Page 75 of Trick Play
Blowing out a breath, I set my pizza down and stand. “Thanks, Dani,” I manage to get out, my voice hoarse and clogged with tears. I can’t say anything else without completely breaking down, though. So I go back to my room to let it all out without an audience.
When Dani taps on my door a few minutes later and asks if I’m alright, I manage to pull myself together enough to answer her.
“I just need to be alone tonight,” I say, my voice wavering with the strain of projecting through the closed door. “I promise I won’t screw up my last two tests, though. I’ll take them, and I’ll ace them.”
I’m not going to let some dumb guy derail me. Not again.
Never again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Cal
I pace my bedroom, staring at my phone. Willing Piper to respond to my last text. But she doesn’t. She hasn’t responded to any of my texts. Every time I’ve called it goes straight to voicemail with the glaring exception of the first time when it rang three times before getting sent to voicemail.
While it’s not unheard of for Piper to take some time to get back to me if she’s busy, that hasn’t happened in over two weeks. And the last time we talked, I told her I’d be calling as soon as I was home. She was going to come over, we were going to have dinner together, and both finish up studying for our last finals. She has two to go still, and I just have one more tomorrow.
Then I planned to reward our studious efforts with sexy times in my room until she fell asleep, too exhausted and satisfied to keep her eyes open a moment longer. I even bought an extra toothbrush for her to keep here for when she stays over, which I’m hoping will happen more often since classes won’t be a thing we have to worry about for a few weeks. And once the break is over and my brutal schedule eases up a bit, she won’t have the excuse of not wanting to disrupt my morning workout routine to fall back on either.
Things have been good, on the right track, and I want them to get more serious.
I mean, we haven’t discussed all these changes, but I didn’t think it was necessary to have a business meeting about it or anything. We’ve been taking everything as it comes all along. Why should this be any different?
But now she won’t respond to my calls or texts.
Worry settles over me, dark and cold, seeping into my skin.
“Hey, Ellie,” I call as I head for the living room. Maybe I’m overreacting, and I hope this doesn’t make me look like a psycho stalker, but I just have a really bad feeling, and I need to make sure that Piper’s okay. Ellie can get me into her dorm, and I can go check on her. Make sure everything’s okay. “Can you get me into your dorm? I need to check on Piper.”
Ellie looks up from her textbook, her brows wrinkled together. “Wasn’t she coming over later? That’s what she told me earlier.”
“Yeah, that was the plan. I told her I’d call when I got home, and she was supposed to come over. But it’s been almost an hour, and I can’t get her on the phone. I have a really bad feeling, and I just want to make sure she’s like … I dunno, that she got busy studying and forgot to plug in her phone and it died and she didn’t realize it or something.”
“Hang on. Lemme check with her roommate. I have her number too.” Her fingers fly over the screen, then her eyes narrow, and she glances at me quickly before typing something again.
“What?” I demand. “What’s going on?”
Ellie shakes her head and stands. “I’m not sure.” She sounds distant, though. Cold. Not the happy, helpful little sister she was just a minute ago.
“Ellie, what’s going on? Did something happen?”
She looks down at her phone, types something else, then sticks it in her pocket and holds out her hand. “I need your car.”
“What?”
She wiggles her fingers, standing in front of me with her other hand on her hip, her face a mask of impatience. “Come on. You want to know what’s going on with Piper? Give me your car keys. Me driving will be faster than walking.”
“I’ll drive you,” I say, my voice brooking no arguments, but she shakes her head. She never did fall for my bossy older brother routine. Not in years, anyway, and not at all since she and Simon got together. It’s like she’s grown completely immune.
“Nope,” she says, as though her refusal weren’t plain as day without her verbalizing it.
Simon wanders in from the kitchen, taking in our standoff. “What’s going on?”
“Something’s wrong with Piper,” I supply, “and Ellie kindly offered to take me to her dorm to investigate.”
Ellie shakes her head. “I did not,” she says emphatically. “What I did was offer to go find out what’s going on myself, but Cal is refusing to let me use his car.” With a shrug to show nonchalance that’s entirely feigned, she flops back down on the couch. “Fine. Have it your way. I thought you wanted to find out what’s going on, though.”
She’s practically vibrating with tension as she opens her textbook and stares at the pages. I don’t think she’s actually reading at all, though, because when she reads, she fiddles with things, taps her pen, clicks the cap, rolls the hem of her shirt between her fingers, something. And she’s doing none of those things. She’s sitting, her back stiff and straight, her shoulders hunched up to her ears, her eyes fixed on the page like that’s a believable approximation of reading.
