Page 44 of Play Dirty

“I had to use the bathroom up there,” he said, leaning back. “In that refrigerator you call an attic.”

I said nothing. I only crunched bacon.

“First floor was a war crime,” he went on. “Second floor was clogged.”

“Zack,” Caleb muttered.

Zack clasped both hands and held them overhead, like he’d just won a trophy.

“Both floors?” Dorian grunted.

“Hey, I warned you guys.”

“You didn’t warn anyone,” Asher shot back. “You destroyed it, and walked away.”

“Semantics.”

A few of them laughed, and another piece of toast sailed across the table. I thought that’d be it. But—

“So I was up there, doing my business,” Asher went on, “and I didn’t see you.”

His eyes swept me again, and my pulse quickened. The bacon tasted like nothing.

“Maybe you didn’t look hard enough,” I suggested.

But Asher shook his head.

“Your door was open,” he said. “Blankets were thrown back. Bed was empty.”

Across the table, something changed. It was subtle at first, but then I saw it.

Ares.

He hadn’t said anything, or looked at me directly. But his posture was different now. His shoulders had hunched forward, and his jaw was clenched just a little bit tighter. It wasn’t anger, exactly. It was something different.

Next to him, Grayson murmured something into his ear. They glanced up at me for a moment, then both went back to eating.

Fuck.

Asher went back to slurping down his eggs, finally letting me off the hook. The room returned to normal. New conversations picked up, filling the space like nothing had happened.

But the damage, if any, was already done.

I drained the rest of my coffee, and finished my bacon with an inaudible sigh of resignation. Did it really matter? They could think what they wanted. Let them try to connect whatever dots they were trying to connect.

Across from me, Sebastian was still staring into his plate. The fact that he hadn’t looked up during the whole conversation — not even once — was starting to bother me. Way more than it should’ve.

I stood up, and got more coffee. Miraculously, my spot was still there when I got back.

“Big day,” Caleb said, off-handedly. “Mercer’s gonna run us into the ground before tomorrow.”

“Good,” Ares said.

It was the first thing he’d said all morning. His voice was flat, but there was something under it.

“We need it,” he added. “Badly.”

Grayson nodded once. “Phantoms don’t give you any space,” he said. “We play like we did last game, they’ll shut us down before we even get going.”