Page 127 of Fake Game

I ended up having to put Sydney in contact with my moderators. She’s working with them to deal with my social media while everyone is still speculating about why Parker and I went to the hospital. In return, Sydney put me in contact with her therapist. I’m not exactly looking forward to it. I’ve been dealing fine on my own.

Kind of.

Not really.

“You’re sighing an awful lot over there. You okay?” Jackson rubs my knee as we pull onto the tarmac and drive up to the coveted Covington jet.

“Yeah, I’m just ready to be home.”

“I know.”

Jackson holds his hand out to help me out of the car. I don’t know why they make Escalades so high off the ground.

There’s ruckus from the other vehicle. My gaze strays to Parker as he leaps out of the car and throws his arm around Aleks, giving him a noogie, to which Aleks elbows him in the gut and tries to push him off. Syd rushes forward to break them apart, but the two boys just start laughing at one another.

I don’t get how he is handling this so much better than me.

The truth is, if Parker hadn’t drunk half my drink…I would have been in way worse condition.

“You’ll sit opposite me, right?” Lee comes up on my left as we walk to the stairs.

She’s still upset she wasn’t at the hospital when I woke up even though I know she had been there the entire day.

“You can sit next to me.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want to spend the entire flight with the Hulk glaring daggers at me.” Lee’s gaze flits to the man beside me.

“Fair,” I chuckle.

I clock Phoebe the second we enter the jet. She sits on a seat in the back right corner, a man in a black suit next to her. She looks up briefly, glancing over me before returning to her laptop. Her stoic expression never shifts.

I’m terrified about what she wants to talk about.

It’s bad enough that, at this point, I’m pretty sure everyone knows that I’ve been keeping more than a few secrets from them. Something tells me that my cauldron has been bubbling too long and that everything is on the verge of spilling over.

I take the seat farthest from Phoebe that faces away from her. I know if I have to look at her throughout the flight, I’ll drive myself to an early grave.

Jackson takes up the seat next to me, and Lee, true to her word, sits opposite me. Parker, Syd, and Aleks mimic our seating arrangement on the opposite aisle.

I try to distract myself, pulling my Switch and headphones from my handbag. I allow the music to drown everything out as I start upMoonstone Valley. I’ve been practically glued to my comfort game since I woke up, losing myself in another world is the only way to prevent my mind from overthinking everything that’s happened to me.

I vaguely feel the jostling of the jet as it rolls down the runway, and my stomach does a little flip when we go airborne.

I’m so focused on trying to woo this damn village doctor to marry me that it takes a second for me to realize Lee is nudging me with her foot. I look up and raise one of my brows at her. Shemakes a drinking motion with her hands and then points to her right.

The stewardess stands there with a couple of water glasses and champagne flutes on a platter.

My stomach drops again, and not from the altitude.

Jackson must notice me tense up in his periphery because he looks up from his laptop. I’m not sure what he sees in my face, but he lifts one side of his headphones and says something to the stewardess that makes her blanch.

She comes back with a water bottle, which Jackson inspects before cracking it open and taking a sip. He then holds it out to me, and I can’t help feeling a little embarrassed. But that embarrassment doesn’t overshadow my relief at his gesture. I mouth “thank you” to him as I tentatively accept the bottle.

I know now that the reason why I couldn’t detect the roofies was because the damn sports drink was blue, which hides the way the tasteless little pill tinges drinks a blue color.

Everyone keeps saying it’s not my fault, but I can’t help feeling like I should’ve known better. I mean, come on, you don’t just accept drinks from people—not if you’re someone in my position, especially with everything that’s been happening. Sure, she seemed official because she was a volunteer with the expo…

I take a sip of the water, and my nerves scream at me even after I’ve gulped it down. Out of everywhere, this is one of the last places my drink could be spiked, but my brain doesn’t seem to understand that. It makes the liquid feel like fire clogging my throat, but I try my best to push past it.

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