by Callie Rose
Thank fuck.
It’s just like Max described. A section of the large space has been set up with a few tables, and people are gathered around them, talking in low voices.
A guy looks up as I enter. “Hey, you can’t—”
“Max told me about the game,” I interrupt, cutting him off before he can preemptively boot me. “I want to play. I have money.”
With that, I tug the thousand dollars I withdrew from the ATM using Mom’s card out of my back pocket, slapping the folded up bills lightly against my palm.
His eyes narrow. To this kid, a grand is probably chump change, but he obviously didn’t expect me to have it. Ordinarily, I might not, but Mr. Black paid us a stipend for moving expenses, and Mom and I did it on the cheap so we have some leftover.
He flicks his gaze back up to me, then finally shrugs. “Yeah, all right. If you can ante up, you can play. Let me get you chips.”
A grin tugs at the corner of my mouth. That was fucking easy. It’ll be harder if I want to come back again, or even if I try to find another game. After tonight, I have a feeling word will spread.
Once I get my chips from the guy, who mumbles something about his name being Carson, I sit down at one of the tables, smiling broadly at the others gathered around. It’s almost all guys, although there’s one girl with auburn hair and a sharp gaze. She’s the one I’ll have to watch out for, I decide immediately. All the rest of these dudes? Easy money.
The thing about learning poker from two heavily tattooed old men in the chemo center of Bayard Medical is that I didn’t just learn how to play the game. I learned how to win. Over the hours and hours we spent playing, I learned how to use every tool at my disposal to turn the odds in my favor.
The two old chips I got from them when they finished their treatments sit in my pocket now, and the one from Hunter is in my other pocket.
We start to play, and I throw the first few hands, making myself look new and inexperienced—just like I’m sure these guys expect the new girl from Arizona to be. By the next hand, I’m ready.
I’ve gotten decent at counting cards, so that helps. Plus, I’ve learned the tells of almost everyone around the table, which lets me know how to play against them.
When I rake in my first pile of chips, the auburn-haired girl narrows her eyes at me. But it takes two more hands for all the guys to catch on to what’s happening. Fortunately, by that point, I’m almost done.
I win the last game too, and the boy to my left tosses his hand down in irritation. “Who let the fucking ringer in here?”
“Max invited me,” I say with an easy grin. He’ll catch shit for that later, but I don’t really care.
People grumble as we all get up, but no one lost money they couldn’t afford to lose tonight. And when I cash in my chips, I’m up almost a thousand dollars.
I stuff it in my back pocket and make a quick getaway before any of the guys can come try to chat me up. Don’t ask me what it is about getting beaten at poker by a woman, but for some reason, it tends to make men horny. Maybe it’s just a last ditch effort to prove their masculinity, who knows.
None of the four kings were here tonight, thank fuck—but I do see another guy I’ve noticed hanging around with them a few times, Ethan, watching me with narrowed eyes as I slip out the door.
As I pull away from the warehouse, I crank up the music in the car and sing along, whipping my hair as I dance behind the wheel. It’s after one o’clock by now, but I’m wired and wide awake. Depositing the cash into the ATM makes a fierce pride swell in my chest, and one more little piece of the crushing guilt I carry chips away.
I’ve been doing this for a few years—only intermittently though, and not as often recently. I sneak the extra money I win into my mom’s account. It usually involves borrowing a substantial amount first, but I’ve rarely ended up losing it all.
Mom’s great at a lot of things, but keeping track of her money isn’t one of them. It got worse and worse after my treatments finally finished; I think it’s probably some kind of avoidance mechanism from when new bills were coming in every day and she couldn’t afford to pay any of them.
I took over managing our finances, paying bills and stuff, when I was thirteen—and it makes things like this way easier. My mom’s never noticed the money I take or the extra cash I manage to bring in.
