Page 61 of Dirty Roulette

Chapter forty-four

Ryder

Delivering pizzas is a nightmare, but I chug down another energy drink, and tape flyers to each order before leaving the store.

For once, Karen doesn’t act like her name.

Behind the greasy blue hair turning green, she’s been uncomfortably kind.

Each time I step back into the store, she checks in on me and feeds me with an all-you-can-eat amount of buffalo wings.

Other drivers hand out flyers to customers.

I keep checking my Instagram story between deliveries and hope people share Charlie’s picture, but getting a missing person to go viral is harder than I expected.

The news helps a bit, but it’s only for our county and it’s not spreading anywhere else.

The detective working on Charlie’s case called in the middle of my shift, dropping the bombshell.

There’s nothing new, and they don’t plan on putting out a search party until they feel the need to recover a body.

Surveillance at the venue is nonexistent.

But with no footage, it leads to a dead end of what happened to Charlie.

The thought of her being dead drops like a cement block in my stomach.

I pull up to Brody’s fraternity shortly after midnight, and the stench of cheese and pepperoni leeks off my shirt. This can go one of two ways. Either my teammates turn against me and pay the same respect and beat me senseless, or I convince them to let me talk to Brody.

I knock on the door and dip my hands into my pockets. It doesn’t take long for someone to answer and the woody smell floats out the door. It’s Farva with a beer in hand and sleepy eyelids.

“What the hell do you want?” He looks me up and down with bitchy judgmental eyes. “You should be kicked off the damn team.” Lucky for him, I don’t plan on going back to a jail cell, otherwise I’d put him in a hospital too.

I’m annoyed and sniffle my runny nose from the frigid air. “Where is Brody?”

“He doesn’t know where your damn sister is.” Farva attempts to slam the door in my face, but I catch it with a hand. “Why don’t you go sit on the bench where you belong?”

“We have another home game coming up. Brody is gonna play, and I just want to talk before we hit the field together again.” I play it nice and shrug my shoulders. A heartbeat hammers nails into my sternum, and I swallow the urge to snap.

“Let him in, you asswit!” Brody shouts in the distance.

I cock both eyebrows and Farva puckers his lips, and his chest heaves in and out as he opens the door. I step in, the floor creaking under my footsteps. My hands stay firm in my pockets, I keep the straightest face strolling into the living area where Brody sits on the couch with a hand of cards.

“Hey...” I say.

“Here to sort shit out?” Brody asks. One of his eyes is still bruised. It’s yellow around the edges, but it gives me an idea how bad I wrecked his face.

“You could say that,” I say.

“I don’t know where Charlie is,” he mutters, fumbling the corner of a card.

“Well, that’s obvious.”

Poker chips and bills are crumbled in a pile on the coffee table. The place is littered with beer bottles. Half of the linemen sit on the couches, smoking and taking swigs of their drinks. The glares and stale expressions wrap hands around my neck.

“You gonna be able to play at our next game?” I ask. There is another five days before we have another game.

“Yeah...” he mutters out.

“Coach plans on benching us if we don’t get along.”

“He plans on kicking us off the team.” Brody lays down his hand with a flush. The other guys throw cards as they lose. “Now what the hell do you want?”

“I’ll get along with you if you remove Payton’s pictures and videos from that website.” I swallow hard, my pulse quickening.

“It has over a hundred thousand views. I’m sure it’s already downloaded and posted elsewhere.” Brody doesn’t falter for one second.

“No one is going to look at our team if we have a losing streak. You want to be drafted as much as I do. We can put this behind us if you remove the video – and every player on the team needs to keep their hands off her. She is my girl, and everyone needs to back the fuck off.”

Brody scoffs, shaking his head. His feet tap on the floor as a smirk molds along his face. “I dunno if your five thousand yards are going to convince me to remove it. I can’t control the team, but my dad will pay the board to keep me on, you on the other hand will be off the team.”

“Then what do you want?” I ask.

More money is thrown into the pile on the table. “You know what I want.” Cards shuffle, in Brody’s hands, and he starts to pass them around the table.

“You want the sex video?” I ask.

“You want the guys to lay off, you want the video removed. I want something in return. I want you fucking the shit out of her, and then I’ll delete everything I posted.

