Page 58 of Dirty Roulette

Chapter forty-one

Payton

It’s been another long week. I jiggle the keys in the lock of my dorm and open the door, seeing Naomi with her cakey makeup, snaggletooth, and the strange mole on her face folding clothes neatly on Charlie’s bed.

My heart pounds miles per minute. The furious beating burns more than stubbing a pinky toe.

“Hi...” I say and throw the dorm keys on my unmade bed. “I didn’t realize I had a new dormie.”

I switch on the warm lamp on my desk. It illuminates my side with posters of rock bands from the 80s and 90s.

Naomi combs a hand through her short blonde hair, ruffling the layers as she stares down at the bed. Her belongings are halfway unpacked and sleeves of shirts hang over the side of a brown cardboard box.

“Did they not say anything to you?” She plops down on the bed Charlie slept on picking at her cuticles.

“No...” I let the duffle bag slip off my shoulder and tumble to the floor.

I sag to my bed with those stupid princess sheets.

I seriously need to douse them in gasoline and set fire to it.

I figured they wouldn’t hand over the dorm in hopes of Charlie popping up and storming in to fight with me and then be my best friend again.

“I didn’t think this would be how Roulette ends.

Charlie missing, and me being the easy slut of GCU. ”

Out of the thousands of students on campus, it’s Noami and her outrageously annoying squeaky voice. The chick butts into everyone’s personal space, breathing down guys’ necks for attention. She makes me want to pull out every hair follicle off my head for her to shut up.

“I saw Ryder earlier with his mom taping some missing posters of her up on the doors,” she says.

I’m honestly numb, starving to be more empty than I already am. If I’m drained of everything, then I can be deeper in a state of nothing but being numb is still a feeling and I can’t handle it anymore.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

I shrug my shoulders and frown at her. “It’s fine...” My palms sweat as it’s one of Brittni’s minions that follows and mimics her every move, but she’s acting nice and not shouting out that damn nickname.

“Well, I don’t have any issues rooming with you if you don’t.”

“Weren’t you in the sorority house for Phi?” I ask.

Her lips mold into a puckered scowl. “Let’s not talk about that dumpster fire.”

“Why, what happened?”

“The haze kinda messed me up...” She crosses her legs, leans against the wall, and stares far away from my existence.

“You’re telling me. My nudes are all online. You want to know how many phone calls I was getting in the middle of the night. I had some old-ass grandpa telling me he wanted to rub my...” I mimic a gag thinking about his rancid voice I listened to the other night.

“Yeah... I was...” She visibly swallows and chuckles under her breath. “I was on shark week.” The blood drains from my face. She bites her bottom lip, nodding her head. “There’s a picture of me too. I passed out with my ass covered in blood.”

“You landed on Scottie P?” I recall the vague image of his hand covered in what I figured was period blood, but now it’s confirmed.

How embarrassing. Pity melts into the bottom of my stomach thinking I had it bad with my tits trending on the internet.

Memes and trashy people with nothing better to do than type cruel words on a keyboard about a girl being on a period feel even worse.

“You call Nick, Scottie P?” Naomi tilts her head with a brow cocked.

“Yeah, have you ever seen the movie We’re the Millers?” I ask.

“Yes!” She giggles and covers her face with both hands. “I’ll never unsee that now!”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about the pictures of you.”

“Brittni said it would ruin her reputation if I stayed at the sorority and kicked me out.”

That girl has some nerve. If it was her, I’m sure it would be a completely different scenario.

Within minutes, she would be an outcast with the rest of us.

I’ll never be like her. Screw that. Brittni wants to say I’m not good enough and I can’t make it?

Nothing I do will prove that I’m better unless I tear them all to pieces and knock down their house of cards.

“You said Ryder was passing out flyers?” I ask.

“Yeah, I didn’t see him too long ago. He was down by the dining hall.”

“I think I’m going to try to find him.”

“Kiss and makeup, why don’t you?” Naomi wiggles her eyebrows. “I’d like to see Brittni squirm seeing him happy with someone else.”

