Page 189 of End Game

For the first time since I bought it, there isn’t an empty part of it anywhere.

Chapter twenty-one

Midnight Initiative

Micah

Dex has been gone for almost four hours, and somehow he’s still the loudest person in the room.

My phone buzzes against my thigh while Griffin is explaining, for the third time, why Cami cannot retroactively change the rules of the game just because she’s losing.

I glance down

Dex

Update from the trenches:

someone has already thrown up in a planter

it’s 9:47

A second message appears before I finish reading the first.

Dex

tips are disgusting, so I forgive humanity

I smile despite myself.

Cami is sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the coffee table, leggings tucked into thick socks, cards fanned in one hand. She catches the expression immediately.

“That was Dex, right?”

Nobody else picked up their phones.

“Who else?”

Griffin looks up from his own cards. “What happened now?”

I read the planter update aloud.

Cami groans. “Ew.”

From the armchair beside me, Ronan takes a slow drink of whiskey and says, “This is why I prefer libraries.”

“Library patrons don’t tip,” Griffin points out.

“They also rarely vomit into decorative landscaping.”

“Rarely?” Cami asks.

Ronan gives her a look. “Public libraries contain multitudes.”

I laugh and put my phone back on my thigh.

The house is quieter without Dex, but not actually quiet. The television is on low in the background, tuned to one of the New Year’s broadcasts, even though none of us has really watched it.

Cami made too many snacks because apparently New Year’s Eve requires at least three kinds of dip. Griffin has been steadily eating all of them while insisting he’s not hungry.