Page 43 of Playing for Keeps

“Thanks.”

“What are you doing now?”

Luke angled his phone to show what we’d rigged up.

“I’m helping Ethan ransom Reuban’s phone. You know, just normal Saturday night activities.”

Jonathan chuckled. “Hi, Ethan,” he said cheerfully.

I rocked back on my heels. “Hey.”

Luke lurched to his feet. “I’m going to…” he said to me, pointing to the bedroom.

I nodded, because of course I understood he’d want to talk to Jonathan privately.

But once he’d left, I sank back on the tiles, suddenly unmotivated to continue without Luke. In fact, it felt as if my mood had taken a bungy-jump on a defective cord and, instead of bouncing back up, had plummeted to the ground.

Through the closed door I could hear the low rumbling of Luke’s voice. What were he and Jonathan talking about? What kind of relationship did they have? My mind swirled.

Luke came back in after a few minutes.

I summoned a smile. “Jonathan good?”

“Yeah, he’s all good.”

“He seems like a great guy. Are you two serious? I suppose if he moved countries with you, then it’s serious, right?” Shit, I always answered my own questions when I was nervous. And I felt weirdly nervous talking to Luke about Jonathan.

Luke paused for a second. His brown eyes met mine. “Yeah, it’s serious.”

I turned my gaze back to the bathtub setup and forced out a laugh. “Right, we better get this ransom plot underway before Reuban spontaneously combusts.”

I typed out a message to Jacob.Tell Reuban he needs to meet our ransom demands or his phone swims with the fishes.

Nothing like a good Godfather reference to increase the classiness of a prank.

In the end the ransom incident resolved itself with Reuban doing a fabulous lip-sync to Britney Spears’ “Toxic” in exchange for his phone. All witnesses agreed Reuban enjoyed himself far more than he should have, and his impeccable knowledge of the lyrics raised a whole lot of questions.

“That’s TikTok gold, right there,” I said as I recorded it.

“Seriously, Lewis, you know you’ve just opened yourself up for revenge, right?” Reuban replied.

I gave him a smirk. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

After some more muttering and veiled threats from Reuban, Luke and I walked back to our room, still chuckling.

“You really do like to live dangerously,” he said.

I put on my James Bond voice. “Danger’s my middle name.”

Luke flashed me a shark-like grin. “And all this time I thought it was Eugene.”

“Fuck, I can’t get away with anything with you. You know me too well.”

I expected Luke to quip back, but instead he went quiet. I flicked a look at him. There was an emotion shimmering on his face that I couldn’t interpret.

He swallowed hard. “Is it possible to know someone too well?” he asked finally.

“I think you’d probably prefer me not to know that you once stole your mother’s sherry and got so drunk that you puked all over the Robinsons’ doormat.”