Would that make you happy so we are good again?

” Linemen shuffle, one of them leaning an arm against the couch with a tight fist. Brody cocks his head. “It’s an eye for an eye.”

“Fine...” I say.

“Good. Now get the hell out.”

There’s no handshake, just him waving a hand at me to get out of the house. I leave the fraternity and take the five-minute drive to the other side of the campus and park in the gravel.

One of Payton’s mixed discs plays at a low volume, and it clicks. I’m listening to Noah singing. I shut it off, sitting in the still silence. The crickets chirp outside, leaking through the windows as I shuffle in the seat, staring at the porch lights and the beetles buzzing.

Payton is in there, and my heart hurts again with the little thought in my head now starting to violently yell at me that there is no way I can make Payton happy.

Not with how messed up everything is right now.

I can’t put the damn bottle down. I get mom has help from the church but when those funds dry up I can’t pay her bills.

Charlie gave me a bit of purpose to keep pushing on because at least I might have been able to make her life better, but that’s a wash now too.

I don’t want to hurt Payton, and I’m not sure how to break it down to her either.

I want to have faith that Payton can pull this off, but I have serious doubts about her random revenge scheme.

If sabotaging the game and broadcasting his dirty laundry on the screens works, it will be on live television.

Everyone watching will see it, but getting past the stadium’s security and their firewall would be some miracle.

She showed me this hidden reddit forum about two men breaking into the NFL and were able to hack those screens by pretending to be part of the crew.

No one knew it was them. That’s exactly her plan.

I remove my keys and step out of the Jeep. The frigid air crawls up my skin as I climb the porch steps. Jared and Nick are on the couch gaming, with the screen flashing in the darkness of the living room.

Making my way down the hall, a dim light bleeds under my door and I push it open. The dumpster unloaded on my floor was picked up. The hamper of clothes is empty. A little scented candle flickers on the nightstand. It smells like something tropical and it’s better than my sweaty socks and gear.

Payton’s tongue is poking out the side of her lips as she rests her head on her knee, dabbing nail polish on her toes.

“You didn’t have to clean my room. I would’ve gotten to it... eventually.” I dig in my pockets pulling out my wallet and the stack of tips I collected tonight.

She dips her head at me. “Can you help me?” She holds out the brush and the pungent odor crawls up my nose.

“Depends. Are you going to paint my damn toes if I’m not looking?”

“Maybe. It’s hot pink, so it would look sexy as hell on you.”

I plop down on the bed, snatch the pink bottle of nail polish, and take her tiny foot into my lap. Her feet are soft like lace as I put on my Van Gogh hat and glide the brush over her nails.

When I’m done, her feet lay flat on my bed sheets. “How did it go with Brody?” She wiggles her toes with a satisfied grin.

“We’ll get along on the field if he removes those videos of you, the guys on the team need to lay off, but we’ll still need to make a sex tape. I don’t want to force you to do anything you're uncomfortable with.”

“Let’s make it now.”

“Payton...”

“My nudes are all over the internet, anyway. What’s the harm of it at this point? If he takes that video and posts it too, all everyone is gonna see is me saying your name and telling you I love you.” Her arms wrap around her legs, and she rests her chin on her knees.

My heart is like a fist pounding the inside of my chest, robbing me of my breath.

Her blue eyes burn into mine, and the words get stuck in my throat.

Not because I can’t say them back, but because saying those words to her scares me each time they slip off my tongue.

If I somehow fuck up this relationship too, it will be the death of me.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” She asks, her head tilting to one side.

“I think I’m going to go shower if we are doing this.

” I slide off the bed, pulling the pizza-reeking shirt over my head and tossing it to the empty hamper.

It’s halfway in, and slumps to the floor instead of the basket.

A bottle of Hennesy sits on top of my dresser, and I grab it, staring at the letters and the golden liquid sloshing.

“I’m gonna dump this...”

“What?” Payton chases after me, snatching my dirty shirt and pushing it down into the hamper.

“I never want to touch this stuff ever again.”

I step out into the hallway. The house reeks of pot. Jared and Nick are still shit-talking in the living room, laughing up a storm, then cursing at the screen. The bathroom light flickers, all the bulbs burnt out except one giving off the old rustic glow.