Page 172 of Play Dirty

That felt a hell of a lot more dangerous than not knowing at all.

~ 49 ~

HAVEN

We didn’t just win.

We rolled.

It started small. One game. Then another. A tight one we probably should’ve lost, except we didn’t. Then a clean one, where everything clicked and nobody even questioned it.

And then suddenly—

We were on a run.

Momentum. It really fucking mattered. The Reavers weren’t just chasing games anymore, we were dictating them. Controlling pace, forcing mistakes, capitalizing in ways that felt… inevitable.

Grayson was a machine. Not flashy — just relentless. Every shift looked like it meant something now. Like he was erasing ghosts one stride at a time.

Ares hit like a boxer in his prime — clean, brutal, perfectly placed.

And Sebastian?

Sebastian was calm in a way that made everything else possible. Locked in. Seeing plays before they happened, and shutting doors before they even opened.

It wasn’t luck.

It was us.

And a small, dangerous part of me knew why.

The bus rides got louder, the locker room got looser. Music blasting. Guys chirping. Mercer no longer telling everyone to knock it off. Zack talking nonstop about how he “always believed,” which was absolute bullshit, but nobody called him on it because winning made everything funnier.

Even the looks started changing.

Not obvious at first. Just… subtle pauses.

Ares standing a little too close to me in the hallway.

Sebastian brushing past me a little too slow.

Grayson, not even pretending he wasn’t staring at me anymore.

People noticed. They didn’t say anything.

But they noticed.

The first time we almost got caught, it was Asher.

He came down the hallway at the wrong time — right as I was slipping from Grayson’s room, heart racing, trying not to look like I’d just been—

Well.

He stopped. Looked at me. Looked at the door, then back at me again.

I waited, until he raised both hands slowly.

“I don’t want to know,” he said. Then he walked away.