Page 142 of Overcast

“You stacked the deck,”Stormi accuses, tossing her cards on the coffee table and hitting me with an accusing glare.

“Do I look like a cheat?” I counter, pressing my lips into a fine line to keep from further taunting. “You’re getting meaner the longer you stay here, sweetheart.”

“Maybe it’s the company,” she counters, crossing her arms over her chest.

Her words are void to me at this point because it’s official that the innocent and angelic Stormi is a sore loser and competitive as fuck.

“And maybe you’re sour because you have some sort of faith in these playing cards that they’re going to give you exactly what you wish for. Only God and I can do that, sweetheart.” She scoffs, leaning back against the couch and crosses her legs. “Do you want to deal?”

“I better,” she mutters. “Unless I want to lose my dignity.”

“Bet I win the next round.” I slam the deck in front of her and scoop up my beer, tugging back on its contents.

“Bet.”

“What would you like? Breakfast? Ten bucks? A shopping trip?” She locks eyes with me, penetrating through my calm demeanor like she’s ready to suck something important from me.

“I want a secret,” she deadpans.

“A what now?”

“A secret,” she repeats, shuffling the deck in her hands. “I want to know something that no one knows. Not Mills or Bishop, something you’ve buried so deep that...it’s a secret.”

“Then I’d have to go through with it and kill you, Stormi.” The seriousness in my tone does nothing to make her flinch or cower down.

Instead, she perks a brow and raises her chin like a little warrior that just realized it lived inside the body of a woman who’s oppressed it for years.

I’m curious to meet her and go head to head.

“Make it interesting,” she replies, flipping half the deck into the other. “What would you like?”

“Loaded question, woman.”

She grins and bats her eyelashes. “Be nice to me.”

Who the fuck is this woman?

I shift off the floor, readjusting my growing cock at all the explicit things sprinting through my brain involving her and this table we’re playing on.

“I want your middle name.”

Lame, yet, there’s the alternative.

“Fine.” She begins rearranging the cards, biting on her tongue as she does.

I pull back on my beer again, watching her intent focus on the stupid cards just to give me a reason to look at her.

Her blonde hair is braided to the side, allowing me a gracious view of her neck. The v-neck of her pale yellow shirt brings out the sun in her skin from being outside. She’s taken a hobby of watering the flowers, pulling out weeds, and sitting on the picnic table outside with her eyes closed to tan a little.

She’s the most beautiful thing out there. Too tempting and sweet. When she brought me a glass of lemonade yesterday when I was out fixing one of my gutters, I barely could utter a “thank you”. A simple action that should be a natural thing to do was hard for me.

I’ve never had a girlfriend that took care of me. The last serious relationship that lasted more than a trip to New Orleans was in high school, and she only liked me because I could get her any hard drug her little heart desired.

That, and we were crazy hot in bed.

Other than that, Stormi makes me feel discomposed and awkward.

Dealing out our cards, Stormi sets the rest of the deck in front of us. Looking over mine, I’m set, while Stormi draws another card from the stack.

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