“Thanks.” I push myself off the bed, snag my keys, and head out of the dorm.

It’s getting chillier as the sun starts to set. I stuff my fingers in the pockets of my light jacket and throw up my hoodie. The sky is mixed with pinks and dark blues. The dim orange street lights flicker on as I stride down the sidewalk.

The dining hall is still packed. The aroma of burgers and fries fills my nostrils as I walk through the double doors. The tables are full of faces engorging themselves.

Scouting the mass of people, I spot Ryder leaning on the wall, slapping the flyers against the palm of his hand.

The sunken eyes and disheveled hair tear me to pieces.

He’s white as a ghost and looks sick as hell.

When a group of people walk out of the dining hall, he races up to them with the flyer, following them as they walk to the double doors, begging them to take a flyer.

They dismiss him with a hand and rush out. I remove the hoodie, and his eyes meet my line of view. My heart sinks as the defeat washes all over him and his hands drop to his sides. One of the flyers breaks free from the stack and glides to the ground.

Those gray eyes he shares with his sister glisten, and the flyers all flutter and scatter across the floor.

My knees crumble where I stand, but I push them to work, walking to him – first one, then two, and finally a third step.

I can’t bear the distance and dash across the tile floor running to him like nothing else exists in the world.

His arms cradle me the second I meet his chest. A heartbeat pounds in my eardrums, and it belongs to him. The ache in each beat causes me to break down into tears. His face is wet. Hands dig at the fabric of my jacket and his embrace is entirely different than anything he’s ever given me.

“How long have you been in here?” I ask, muffled under his long-sleeved shirt.

“I don’t know...” He mutters, and he rests his head on top of mine. His breath brushes against my hair.

“Do you need a break?”

He releases his embrace. We lean down and pick up the flyers with Charlie’s senior pictures.

“Probably. I’ve been doing this all day since I couldn’t at the game.”

All the blame in the world seeps into my veins, telling me this is all of my fault. If only I told her the truth, then we would’ve been at the concert together as friends. Brody would have never got his fingers on her, and she wouldn’t be missing.

I walk with him out of the dining hall, the flyers a complete unorganized mess in my hands. I follow him to the parking lot. We are silent getting into the Jeep.

Ryder’s hand rests on the steering wheel, his eyes hazed over staring out into the darkness of the night sky.

“I had to retract my statement about Brody.” He visibly swallows.

The streetlights grant me small glimpses of the tears staining his eyes.

He wipes his nose with the sleeve of his shirt.

“The only way to get out of the charges was to write a statement that it was consensual. I watched her tell him no, and to get off her. Maybe at some point she agreed to sleep with him, but she said no.”

“They made you retract the statement?” I ask in shock.

“It was that or his father was going after the maximum amount of years. That’s why I got so trashed once they released me. I get it’s not an excuse...” He rests a hand on the door paneling, running his fingers across his face.

“His dad plays the same games.”

“Apparently.”

“I talked to Noah a bit. He said she lost her virginity to him and was telling him she loved him... there is no way she would have agreed to sleep with Brody. After the whole Brittni thing, she wanted nothing to do with him. She wasn't ditching me this summer for Brody, she ditched me for Noah.”

“I think he was still making her play Roulette. That would be the only reason.” Ryder lifts a brow and digs into his jeans pocket, pulling out clinking keys.

My hands coil into tight fists. “I hate him so much.”

“They say after forty-eight hours, the likelihood of finding a missing person drops dramatically. Over two hundred and fifty people go missing in this state alone every day. They aren’t looking for her... It’s almost been a month, and I’m bracing myself for the cops to tell me she’s dead.”

I lean over and grasp one of his hands. His fingers are rough as I squeeze it. “We will find her.”

“I hate myself.” He runs his teeth over his bottom lip. “I wished her dead, and now she’s gone.”

Ryder ignites the engine, and he pulls out of the parking lot. The five-minute drive to the fraternity dragged as we both fell back into silence. My head races a mile a minute, trying to plot out how the hell I can take that bastard down.