Page 51 of Game Night: Truth or Dare

“I—”

“Take. Your. Turn.” I can’t tell you why it was so important to me, but it was. Maybe it was just, I needed all of this to be part of a game. Not serious. Not real. If I could keep my burning eyes and my racing heartbeat contained within a Truth or Dare circle, maybe none of this would mean anything tomorrow.

Ben broke, acknowledging my tone with a nod. “Fine. Oliver…”

“No,” I said. “Don’t you even know the rules? You can’t bounce back to me.”

“For fuck’s sake,” he whispered, then looked around the room. “Taylor.”

Taylor looked shocked that he’d been addressed. I mean, he was probably stoned out of his mind by now, but also, Ben and I had put on quite the show. He probably thought he was watching a movie or something, and hadn’t expected the characters to address him by name. He recovered, though, with a lopsided grin. “Yo.”

“Truth or Dare?”

“Dare, man.”

“Pass me your vape.”

There was a tiny pause, and then everyone started laughing. Everyone but me, obviously. Even Bianca had cracked a grin. It was like the whole room had forgotten about the little showdown, and the tension had burned away, and now everyone was cool and chill and having a good time. Only I was sitting there, still furious, a spicy little radish in a bed of daisies.

“Sure thing, man.” Taylor fumbled for the pen, then passed it over. Ben took it with his big, clumsy, thick-fingered hands and raised it to his lips. The tip glowed green when he hit it.

Beside me, the timer on my phone went off. I stopped rubbing and slid to the floor next to Sienna. Bianca didn’t even notice that I didn’t return to her.

Taylor took back his vape, then rubbed his hands together eagerly. “All right, all right,” he said. “Guess it’s on me.” Almost immediately, his focus landed on me. I didn’t know why he made that choice in a circle that was three-quarters women. Maybe it was just that I was so obviously pissed, and he wanted to make me pop off? Whatever his reasoning, I was his target. “Ollie.”

“Oh, god…” said Gracie. “If I’d known this game was going to turn into a sausage fest…”

“Yeah,” said Kelly. “Pass it around a bit, Taylor.”

“No, no, hold up. This is gonna be excellent.” His bleary eyes returned to me. “You good, Ollie?”

What, he expected me to admit how rotten I felt? “Sure.”

“Truth or Dare?”

Fuck this guy, anyway. I didn’t know what he was trying to prove, but if Ben Quinn wasn’t going to get the best of me, dumbass Taylor Harris couldn’t make me flinch. “Dare,” I said, staring him dead in the eye.

“I sense—” He spread his arms like he was about to give a fucking TED Talk. “—a lot of tension in this circle, and I think we all need to come together.” Ugh. He thought he was hilarious. I could have busted his lip. “Oliver…I dare you…to kiss Ben and make up.”

“Fuck you,” I said, and simultaneously a chorus of Dude and C’mon, man and Be cool rose up from around the circle.

“Okay, okay.” Taylor held out his arms again, calming down his audience before they turned on him. “Maybe mouth-to-mouth is a little intense. But I do think you guys should make up. How about…” He screwed up his face, thinking, or at least pretending to think. “How about, I dare you to give Ben a hickey.”

Again the crowd started muttering, and the part of me that had felt abandoned and unthought-of a second ago appreciated that. But there was, actually, a big difference between the first dare and the second. Kissing Ben—ew—would be something we did together. The hickey, though? I wasn’t dying to put my mouth anywhere near him, but at least it was something I could do to him.

And I could make it hurt.

And I could leave a mark.

And none of that would actually heal the things that were aching inside of me, but it would feel good in other ways. Hurting Ben would feel…amazing.

At the very least, I could make him be the one to say no, to violate the sacred trust of a Truth or Dare circle. That would be a smaller victory, but at this point, I’d feast on whatever scraps I could get.

I didn’t want to sound too eager, though.

“You think I won’t?” I asked, my voice loud enough to cut through the hubbub. “You think I’m chickenshit?”

“Ol…” That was Bianca, in the voice she used when she was trying to talk sense into me. Maybe she thought I was being immature and dramatic.

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