Page 42 of Study Games

Not offering us one, he looked up, a degree of calculation in his features that hadn't been there before. “What do you want?”

Crush held out his phone open to a picture of the twins. “What do you owe them?”

Vincent took one look at the photo and shrugged, his face open, and shook his head. “Never seen him.” He frowned and seemed to realize there were two different people in the picture. “Either of them,” he amended, half emptying his beer.

“Kid should be a pleb at the frat with those skills,” I muttered, watching him for signs of mistruth and finding none.

Growing up with my father, I knew bullshit when I saw it.

“Not likely,” Crush said out of the side of his mouth.

“Was that it? Just, ‘do I know them’?” Vincent parroted, misquoting Crush.

My brow creased. How this waste of a human was related to Waverly, I had no idea. “And yet they say you owe them money.”

“Not to them, I don’t.” He laughed, a harsh, unholy sound.

The sort I knew and had been waiting for.

Crush stiffened at my side. “So who do you owe, Vincent,” he asked softly, the presidential facade slipping fast.

Pity Waverly’s brother was too drunk before noon to recognize it.

The asshole laughed again. Some kingpin druggy on the coast. California’s greatest. Home sweet home, eh? That’s what they told me when I came back. Bunch of bullshit,” he muttered into his empty beer. Then his mood shifted and he grinned at me like he just solved all the world’s problems. “But we’re here, right? We survived?” He looked up at me hopefully.

My jaw locked. I glanced at Crush, well out of my depth.

He shook his head lightly, and crouched before Vincent, his face free of doubts. But I still had a big one, and it started with the sloppy asshole of a brother who sat right in front of me.

“When was the last time you spoke to Waverly?” he asked gently.

I could have told him that was a mistake.

“She’s too good to talk to me.”

I glared at him. “So she doesn’t call, then?”

Go on, ass wipe. Call her a liar. Cause I bet everything I own she’s called you this year a dozen times. Did you pick up or were you passed out.

“Nah, she doesn’t.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” I said through clenched teeth.

Crush shot me a look. “This kingpin who you owe money to. Vincent.” He snapped his fingers as the kid’s eyes shuttered for a long second. “How much do you owe him?”

Vincent yawned and scratched the scruff of his neck, seemingly unconcerned. “I don’t really know. Maybe two hundred grand?”

My eyebrows raised. Even to me, that was a sizable sum. “For drugs?”

Vincent’s fleshy lips split into a wide grin. “And a few other things. Had a little party time when I got back from the desert. You know they don't pay real well in the military when someone shoots you. Drugs… People getting shot over and over and over and then it hits you. Nothing here is real. They want you to come home and pretend nothing happened. But it did, man. And there’s people who didn’t come home, and…And then you go back to work. But it’s not real. Not the same. Can’t sit there day after fuckin’ day staring at a screen…”

He trailed off, jaw clenching, his fists mirroring the motion.

“All right.” I tapped Crush’s shoulder. We wouldn’t achieve more here than upsetting an already broken man. I knew what I had to do.

Vincent stilled for the first time since we entered the house. “Yeah. It is.”

I cleared my throat. We were losing him. “You are this man. Unfortunately he seems intent on taking his debt out somehow on Waverly.” I held Vincent’s reddening eyes, determined to make him see the damage he’d done, if only for a brief period.

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