Page 22 of Ly to Me
“You sure you can do this?” Grant angled his lips my way, but I ignored him. I’d show them all. Lady Luck was a woman, and she was on my damn side, not theirs.
Hayes finished laying the cards out in the center. “No sense in betting any chips, right?”
“Do you see Lyra holding any fuckin’ chips?” Jamie asked, checking his cards.
“What I see is a scared little man,” I snapped back.
“Calls ’em like she sees ’em.” My brows furrowed at the defensive remark. Car carried on as he checked his cards, then leaned back in his seat, becoming the picture of amity, while his friend across the table was anything but.
I peeked at my cards again, making Car flash those blue eyes my way. Shit. The smile he let spread as he watched Hayes turn over each card was eerie. It made my skin crawl, yet heat in the worst of ways.
My only hope of winning was if they’d both have, at most, a single pair. It was that, or I’d be fucked. Judging by the nose scratch, Jamie had jack shit. I glanced at Carver once more andheld back on that desire to go alley cat on his face. He’d grown better at lying. I had to give him that.
As the cards flipped, my stomach sank further and further. The last card turned, and Jamie threw his cards down. Carver turned his over, and Jamie’s eyes grew wide. “This was all rigged!” he shouted as I laid my pointless cards out, my bones turning hollow. “You kept the ace from the last round, didn’t you?”
Carver spread his legs wide once more, his gaze set on Jamie like he could murder him with a single look. A look that bounced between the hallway leading to Jamie’s room and Jamie. “I’m not a cheat.”
Grant stood, ready to hold Jamie back if need be. I tried pushing my chair back, but Carver’s boot locked onto the wooden leg.
“A deal is a deal, little Ly.” His smooth voice chilled those lifeless bones of mine. My attention darted to my bag. Boots stomped, and Grant and Hayes’ demands for Jamie to calm the hell down couldn’t compete with my tunneling vision on that white bag and the door a few feet to the left of it. If I could just—
“Don’t. Do. It.”
I glared. “Let me go, Car. You don’t want me.”
His jaw worked. “I told you—don’t fucking call me that. You lost those privileges when you—” Another muscle popped along his jaw as he reached down for the bag. “Take it and go to my room.” The rest of the men were oblivious to us as they stormed through the front door, leaving us with muddled shouts and a cacophony of cicadas that dulled none of the buzzing in my ears.
“Car, please, I—”
He lunged forward, gripping my cheeks and pulling me within an inch of his lips. “Let me make this clear—I am not him. The boy you pretended to love died ten years ago in the hole you lefthim to rot.” His face morphed with rage right before he released me. “Now, go.”
“I don’t have to listen to you. I could just leave.”
His hand balled into a fist along the tabletop. “You leave, and I’ll track you down and bring you right back. A deal is a deal.”
I hesitated a mere two seconds before snatching the bag from his hand. Because he was right—the man I saw before me was nothing like the boy I’d known all those years ago. Then again, the boy I knew had been a lie. Whoever he was now was probably an evolution of the same beast I, unfortunately, had let through my heavily guarded walls.
“Thought you had given up betting.” The bag swung as I stood, my fingers trembling with rage. “It appears we’re both full of disappointments lately.”
His low growl froze my feet inches from the front door. “I’m serious, Lyra. There’s nowhere in this town you can hide, and no lengths I wouldn’t go through to drag your ass right back here.”
My lips parted, the doorknob turning slick with sweat from my palms. “You told me I could leave. You said I had a choice.”
“That option is no longer on the table, and now you’re two seconds away from being tossed over my shoulder and hauled to my bedroom. Or, you can choose to walk there yourself with the ounce of dignity you have left.”
“Fuck you.” Those mocking cicadas followed me as I turned and stormed down the hall, letting the bag scrape against the walls leading to his room. It had been a pipe dream to think I’d win against Carver Roland based on pure luck alone—Lady Luck had never favored me once in my life. So why would she now?
TEN YEARS AGO
Waves of dizziness mocked me as I tried to remember the locker combination, spinning the dial whenever a number felt somewhat familiar.
“Fuck,” I murmured, smacking the metal like that would help. “Come on, open.”
“Need a hand?” A glance to my side revealed a smarmy grin spread over broadened cheekbones and a strong, angular jawline.
“No. I think I got it.”
“What’s your number?”
