me stupid memes.” I lie, feeling my nose grow ten inches with that remark.

“Right.” Charlie scoffs and proceeds to lick her bottom lip. “Do you wanna put something decent on and come over and meet Noah’s band? I’ve been begging you all week, and you’re the music junkie, not me.”

“I’m going to knock out this paper. I really don’t want any responsibilities this weekend,” I say, knowing I haven’t even touched the psychology paper or even a fraction of my homework. With a slight eye roll and a sigh, she leaves.

“Okay, I guess. See you later.” I nod goodbye as she heads toward the door. The second she dips, I’m going to meet up with her brother – like I have been all week long.

“Alright, I’ll be back around elevenish.

” Charlie hovers like I’m going to change my mind.

When I don’t, she blows me kisses before heading out the door.

I wait several long moments, making sure there isn’t a sudden return because she forgot to grab her wallet or the lipstick she’s been obsessed about.

When I know the coast is clear, I clamber to the closet to find the hottest outfit I could.

I throw on a pink ditsy crop top and a tight denim mini skirt that definitely belongs to Charlie.

My phone buzzes on the bed and I make a quick dash for it.

Crab: I’m here.

Payton: Be right there.

I grab my purse and throw it over my shoulder before climbing down the three flights of stairs.

At the bottom, Ryder is waiting for me. His mouth parts open once I hop off the last step, grasping the tips of his fingers for balance.

He’s in a cuffed-sleeve black shirt that hugs his chest, with the best jeans I’ve ever seen on him.

“Hey,” he smiles wide and it’s infectious.

“I missed you,” I bit my bottom lip.

Nothing can save me now. My heart is pounding a million miles an hour.

All I can do is wrap up how I feel in barbed wire, and pray it doesn’t unravel.

Play it cool and pretend my heart isn’t flopping like a dead fish on the floor.

But whatever this is, it feels real. All I do is smile at him and stare at his gray eyes that shouldn’t exist and wonder at the way the evening air ruffles his curly curtain hair.

“I’ve been thinking about taking you to this place for a while, but you can’t tell anyone about it.” Ryder laces his fingers into mine as we walk down the sidewalk.

“I love secrets!”

“Oh, I know you do.” He dips his head toward the Jeep. I hang onto one of his arms as we cross the street. He opens the passenger door for me, then rounds the corner and climbs in as I’m buckling up.

We take a fifteen-minute drive and pass the beach shops downtown. They’re closed for the night but still have one display light illuminating in the windows. “Where are we going?” I ask.

“I told you, it’s a secret.” He turns through some random streets I’ve never bothered to notice, and we hit a dirt road.

It’s bumpy, and the lifeless air freshener hanging on his rearview mirror violently swings back and forth. “Oh, come on, tell me. Secrets don’t make friends.”

“Let’s just say I don’t even bring friends here.” He uses a palm to turn the steering wheel. Trees tangle and twist all around the road, but clear up with a view of an old lighthouse beaming its light against a restless ocean.

Ryder parks the Jeep. He leans over the center console and grabs his football jacket hanging out in the back seat.

“Here,” he hands it to me – it’s thick and warm, with Henderson stitched on the backside and his lucky number eleven stitched below.

“It can be cold here once it gets dark.” The jacket is gigantic and Ryder’s woody scent saturates the inside, making me melt into it.

It’s big enough to be a dress as it almost reaches my knees.

“Is that why you were asking me what I was wearing?”

“Maybe, but I didn’t want to spoil it.”

He’s brought me to the beach. That’s the number one most romantic thing a guy can do, right?

Besides getting roses, writing poetry, and reciting Shakespeare.

I didn’t even think this was a thing – Ryder being a romantic and all.

The guy is gruff, with his muscles rippling under his shirt.

He always has a fist clenched, fighting someone else, but somewhere deep inside he has a sweet spot – an actual human piece to him he doesn’t cut out and share with people.

I open the door, and I’m hit with cold salty air. The wind presses and pulls at my hair.

Ryder rounds the front end of the Jeep, lacing his fingers in mine. “Come on...” He dips his head, and he leads me through a pathway of bushes, littered with white flowers glowing bright in the moonlight. We twist and turn through the narrow path until the brush clears, and my feet meet beach sand.

Waves crash and the fizz of foam sweeps along the shore. The yellow light pulsates like a heartbeat as it spins in a circle across the ocean.

We walk a bit further through the sand where there’s a cluster of smooth large stones.

“Okay... this is it.” He sits down on one of the rocks and rests his arms against his knees.

I follow his lead, plopping down next to him.

The sun is almost down, and it’s just a tiny bit left, but it’s the prettiest part where all the red, pink, and orange hues mesh in the sky blending into one color I can’t even describe.

He didn’t lie. The push and pull of the waves force the frigid air to prickle my skin with goosebumps. My butt is cold as ice, and the rock steals any warmth from me.

“Do you come here a lot?” I ask.

“When I want to disappear. Kinda came here a lot after Brittni, and shit with my dad.”

“What was it like?” I ask, trying to put the words into the correct order so the question doesn’t come off wrong, like I’m insecure and just another crazy girl. “You know... dating Brittni? Sorry. You brought her up and I’m curious.”

“We only started seeing each other because of Roulette. I knew her for maybe thirty seconds before...” He stares down at his boots, tapping them against the sand.

“And you lost your virginity?”

“Yeah...” He pauses, and I stare at the way the ocean breeze pulls and tugs his hair in all directions. “I actually never told anyone before, but I was trying to wait until I found the right girl. Roulette wasn’t a part of the plotline I drew out for myself...”

“I don’t think any of us have the pen to write out our lives,” I say.

He lets out a brittle laugh. “You’re right... we don’t have an eraser to go backward, either.”

I dip my head onto his shoulder “There are still guys waiting like that?” I ask. He maneuvers his arm and wraps it around me.

“Kinda stupid, I know...” He puts his chin on my head, and his warm breath fights against the reckless cold wind.

“No, it’s not.”

“I believed whoever that person was, I would always be connected to them somehow. It was supposed to be sacred or something. So I tried to be her boyfriend, but she was always partying, and telling me I was the one cheating. Plus she liked to stalk me sometimes. Me and her were just two people always fighting, and...” He inhales a deep breath. “Fucking.”

“You never brought her here?”

“She’d bitch about sand in her ass. She doesn’t know this place exists, so I’d rather keep it that way.” Ryder smiles at me, and it ignites flames in my chest that are hard to ignore.

“Was Dirty Roulette always a thing?” I ask.

“If there was a haze, it wasn’t Roulette.

Brody set that up. There were two guys who came in that year for the quarterback position – Brody and Logan.

The previous ones graduated, and one of them got drafted.

Logan had a better record for touchdown passes and more yards.

Brody was looking at being the backup, and in college, he wasn’t going to have cameras on him. ”

“How did he convince you all to play, then?” I ask.

“I thought it was strip poker... but it turns out Brittni and some girls stole the booze. Brody was given footage of it from the store. How he got it, I don’t know.

But the guys there were dogs, so they wanted to sleep around and if any of us backed out, the girls were looking at charges.

Classic manipulation with fear, I guess.

.. but we were eighteen and stupid. We all found out Logan was into dudes and a Mormon.

I guess getting fucked in the ass and it being filmed was not something Logan wanted out.

He dropped out after the first semester.

.. Never heard from him again. Brody has been the quarterback and captain since. ..”

“Oh shit...”

“Yeah...”