On the drive back to the Black house, I turn the music off but roll down the windows, letting the chilly, slightly salty air infiltrate the car. Their house is a few miles from the waterfront, but I swear I can still taste the ocean in the air.
I switch off my lights before I punch in the code for the gate, and then I roll quietly into the second garage and hop out, crossing the short expanse from the garage to the house. As I reach the door to the service entrance, I catch the scent of coriander and musk a split second before a hand clamps around my wrist.
The tiny bit of advance warning isn’t enough to stop my heart from leaping into my throat, and I spin toward the large male body behind me, keys clenched in my fist.
“You gonna punch me, Pool Girl?”
Lincoln’s voice is wry, and I can’t make out much of his face in the darkness—just his light amber eyes.
I let out a gasping breath, yanking my hand out of his grasp and shoving him away with two palms to his chest. I’m too freaked out to realize I probably shouldn’t be touching my boss’s son and frequent tormentor so casually.
“Jesus Christ, Lincoln! You scared the shit out of me!” I hiss. “What are you doing out here?”
“Probably the same thing you are. Sneaking in.”
I blink. “You use the service entrance for that?”
“Sometimes, yeah. It’s easier than going in through the front. Less shit to trip over, and I don’t have to worry about running into my old man or mom.” He cocks his head at me, those insanely alluring eyes of his scanning my body like the answer will be written there. “Where were you? You’re not dressed to impress.”
Jesus. This fucking guy.
I take a step back, trying to put more distance between us so I can think better. I’m dressed just fine for kicking ass at poker, thank you very much.
“Where were you?” I ask, turning the question back on him.
“All right, all right.” One side of his mouth tilts up, and he holds out his hands. “We can both keep our secrets.”
Dammit. I want to know where he was—don’t ask me why. But I’m not trading him my secret in exchange for his. It’s bad enough he knows I snuck out at all. It just gives him one more thing to use against me if he does decide to get me fired.
Speaking of which…
“Hey. Why didn’t you tell your dad about the phone?” I cross my arms over my chest.
“What?”
“River’s phone. You guys were all pissed, I saw it. Why didn’t you tell him?”
He shrugs, his large shoulders rising and falling. He is dressed to impress, in a white shirt and perfectly tailored jacket that felt soft and silky against my skin when I touched him. Where the hell was he?
“River’s phone was a piece of shit. He needed a new one. I’d been telling him that for weeks.”
“Oh, so I did you a favor?” I shoot back.
His demeanor, more relaxed than usual, changes in an instant, and he steps toward me, crowding me against the wall. “Pool Girl, don’t think for even one second that pulling shit on one of my friends is ‘doing me a favor’. And if you want me to get you fired, I’d be more than fucking happy to do it.”
I swallow hard. “No. Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t…” I lick my lips, hating every second of this. “Don’t get me fired, please.”
His gaze flicks down, tracking the movement of my tongue, and he stills, the hard lines of his arms and shoulders softening for a moment. “You’re better than the last one was, I’ll give you that. You actually act like you care.”
I press away from the wall. “I do care—”<
br />
Lincoln chuckles, holding up a hand. “Save it, Pool Girl. I don’t need to hear your sob story.”
Then he slips through the service entrance and vanishes up the stairs.
6
I spend the rest of the weekend catching up on homework and helping Mom around the house. The cleaning is pretty easy, actually. Mr. Black demands everything be kept pristine, but it’s not that hard to do since the house barely seems lived in.
As I clean the guest bedroom down the hall from mine, I poke around surreptitiously, but I can’t find any sign that anyone was in here at all on Friday night. The bed is made perfectly, and nothing is out of place. If I hadn’t heard Mr. Black and that woman’s voice through the door, I’d never guess that anyone had used this room in weeks.
Lincoln’s gone for a lot of the weekend, which is nice in a way, since it’s easier to breathe when he’s not around. But I also find myself looking for him, expecting to turn the corner and find him staring at me with that intent look he often gets.
