Page 23 of Fight or Flight
My heart does a weird skittering beat as my chest constricts.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him. He has to be lying and trying to get me to admit to cheating. There’s no way he saw me switch cards.
“Mmmmhmmmm.” He drags his tongue over his bottom lip, and my eyes are drawn to the shine left behind. “Of course you don’t. Maybe I should ask Axel if I can pull the security footage from the room to jog your memory?”
“No, don’t,” I say quickly. Too quickly.
He grins. “I thought that might help you remember things.”
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Who says I want anything?” He uncrosses his arms and pushes his long hair from his face.
“Why else would you be here?”
“To have a friendly conversation about your particular skill set.”
“Skill set?” I repeat dumbly.
“I’m assuming that cheating at cards isn’t the only thing you can do.” He pulls an unopened deck of Bicycle cards out of his pocket and holds it out to me.
“And what do you want me to do with that?” I ask, eyeing the cards suspiciously.
“Show me what else you can do.” He wiggles them at me.
“What makes you think I can do other things?”
“Call it intuition.” He wiggles the pack again.
“Why are you doing this?” I take the cards from them and seek out the little tab so I can pull off the plastic wrapping.
“Because it’s fun.”
“Fun?” I ask dubiously. “Are you sure about that?”
“Fun for me,” he corrects. “And I figured you’d find this preferable to me telling everyone that you’re a card cheat. How do you think that would go over?”
I shoot him a dirty look and shake the cards out of the package.
For a frat full of some of the most obscenely wealthy people on this side of the planet, the guys are notoriously stingy when itcomes to their own money. I’ve seen friendships end and fights break out over far less than cheating at poker.
“So what am I supposed to do now?” I ask as I unconsciously run my thumb over the smooth surface of the cards.
“Show me a trick.”
“A trick?” I shoot him a flat look.
“Yeah.” He grins. “Entertain me.”
I bite my lip so I don’t tell him to go fuck himself.
He has the upper hand here, and it’s better if I just do what he says and hopefully that’ll be enough to make him forget all about what he saw.
“Like what kind of trick?” I split the deck with one hand and rotate the halves so the top part is now on the bottom. Then I do it again, only this time I split the deck into three and mix them up.
“That’s a good start.” He smiles appreciatively, his eyes locked on my hands. “What else can you do?”
Adding my other hand to the mix, I break the deck up into five parts and flip and turn them in a dizzying pattern until they’re all neatly stacked back together.
