Page 18

CHAPTER 17

JACE

T here were exactly three things I didn’t want to wake up to, especially after such a nice night of cooking a steak, having sex, and then watching my favorite movie before Riley had made me take her back to her dorm:

One: A crying voicemail from my mom about her fear of dying before I give her any grandbabies .

Two: Darla Pinswallow’s boobs .

Three: A fucking blindfold strapped over my face while I was clearly not in my own bed .

Guess which one I woke up to?

The answer: all three, if you counted the fact that Darla drunk texted both me and Matty in a group chat with her guzzling a bottle of wine with her tits out. And then when I tried to delete it, I opened a voicemail instead and had to listen to my mom’s existential crisis, sobbing about the fact that she’d probably die before I ever gave her grandbabies—which was actually Jagger’s responsibility as the oldest, obviously.

Although now that I’d found my babycakes…I could probably be persuaded to fulfill that wish sooner rather than later.

But that was after I ripped a blindfold off my face. After I clumsily reached for my phone to check the time and got bombarded instead. After I shoved it back in my pocket and realized I was not in my own bed.

I was instead…outside. High up. And judging by the way the air sliced across my bare chest like a fucking blade, I was nowhere safe.

I sat up fast, my body already on high alert, gravel crunching under my palms.

A slight tilt to the ground made my stomach lurch. And then—the wind, howling and ripping around me. And the distant wail of traffic below.

Looks like my second Sphinx trial had begun.

I blinked at the blinding city lights below me— below being the important word there. Because…I was on a rooftop. A high one. One that was still under construction if the unfinished concrete and steel beams sticking out like ribs were anything to go by.

I blew out a breath, dragging a hand over my face, wincing at the bits of roof gravel stuck to my palm. How the fuck had I been passed out hard enough not to notice being dragged out of my fucking bed? Had they drugged me somehow? I glanced around, trying to see if there were cameras watching me or something.

“Motherfuckers could’ve at least given me coffee first,” I muttered, thinking longingly of that macchiato Riley had made me the other day.

That’s when I noticed the envelope.

A red envelope, the Sphinx symbol stamped into the wax seal, sitting right next to me like a taunt. I sighed, snatching it up and tearing it open.

Congratulations, Jace. Trial #2 begins now.

Retrieve the item at the edge of the rooftop.

Blindfolded.

No safety harness.

One way down.

Find it yourself.

I stared at the note, then turned my head slightly to look at the very distant edge of the rooftop.

Then back at the note.

Then at the skyline, stretching out in front of me.

Then back at the note.

I dragged a hand down my face. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“All right, Thatcher,” I muttered under my breath, rolling my shoulders. “You’ve survived worse.”

Which—objectively—was debatable, considering I had never actually had to blindfold myself and walk a fucking rooftop ledge before.

But hey. First time for everything.

You know what would have been much better than this trial? Literally anything else.

What about a cook-off? Who could heat up a corn dog the fastest? Or a milk drinking contest—no ice, obviously. Ooh, what about an obstacle course?

All of these things would be much more appropriate for a fucking college student.

Something else I would leave in my feedback along with my comment about welcoming snacks before trials. A cookie would have been great right about now.

This was the moment, though. The moment where any sane person—hell, even an insane person—would weigh their options.

Option A: I could just walk away. Call their bluff. Refuse to be their trained monkey. This wasn’t exactly a legally binding contract. What were they gonna do, give me a bad Yelp review?

Option B: I could do the dumbass thing. Walk blindfolded across the ledge like I had some kind of death wish, risking a quick splat on the pavement below for the sake of a game I wasn’t even sure I wanted to play.

It wasn’t a hard choice. I should walk away. I should turn around, find the exit, and tell them to shove this little hazing ritual up their cryptic, Sphinx-worshipping asses.

But then…

Jagger’s face appeared in my head.

My mystery of an older brother. My Sphinx-member brother.