On Monday, Max bitches to me about how I should’ve told him I was good at poker, but I just laugh. Serves him right for assuming I wasn’t. He glowers at me as I turn down the hall to head for my next class.
I’m feeling pretty damn good. The high from playing well and winning always lasts a few days.
But it all comes crashing down around me at 3:05 p.m.
I push through the large double doors at the entrance of Linwood Academy, my backpack heavy on my shoulders and a couple books held in my arms. Students are spilling out of the school alongside me, and I ignore the few catcalls of, “Hey, Pool Girl!”
As I walk toward the parking lot, I notice a bunch of people standing around. The crowd around me slows too, and as I step forward, I see—
Mom’s car.
Fuck.
Two windows have been broken, and the car is stuffed full of garbage. Someone scrawled Clean Me, Bitch and drew a dick across the front windshield, and it looks like every single tire has been slashed.
For a second, I just stare at it, trying to comprehend what I’m seeing. The books in my arms hit the ground with a thud a second before I whirl to take in the gathered crowd.
“Who did this?” I yell.
Nobody answers. Savannah and Iris are standing with a group of cheerleaders, arms linked as they laugh. I heard them get into another fight after gym today, but apparently, they’ve smoothed things over again already.
The quarterback, Trent, stands nearby them, smirking.
My gaze scans the crowd for four familiar faces, and I find them too. Dax and Chase are standing side by side, each with their arms folded. On the other side of the gathered crowd, I find Lincoln and River. As they watch me, Lincoln leans over to speak into River’s ear, and River shakes his head slightly.
It could’ve been any of them. Or someone in the crowd whose name I don’t even know.
Kids are laughing, a few people are chucking more trash at my car, trying to get it through the broken windows, and my blood feels like it might combust. I’m so fucking pissed.
This isn’t even my car. It’s my mom’s. And if these rich assholes knew how hard she fucking worked for it, what it meant to us to finally even have a car after years of riding buses and begging rides off people… would they still have done this?
Sadly, probably yes.
“I hope you’re fucking happy.” My voice is low because I’m trying not to cry or fly completely off the handle and start screaming at everyone here. That’s what they want, I know it. To see me lose it. For me to complete the prank by giving them a show to laugh at.
But I won’t do that. I won’t give them the damn satisfaction.
I shuck my backpack and drop it to the ground before I pull my phone out, sinking to a crouch and leaning against the side of the car. A quick Google search pulls up a few different towing companies in the area, and I randomly pick one and dial the number.
“Fox Hill Towing, how can I help you?” a bored female voice answers.
“Hey, um, I’m in the lot of Linwood Academy on Newfield Avenue. I need a tow to a mechanic.”
“All right, we can do that.” She takes down my information and then finishes with, “Someone should be there in half an hour.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I end the call but stay where I am, crouched against one side of the car. Some students have wandered away, ready to get off campus and bored by my lack of tears. But Iris and Savannah linger for a little while, whispering back and forth. And when I glance at Lincoln and River again, I see their gazes darting around the crowd, like maybe they’re trying to figure out who did this too. Or, hell, maybe they did it, and they’re just wondering if anybody here saw them.
The tow truck takes forty minutes, and by the time the guy arrives, the parking lot has mostly cleared out. I haven’t even touched the trash inside the car, even though I know I should start cleaning it out. I just can’t bring myself to do it.
“Oh, wow.” He shakes his head, grimacing. “Somebody really did a number on this, huh?”
Yeah, genius. They did.
“Can you recommend a mechanic?” I ask. “We’re new in town, I don’t know any.”
“Sure.” He dusts his hands off, nodding toward the interior of the car. “They’re gonna charge you extra to get rid of all that though, I bet.”
“It’s fine,” I mutter.
But it’s not.
On the way to the mechanic, I have to call Mom because I don’t have enough money to pay for the tow. She takes the bus over to meet me at the auto shop, and I wish she could’ve borrowed one of the three cars Mr. Black owns, but I’m not surprised she didn’t ask.
