Page 28 of You Owe Me

“That wasn’t embarrassing; that was unfairly charming. I was aiming for awkward teenage confessions. Not full seduction with confessions of love.”

“You’ve met me, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

She tries to glare, but she’s still blushing, and I count that as a win.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rumor has it, poker nights are for planning murders.

Maverick

The cards feel different tonight.

Not wrong. Just… off. Slicker than usual. Lighter in the hand. Like they’ve been handled too much by someone who doesn’t know better. Or maybe it’s not the cards at all. Maybe it’s me. My mood. The undercurrent of tension I’ve been pretending isn’t there since I woke up with my watch buzzing and my chest tight for no damn reason.

Either way, I don’t like it.

Poker night is the one constant I still have. Three hours of silence, strategy, and control. My system. My rules. My people. Everything else in my life might be one phone call away from falling apart, but this table is mine.

Or it was.

Until Sebastian brought a guest.

“Full house,” I say, voice even, cards sliding into place on the felt. Three kings. Two tens. Not flashy, but lethal.

Rowan groans, tossing his hand down. “Dammit. That’s the third time tonight. You counting cards again?”

“He doesn’t need to count.” Sebastian folds. “It’s that freaky robot brain.”

I don’t respond. I never do. Let them joke. Let them pretend it’s luck or talent or some kind of parlor trick. It’s not. It’s math. Discipline. Pattern recognition. The fact that Rowan lifts his left shoulder every time he bluffs. That Sebastian taps his chips in sets of three when he’s got something decent.

It’s knowing the rules so well you can bend them without anyone noticing.

I rake the chips toward me, stacking them by color. Red. Blue. Green. Left to right. Same order every time. Because it keeps me focused. Because it keeps my hands busy while my brain keeps working.

My watch vibrates softly against my wrist. 110 BPM. A warning, not a threat. I take a slow breath through my nose and let it out through my teeth. Medication’s working. For now.

“Dude, that was sick!”

And there it is.

The reason I’m one ill-timed joke away from snapping.

Tweener.

Not his real name, obviously. I didn’t bother learning that. Sebastian calls him that because he’s “between” majors, “between” girlfriends, and based on the way he’s been bouncing his leg for the last hour, “between” doses of something synthetic.

“I mean, the way you knew he was bluffing? That’s, like, Jedi shit, man. You just stared him down and boom—folded like a cheap suit.”

He laughs. Loudly. Alone.

I don’t look at him. Just start shuffling the deck again. Not because we’re ready for the next hand. Because I need the sound. The rhythm.

Because I don’t want to be the guy who murders a guest in front of two witnesses.

He’s got a backwards hat on like it’s 2007 and we’re all still recovering from the MySpace era. His shirt has not one, nottwo, but three popped collars, layered like some kind of frat boy nesting doll. And whatever body spray he bathed in is strong enough to qualify as chemical warfare.

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