Page 115 of Dirty Roulette
“Can I stay at the house and steal your clothes? Will that make you feel less insecure?” She asks, tilting her head to the side with her beautiful smile and eye flutter.
“Do what you want, cutie. I’ll be home a little after midnight.”
“I’ll make sure I’m on a silver platter with an apple in my mouth waiting for you.”
Chapter forty-four
Ryder
Delivering pizzas is a nightmare, but I chug down another energy drink, and tape flyers to each order before leaving the store. For once, Karen doesn’t act like her name. Behind the greasy blue hair turning green, she’s been uncomfortably kind. Each time I step back into the store, she checks in on me and feeds me with an all-you-can-eat amount of buffalo wings. Other drivers hand out flyers to customers. I keep checking my Instagram story between deliveries and hope people share Charlie’s picture, but getting a missing person to go viral is harder than I expected.
The news helps a bit, but it’s only for our county and it’s not spreading anywhere else.
The detective working on Charlie’s case called in the middle of my shift, dropping the bombshell. There’s nothing new, and they don’t plan on putting out a search party until they feel the need to recover a body. Surveillance at the venue is nonexistent. But with no footage, itleads to a dead end of what happened to Charlie. The thought of her being dead drops like a cement block in my stomach.
I pull up to Brody’s fraternity shortly after midnight, and the stench of cheese and pepperoni leeks off my shirt. This can go one of two ways. Either my teammates turn against me and pay the same respect and beat me senseless, or I convince them to let me talk to Brody.
I knock on the door and dip my hands into my pockets. It doesn’t take long for someone to answer and the woody smell floats out the door. It’s Farva with a beer in hand and sleepy eyelids.
“What the hell do you want?” He looks me up and down with bitchy judgmental eyes. “You should be kicked off the damn team.” Lucky for him, I don’t plan on going back to a jail cell, otherwise I’d put him in a hospital too.
I’m annoyed and sniffle my runny nose from the frigid air. “Where is Brody?”
“He doesn’t know where your damn sister is.” Farva attempts to slam the door in my face, but I catch it with a hand. “Why don’t you go sit on the bench where you belong?”
“We have another home game coming up. Brody is gonna play, and I just want to talk before we hit the field together again.” I play it nice and shrug my shoulders. A heartbeat hammers nails into my sternum, and I swallow the urge to snap.
“Let him in, you asswit!” Brody shouts in the distance.
I cock both eyebrows and Farva puckers his lips, and his chest heaves in and out as he opens the door. I step in, the floor creaking under my footsteps. My hands stay firm in my pockets, I keep the straightest face strolling into the living area where Brody sits on the couch with a hand of cards.
“Hey...” I say.
“Here to sort shit out?” Brody asks. One of his eyes is still bruised. It’s yellow around the edges, but it gives me an idea how bad I wrecked his face.
“You could say that,” I say.
“I don’t know where Charlie is,” he mutters, fumbling the corner of a card.
“Well, that’s obvious.”
Poker chips and bills are crumbled in a pile on the coffee table. The place is littered with beer bottles. Half of the linemen sit on the couches, smoking and taking swigs of their drinks. The glares and stale expressions wrap hands around my neck.
“You gonna be able to play at our next game?” I ask. There is another five days before we have another game.
“Yeah...” he mutters out.
“Coach plans on benching us if we don’t get along.”
“He plans on kicking us off the team.” Brody lays down his hand with a flush. The other guys throw cards as they lose. “Now what the hell do you want?”
“I’ll get along with you if you remove Payton’s pictures and videos from that website.” I swallow hard, my pulse quickening.
“It has over a hundred thousand views. I’m sure it’s already downloaded and posted elsewhere.” Brody doesn’t falter for one second.
“No one is going to look at our team if we have a losing streak. You want to be drafted as much as I do. We can put this behind us if you remove the video – and every player on the team needs to keep their hands off her. She ismygirl, and everyone needs to back thefuck off.”
Brody scoffs, shaking his head. His feet tap on the floor as a smirk molds along his face. “I dunno if your five thousand yards are going to convince me to remove it. I can’t control the team, but my dad will pay the board to keep me on, you on the other hand will be off the team.”
