Page 195 of Play Dirty

“You didn’t take it,” she said.

I exhaled.

“No.”

A beat. Then, quieter—

“You were right.”

She pulled back just enough to look at me, eyes bright, locked in.

“I know,” she said, like it wasn’t even a question.

My eyes slipped over her shoulder, and I saw him:

Sutherland.

Still in the crease. Not moving. Just standing there. Staring at nothing.

At everything.

At something only he could see.

My jaw went tight.

Something happened to you.

I didn’t know what. I told myself I shouldn’t care.

But I did.

And that was going to matter.

~ 56 ~

HAVEN

The house was already shaking by the time I got there.

Not metaphorically.

Actually shaking.

Bass thumped through the floorboards, rattling the crooked picture frames in the hallway and making the loose stair rail hum like it might finally give up and collapse under the weight of it all. Voices layered over voices — shouting, laughing, someone absolutely butchering the lyrics to a song that was loud and fast and completely unrecognizable.

The Reavers didn’t just celebrate. They took over.

And tonight?

They’d earned it.

I stepped inside and immediately got swallowed whole.

“MAXWELL!”

I didn’t even see who it was before a beer got shoved into my hand, and someone spun me halfway around. Jackson — right, that was Jackson — grinning like he’d just personally scored all three goals.

“You see that last play?” he shouted over the music.