When she sees her Nissan, that’s when I almost cry. The shit kids have been pulling on me at school sucks, but I can handle it. I dealt with a few bullies my freshman year at my old high school, and I’m tougher than most people assume.
But watching my mom read the words scrawled across the windshield, watching her process what’s been done to her car—and the fact that the kids did it to hurt me—breaks my fucking heart.
She gave up her life so I could have one. And somehow it feels like I just let her down.
“Low, are you okay?” As the tow truck driver unhooks the car from his rig, she wraps her arms around me. “Sweetie, if kids at school are—”
“It’s not that bad. It’s just a few jerks, and some asshole who decided to go overboard. I’ll help you pay for this,” I promise.
And I will. Even if she doesn’t know it.
She brushes that off, insisting it’ll be fine. But she hasn’t even gotten her first paycheck yet; an extra expense is not what she needs right now.
We leave the car at the shop and take a bus back to the Black’s neighborhood. It’s about a mile to their house from the bus stop, and my backpack straps dig into my shoulders as we walk.
My mom leaves it alone for a while, trying to cheer me up by talking about other things, letting her optimism bubble to the surface like always.
But even she can’t totally brush this off.
Later in the day, as we’re in the kitchen cleaning, she broaches the subject again.
“I think I should have a talk with the principal.”
The rag in my hand freezes, and I suppress a groan. “Mom, please don’t.”
“Why not?” She turns to face me, and I can tell this really upset her. Of course it fucking did. I wish I hadn’t had to tell her about any of it. “What they did was awful. Whoever was responsible should be held accountable. And what if it’s something worse next time? You could get hurt!”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
“Well, it won’t if I talk to the principal.”
Ugh. I wish I could make her understand it doesn’t work that way. Maybe if we knew who did it, they’d face some kind of punishment. But high schools have their own kind of hierarchy, and the principal is never really top of the heap. If I piss these kids off by t
attling on them, it’s extremely doubtful they’ll stop coming after me. They’ll just get sneakier about it, maybe move their pranks off campus. And I sure as fuck don’t want that.
“Talk to the principal about what? Is there something wrong at Linwood?”
Samuel steps into the kitchen, his dark brows drawn together. Mom and I both turn at the sound of his voice, and before I can stop her, she launches into a brief explanation of the whole thing.
Mr. Black’s expression darkens. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry. And yes, I would absolutely recommend reporting it to Principal Osterhaut. Linwood is a fine school. He’ll deal with the matter.”
Oh yeah? And what if it was your fucking kid who did it?
I don’t voice my thoughts though. And it’s a good thing I don’t, because a second later, Lincoln walks into the kitchen.
“In the meantime, Lincoln can drive you to school,” Mr. Black offers, smiling at me. “You two should’ve been driving together anyway. It only makes sense, since you’re headed the same place.”
“What?” The boy in question stops in his tracks, his head swiveling to stare at his dad.
“Penelope’s car was damaged today. So you’ll drive Harlow to school for a while, won’t you?”
Lincoln’s gaze tracks to me, and for a second, I expect him to tell his dad to go fuck himself, that I can walk to school barefoot through glass for all he cares.
But instead, he nods curtly. “Yeah. Of course.” He grabs something from the fridge and turns to go. “I leave at 7:30 sharp. Don’t be late.”
Once he’s out of the room, Mr. Black beams at me and my mom, as if he’s single-handedly solved all our problems. “There!”
“Thank you, sir. That’s sweet of you.” My mom smiles at him, seeming genuinely touched, and he smiles warmly back.
“It’s the least I could do, Penelope.”
Honestly, I’d almost rather walk to school than accept a ride from Lincoln. I don’t like the idea of owing him anything, and the idea of sitting alone in a confined space with him makes my skin prickle with an odd sort of awareness.