If he had done this and survived, there was no way in hell I was backing out now.

Because I knew him. I knew he’d be sitting on his throne of smugness, just waiting to give me shit for failing the second trial. Even if I died, he would figure out a way to rub it in my face.

And there was no fucking way I was giving him that.

I exhaled slowly, rolling my neck.

“All right,” I muttered. “Jagger lived. I’ll live. Surely they wouldn’t let me die, right?”

Right ?

I pulled out my phone and fired off a text to Jagger:

Me: Thanks a lot asshole, for making me probably about to die due to our stupid sibling rivalry that shouldn’t even be a rivalry because I’m obviously superior.

He didn’t answer me.

I grabbed the black cloth that I’d tossed off earlier, feeling the rough, scratchy fabric between my fingers. Cheap bastards . “Blindfolded, huh?” I mused, already tying it around my head. “Could’ve at least gone for silk. Maybe some lace, make it sexy.”

I adjusted the knot, tugged it tight, then exhaled through my nose. And stepped forward.

The first thing I noticed?

The sound.

Wind howled past me, whistling through the unfinished beams like a fucking ghost orchestra. Every step forward made the gravel crunch, every shift in weight had the ledge feeling one gust away from taking me out.

This was so much worse than a football field.

On the field, I could see the chaos coming. I could anticipate the hits. I could feel the pressure but control it.

Here?

Nothing.

Just the wind, the height, and the fucked-up knowledge that one wrong step meant a headline that would probably read something like, “College Football Star Mistakes Himself for a Bird.”

I inched forward, feeling with my feet. My bare feet—since I’d been brought to this trial dressed in only my jeans. Considering I went to bed naked, that meant someone had handled me while I was unconscious.

“I hope you enjoyed the show, assholes!” I yelled into the night. “Must be tough knowing you’ll spend the rest of your lives feeling inferior in the face of my dick size. Hope it was worth it.”

These weren’t even my favorite pair of jeans. They could have at least managed to put me in those.

I shivered, because it got disturbing if I thought about it for too long.

One step.

Another.

Each one slow.

Each one deliberate.

Each one made me fully aware of the thousand feet of nothingness below me.

The fucked-up part? The one that probably made me a certifiable badass and something I would definitely be rubbing in Parker’s and Matty’s faces…

I liked it.

The rush. The pure, unfiltered adrenaline tearing through my veins.

My heart pounded, my body thrumming with that same high I got on the field—only bigger.

Darker.

Something about it felt good. The risk. The recklessness.

The certainty that one bad move could cost me everything .

I was made for this.

Just as I reached the edge, the whisper of a sound cut through the wind—a faint scuff of movement, barely there, but enough to send every nerve in my body firing at once.

My muscles tensed, instincts kicking in before my brain could catch up. The hairs on my arms rose, my breath stilled in my chest, and some deep, primal part of me screamed that I was no longer alone.

Before I could turn—before I could react—something slammed into my back.

A shove.

Hard. Brutal. Right between my fucking shoulder blades.

Air rushed past my ears as my body tilted forward, weight tipping over the ledge, gravity yanking me toward the abyss below. For half a second, I pictured it in my head—the vast stretch of city lights beneath me, a glowing sprawl of streets and steel, the dark ribbon of pavement that would have been my grave. Concrete death, waiting.

Then—

The yank.

A sharp, brutal snap at my waist, the sudden force jerking me mid-fall, snapping my body back so violently my teeth rattled.

I wasn’t falling anymore. I was swinging.

A fucked-up human pendulum, arms flailing, legs scrambling for purchase as I dangled hundreds of feet above the city, my body twisting in open air.

My brain barely managed to catch up before the sheer panic hit. My pulse roared, my breath coming too fast, too unsteady. I should be dead.

But I wasn’t.

Something held me.

I fought to get my bearings, sucking in air, my stomach flipping as I twisted midair like a rag doll. My belt. There was something attached to my belt. I ripped off my blindfold.

