Page 21 of You Owe Me (21 Rumors #2)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Rumor has it, I let my IOUs get sentimental.

Maverick

The cards don’t shuffle the same tonight.

Maybe it’s the room—too quiet. Maybe it’s the table—just me, no audience, no idiots bluffing like I don’t already own their tells. Or maybe it’s her. The reason every card in my hand feels off balance.

Ainsley hasn’t sat across from me in days.

Not here. Not on this side of our lives.

She’s been… around. Polite. Distracted. Busy with classes, sea lions, and excuses. The kind of distance that doesn’t slam doors or throw accusations. The kind that leaves your coffee half full and your bed feeling twice as wide.

I flick the corner of an IOU. Let it land face down beside the pile like it doesn’t weigh more than it should. One favor from someone whose name I don’t even remember. Doesn’t matter. They’ll come knocking. They always do.

What I need is the one person who’s been slipping through my hands for weeks.

She’s in the bedroom now. I can hear the drawer open. The zip of a makeup bag. Keys jangling. She’s not trying to sneak out—Ainsley doesn’t do subtle—but she hasn’t looked me in the eye since Tuesday, and that says more than any lie she might spin.

I deal myself a hand I don’t plan to play.

Just to keep my fingers from dialing her number while she’s thirty feet away.

And then, right on cue, I hear it.

The clink of her water bottle hitting the counter. The squeak of that loose floorboard near the hallway. She stops in the doorway like she didn’t expect me to be sitting here, even though it’s the same damn time I always am.

Her hair’s up. Glasses on. Hoodie zipped halfway. And still, somehow, she looks like temptation weaponized.

“Thought you had game night?” Her voice is light. Breezy. But her eyes flick to the cards, then back to me, and I know she’s counting—IOUs, lies, whatever she’s holding in her chest and hoping I don’t notice.

I lean back in the chair. Arms crossed. Poker chips idle between my fingers.

“Canceled it.”

She lifts a brow. “That’s a first.”

“Felt like a night off.”

“From what? Blackmail? Or the capitalist underworld of campus academia?”

There she is. A spark of the girl who made this apartment hers just by sitting on my couch in dolphin pajama pants and telling me my spice rack looked like a hostage situation.

But tonight? She’s playing defense. Cute quips. No eye contact.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” I say, casually. Too casually.

She shrugs. “Busy.”

I nod, slowly. “So I noticed.”

Silence stretches between us.

She fidgets. Twists the cap off her water bottle and doesn’t drink. Just stands there like she’s waiting for me to let her go.

So I do the opposite.

I reach for the deck and pull a single IOU from the stack. Slide it across the table without looking at it.

“Cash in,” I say.

That gets her attention. Her brow furrows.

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

She eyes the card. “Mav, I have somewhere to be?—”

I cut her off with a look. Calm. Final. The kind that makes grown men confess and freshmen cry.

“You owe me a favor,” I say, voice low. “I’m calling it in.”

She hesitates, and I can see the war play out in her eyes. Pride versus guilt. Curiosity versus whatever secret’s got her spine stiff and her hands trembling just slightly.

She crosses the room anyway.

Barefoot.

Defiant.

Like she’s walking into something she’s half-hoping will break her open.

She pulls out the chair.

And hesitates.

Fingertips ghost the back of the wood like she’s deciding if she should brace herself or bolt. The air between us crackles—static and secrets. She finally lowers into the seat like it’s an ambush, legs crossed, shoulders squared, lips pressed into a line.

I don’t say a word.

I just watch.

The kind of watching that makes people confess. That makes them squirm. Ainsley doesn’t squirm. She just sits there, chin lifted like she’s daring me to blink first.

I don’t.

She folds her hands on the table. Smooth. Controlled. But her knee bounces once. She catches it, fast.

The hoodie’s slipping off one shoulder.

She doesn’t fix it.

I tilt my head slightly. Noticed.

Her eyes flick to the IOU still under my hand, then up to my face. “You gonna tell me what I owe you or just stare at me like you’re in the middle of a villain monologue?”

A corner of my mouth twitches.

There she is.

I lean forward, forearms on the table, voice low. “You already know what I want.”

She shifts. Breathes in slowly through her nose. “If this is about sex?—”

“It’s not.”

“Then what is it?”

I tap the edge of the card with my finger. Once. Twice. A steady pulse.

“I want the truth.”

Another beat of silence. She glances at the hallway, like the walls might offer her a better out than I will.

“You’re cashing in an IOU for that?”

“No,” I say. “I’m cashing it for your time.”

She blinks.

I lean back. “Whatever version of you that’s been floating around this apartment the last two weeks? That’s not the girl who eats mac and cheese at two in the morning and insults my investment strategies while wearing a sea lion on her socks.”

