Page 50 of Night Shift

She never cries.

“What happened?” I demand.

“It’s nothing,” Harper snaps, sniffling hard. “I’m getting some jungle juice.”

“Harper, wait—”

She’s already shouldering her way into the kitchen.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, Nina grabs my arm and leans in.

“We saw Jabari with another girl,” she whispers as well as one can whisper in the middle of a crowded house party. “He was upstairs with Harper and a bunch of the team, and he got a text, and he said he’d be right back, but then Harper followed him down here a few minutes later and we saw them. He was holding her hand. He was taking her to the bar. And Harper played it cool, but then we overheard one of his teammates talking about some sort of big team mission to get someone laid and—”

Nina stops talking abruptly, her face crumpling as she takes in my rumpled hair and missing lipstick. She thought they were talking about Jabari. But now that she’s said it out loud—and now that she’s seen me—I think she realizes they were probably talking about someone else.

The birthday boy.

Twenty-one

I’ve always hated the it was only a bet trope.

Right now, I have the same sinking feeling of nausea I get when I’m reading a book and the pieces start to fall into place. Because maybe this is why Jabari was so excited to see me. I really was Vincent’s birthday present—wrapped up in a neat bow and hand-delivered. And what about Griffin, the kid who came and asked Vincent for the key to the basement? Was that an attempt to get me upstairs to Vincent’s room? Was this whole night one big, coordinated team effort to get my pants off?

My underwear. Maybe it's still up in Vincent’s room, wherever it landed. But maybe—just maybe—it’s in his pocket, a trophy to be shown off to his friends.

My brain has no brakes. I’m just a passenger, my grip on my seat white-knuckled as I go barreling toward the worst-case scenario. I can’t stop myself from replaying the events of the night, wondering if I somehow misread it all. If I somehow got the story wrong.

“I’m ready to go home,” I say, my voice high and tight.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Nina says, gripping me by my biceps. “What happened upstairs? Did you guys make out?”

I laugh weakly. “A little more than that.”

“Oh, God. Did you . . .” She trails off.

Maybe the basketball team will be able to tell you all the dirty details tomorrow.

And fuck, now I wish we hadn’t come at all, because this hurts. The same part of my imagination that’s so good at painting everything in romance tropes is turning the whole night into a horror movie. I press my fingertips into my chest, prodding at the tight lump where my heart should be. I think I’m going to throw up. Can stress kill you this quickly?

“Did he do something you didn’t want him to?” Nina demands.

“No. No, I—it was all consensual, and it was—”

My throat is too tight. I can’t finish the sentence.

Perfect. It was perfect.

“Kenny,” Nina says gently.

Her eyes are focused somewhere over my shoulder.

I turn just in time to see Vincent coming down the stairs. He’s not alone—a small crowd of his teammates surrounds him. Jabari Henderson is right behind him, a hand on either one of Vincent’s shoulders as he speaks into his ear like some kind of hype man. Their little cluster quickly grows as other partygoers are swept up into orbit around the birthday boy. I watch Priya, the girl from behind the kitchen bar, who’s pretty and sweet and exactly the kind of girl I’d want to be friends with, ruffle Vincent’s hair, and I have to look away.

Because I want him.

Despite every warning siren blaring in my head, there’s still a part of me that trusts him. That sees him in the crowd and thinks, mine.

All night, I’ve been falling.

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