A rope.

A near-invisible, black climbing harness had been clipped to me at some point—thin, sleek, strong enough to stop my fall but impossible to notice in the dark.

I clenched my jaw, dragging in one long, shuddering breath as realization over what had happened sank in. They’d fucking pushed me!

They’d fucking wanted me to believe that I was going to die!

This wasn’t just about seeing if I had the balls to walk blindfolded across the ledge. This was about trust. About seeing if I would hesitate. If I would question the game. Or if I would throw myself into the void, blindly believing the Sphinx had no intention of letting me die.

I forced my hands to unclench, flexing my fingers, feeling the tremor still running through my limbs. Slowly, I exhaled.

And I grinned.

“All right, motherfuckers,” I muttered under my breath, voice raw from the adrenaline still ripping through me. “I see how it is.”

The line above me tightened.

I felt myself being reeled back up, slow and deliberate, my body dragged toward solid ground as if some unseen force had decided I’d had enough fun for one night.

Within moments, I’d flopped over the edge of the building, my heart still hammering like a war drum as I pulled myself all the way onto the roof.

And there, standing just a few feet away, was a single masked figure. Watching. Silent. His expression unreadable beneath the black mask.

In the thick, charged air between us, he clapped. Once. A slow, deliberate sound, slicing through the night like a knife.

Then, without a word, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadows.

I stood there, breathing hard, hands braced on my knees, my entire body humming from the experience.

Then I let out a low, breathless laugh, shaking my head.

“They really need to start providing cookies.”

I woke up to pain.

Not the dull, lingering ache of sore muscles or the bruises forming from my latest attempt at impressing a group of masked psychopaths. No, this was a sharp, bone-rattling impact as I hit the floor face-first, limbs flailing, blankets twisting around me like some kind of fabric straightjacket.

The mattress above creaked. A slow, menacing breath filled the silence. And then?—

“Jace.”

I peeled my face off the floor just in time to see Matty’s furious, sleep-creased face peeking down at me from the edge of the bed, his eyes bloodshot, his hair sticking up in seventeen different directions.

“What,” he said, his voice flat, dangerously calm, “are you doing?”

I blinked at him. Took a second to assess.

Right. I was in his bed. Not mine. That made sense. After barely surviving the trial from hell, I must’ve crawled in here at some point.

“I was snuggling,” I admitted, pushing myself up onto my elbows. “Duh.”

Matty’s nostrils flared. “With WHO?”

I squinted. “With you, obviously. You were just asleep for it.”

A vein in his forehead visibly pulsed. “So you got into my bed—without my consent—and snuggled with me?”

I scratched the back of my head, offended that he looked so angry. “I mean…yeah. No one was around to distract Riley’s roommate, so I had to snuggle someone after my NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE!”

Matty launched a pillow at my face.

The door creaked open just as I caught it, and Parker walked in because, even though he lived next door with Casey, apparently he had to start the day with his bestilicious bros.

He stopped short, eyes flicking from me on the floor, to Matty looking homicidal, to the fact that there were clearly two people crammed into one bed before my abrupt eviction.

A long pause.

A very long pause.

Then, slowly, Parker nodded to himself, pivoted on his heel, and walked back out without a word.

Matty threw up his hands. “See?! Even Parker knows this is fucked!”

“Yeah, but he also just accepted it immediately,” I pointed out. “Which, honestly, says more about us than him.”

Matty groaned and flopped onto his back, muttering something about needing a new roommate and possibly an exorcism.

He kept mentioning that—an exorcism. Maybe I should just contact a church on his behalf. Or the Ghostbusters. It would be a nice little surprise for him.

I tossed the pillow back onto the bed and grinned, stretching like a cat.

“Anyway,” I said, standing up and cracking my back. “We cuddling again tonight or what?”

Hopefully by tomorrow, when my plan went into effect, Riley would be the one cuddling me, but in a pinch, Matty would have to do.