She flinches at that. Tiny. But I see it.

Nailed it.

Still, she doesn’t talk.

So, I deal another card from the deck. Slowly. Methodically. Like it’s just another game.

But this one?

This one’s stacked.

And she knows it.

She watches the card land between us like it might explode.

I don’t look at it. Doesn’t matter what it says. The message is the same—your move.

Ainsley leans back slightly, arms crossing over her chest, hoodie sleeve slipping down further until it’s bunched at her elbow. There’s a bruise near her wrist. Faint. Fading. Not mine.

Another flinch in my chest. Controlled. Contained.

“What do you think I’m hiding?” Her voice is softer now, but not soft enough to fool me.

I shrug. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to ask.”

“You could just trust me.”

“I do.” I pause, letting it land. “But trust doesn’t mean I stop noticing.”

Her eyes flash, like she wants to argue. But she doesn’t. She chews the inside of her cheek instead, jaw tight.

Still bouncing between fight and flight.

Still here.

I let the silence stretch until it folds around us. Heavy. Intimate. Like we’ve stepped into some soundproof corner of the world where nothing exists but the scrape of her nail against the wood grain and the slow tick of the watch on my wrist.

“Are we okay?”

That’s a loaded question.

She wouldn’t ask it if she thought the answer was yes.

I look at her. Really look.

Hair in a messy twist. Eyes tired. A ring of smudged mascara, like she rubbed her face too hard earlier. Probably after whatever it was she didn’t tell me.

“I don’t want okay,” I say. “I want you.”

The words hang there.

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just stares at me like I cracked something she wasn’t ready to hear.

I reach across the table and tap the card she didn’t take. “So, if I only get one IOU tonight, I want the version of you that doesn’t run.”

Her breath catches.

Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a shift in rhythm.

And then she leans forward.

Hands flat on the table. Nails chipped. Shoulders hunched like she’s preparing for impact.

“I haven’t been running.”

I arch a brow. “No?”

She doesn’t answer right away.

She just looks at me.

Not the usual glance—not the flippant, sarcastic version of her that dodges and dances and turns everything into a joke. No, this is different. She’s staring at me like she’s holding something heavy and deciding whether I’m strong enough to carry any of it.

I don’t look away.

Neither does she.

Seconds stretch. My watch ticks once. Twice.

And then, finally, she leans back, slowly, like every muscle in her body is braced for recoil.

“I’m not the only one who’s been off lately, but you already know that, don’t you?”

Her voice is calm.

Too calm.

That’s how I know what’s coming isn’t small.

I narrow my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She tilts her head. “It means if we’re calling in favors for the truth now, I’ve got a stack of unpaid ones I’ve been sitting on.”

I stare at her.

Hard.

And for once, she doesn’t flinch.

“You disappear,” she continues. “For hours. No explanation. Your heart monitor goes off and you brush it off with some bullshit joke about stress. You come home looking like you’ve been put through a paper shredder and expect me not to ask questions?”

“You do ask.”

She lets out a sharp breath of a laugh—mocking and exhausted at the same time. “Right. And you give me nothing. Every single time.”

I say nothing.

Because she’s not wrong.

“You want me to spill?” she snaps. “Fine. But don’t act like you’re owed transparency when you’ve never given it to me. You ask for the truth, Mav, but you don’t offer it. You collect secrets like IOUs and cash them in when it suits you, and I’m supposed to just… hand mine over?”

Her voice is rising now, not loud, but sharp—every word honed like glass.

“I’m not the one who wakes up at three in the morning, gasping for breath. I’m not the one clutching their chest in the kitchen when they think no one’s watching. I’m not the one lying through my teeth every time someone says, ‘Are you okay?’”

I swallow hard.

But she’s not done.

“You think I don’t notice? I notice everything. The meds in the bathroom cabinet that weren’t there two months ago. The way you stopped drinking coffee. The fact that you start pulling away right when I’m getting close enough to see whatever it is you’re trying so damn hard to hide.”

Her eyes are glassy now, but not soft. They’re furious.

She stands and slowly steps forward.

“You want to talk about running? You’re sprinting. You just do it in a tailored shirt, with your jaw clenched so tight no one calls it what it is.”

I grip the edge of the table. Fingertips white. Pulse climbing.

“And the worst part?” Her voice cracks. “You make me feel guilty for holding things back when you’ve been lying by omission for weeks.”

Silence falls again.

It’s deafening this time.

She’s shaking slightly—whether from rage or fear or heartbreak, I can’t tell. But she stands tall anyway. She doesn’t back down.

“I’ll give you the truth,” she whispers. “But not while you’re still pretending yours doesn’t exist.”

Then, without waiting for a response, she turns and walks away.

No door slam. No dramatic pause.

Just distance.