Chapter Eight
Maisie
“Have you checked on your brother recently?” Lyric slides up next to me, looping her arm through mine.
“Um, why? What’s he doing?” I have to raise my voice over the music in order to be heard.
She gives me that look of hers, the one that says she really doesn’t want to say it out loud.
“Lyric.” I narrow my gaze at her.
“He may or may not be playing the peanut butter in a human PB&J.” She looks laughably uncomfortable as she says it.
“Oh God. I don’t want to know.” I groan.
“Are you sure? Because he’s half naked in there.” She hitches her thumb toward the back room.
“Oh, I’m sure. And since he came with you and Kai, he’s your problem tonight,” I tell her with a teasing grin.
“You mean he’s Kai’s problem.” She snorts out a laugh.
“Speaking of... Where is Prince Charming anyway?”
“He’s getting us drinks.”
“Well, he better be getting me another because I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”
“Why? Is everything okay?” She looks around, slowly realizing that she’s caught me on my way upstairs. “Were you?” She arches a brow and points to the stairs.
“It’s not what you think. Lana texted me and asked me to meet her up there.”
“Why?” Her brow shoots even higher.
“No idea. And I’m a little scared to find out.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“And traumatize that pretty little head of yours? Nah.” I laugh, knocking my hip into hers.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” I catch sight of Kai over the top of her head. “Besides, someone is looking for you.” I gesture behind her.
She looks over her shoulder, a smile touching her lips when she spots her fiancé making his way toward us.
“I’ll leave you two to it. I gotta go see what this crazy roommate of mine needs.”
“Wait, take this first.” She takes one of the red Solo cups from Kai before shoving it into my hand, beer sloshing over the sides before trickling across my fingers. “You need it more than me.” She winks.
“Thank you.” I smile at my best friend before lifting the cup and draining half the contents in one long pull.
“Text me if you need backup,” she says as I shove the now half-empty cup back into her hand.
“Always.” I knock her hip a second time before stepping past her. I nod a greeting to Kai and then quickly make my way up the stairs to the second-floor landing.
Making my way to the far end of the hall, I wrap my knuckles on the third door on the right, which is where Lana directed me to go.
There’s so much noise in the house that if anyone replies, I can’t hear it. Instead of wasting my time knocking a second time, I twist the doorknob and push it open, revealing a dimly lit bedroom.
“Lana?” I hesitantly step inside.
“There you are.” She appears in front of me, taking my hand to pull me farther into the room before closing the door behind her.
She’s dressed in an oversized shirt and plaid shorts, her brown hair pulled away from her face in a messy ponytail.
Honestly, it kinda looks like she just rolled out of bed.
Meanwhile, I’ve got myself squeezed into perhaps the tightest dress I own, and my heels are wreaking havoc on my feet.
We look like we’re attending two different types of parties.
It takes me longer than it should to realize that we’re not alone in the room.
You would think the nearly naked man on the bed would have been the first thing I would have noticed.
Especially since that man is none other than Joey Franklin, starting quarterback and roommate to one Macallan Stewart, spread out on the bed in nothing more than his boxers.
“Um, what is going on in here?” I look from Lana to Joey and then back to Lana.
“Payback,” she says in explanation.
“Payback?” I look at her like she’s grown another head, though maybe that has more to do with the alcohol swimming through my veins making me see double than what she actually said.
“What better way to make Macallan jealous than by hooking up with one of his best friends?”
Did that already, I think but don’t say. My night with Trev is one I would like to forget. Not because the sex was bad. I mean, it wasn’t great either, but that’s neither here nor there. It had more to do with why I slept with Trev than anything else.
“Where am I?” Joey slurs, attempting to sit up before collapsing back onto the pillows.
“Is he okay?” I ask, a tad bit concerned.
“He’s fine.” Lana swipes her hand through the air. “Do you want left side or right?”
“You want me to have a threesome with you and Joey?” I take a wild guess, the scene rather telling.
“We’re not actually going to sleep with him.” She lowers her voice. “We’re just going to make it look like we were about to when Macallan comes in.”
“What do you mean when he comes in? He’s not here, is he?” I ask, having not seen him all night, not that I was looking or anything...
“No, but he will be. Because Joey texted him and told him he needed him to come pick him up. I made sure plenty of people saw us come in here, so when he starts asking around, someone will point him in the right direction. And when he finds us... Well, that’s where the fun begins.”
“I don’t... I don’t think I can do that.” I shake my head, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute.
I have no problem sleeping with an attractive man, but to mess with one for the sole purpose of being caught by someone else—the whole thing feels... wrong.
“What do you mean? We agreed to pay him back.”
“I didn’t agree to this.” I gesture wildly around the room.
“Hey, I know you.”
My eyes dart back to Joey as he scrutinizes my face.
“What did he take?”
“What do you mean? He’s just drunk.” Lana gestures to him with a flick of her wrist.
“He seems high on something.”
“High on life.” He laughs loudly at himself.
“Relax, he’s just had a lot to drink. Now, are we doing this or not? We don’t have that much time before Macallan is going to be here.”
Something about her reaction to Joey’s state of mind doesn’t quite sit right with me.
“Did you give him something?”
“What? Of course not.”
I try to replay exactly what she said to me that night when she apparently concocted this elaborate scheme.
She said to leave it to her and that she had to go see a friend.
I never questioned her about it afterward because, truthfully, I thought she was just running off at the mouth.
Turns out, I severely underestimated her thirst for revenge.
Something Macallan said to me comes to the forefront of my mind... She’s batshit. Never thought I’d say this, but I’m starting to agree with him. There’s fucking someone’s friend to piss them off, and then there’s whatever the hell this is.
“What did you give him?” I ask again. “The friend you had to go see... Who was it?”
“Just a friend of mine.”
“Who was it?”
“Oh my God. It was just a couple Xannies.”
“You gave him Xanax?” I gape openly at her. “On top of alcohol.”
“Relax, it won’t kill him.”
“Lana, you can’t go around drugging people.”
“Well, it’s not like he was going to go along with this otherwise.”
“Perhaps that should have been your first indication that this was a bad idea.”
I stare at her like I’m seeing her for the very first time.
“I thought you wanted to make him pay.”
“I think your idea of making him pay and mine are very different.” I shake my head.
“You know what, fine. You don’t want to participate, there’s the door.”
“I’m not going to leave him in here with you. You drugged him!” My voice hitches at the last part.
“And?”
“And... You can’t go around drugging people. What if he has an allergy? What if the medication interacts poorly with the alcohol? What are you going to do if he stops breathing?”
“Oh my God... He’ll be fine. Jesus, I didn’t realize you were such a Goody Two-shoes.”
I bark out a laugh because that’s not a title anyone who knows me would ever label me with.
“There’s a difference between being a Goody Two-shoes and being a decent human being. Besides, do you realize what could happen to my athletic scholarship if someone finds out that I was privy to this and did nothing? I could lose everything.”
“Then leave!” She points toward the door.
“Not without him.” I shake my head, making a beeline toward the bed. I find Joey’s clothes on the floor and quickly snatch them up before crawling onto the mattress beside him.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting him out of here and away from you, crazy.”
“What did you just call me?”
I glance back at her just in time to see her wing something off the dresser at my head. I duck just in the nick of time and the object smacks hard into the wall behind me before hitting the floor with a loud thud.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Me? You’re the one fucking everything up. Do you realize how much planning this took? And I did it all for you!”
“Oh no. Don’t you dare put this on me. You did this for you.”
“You’re the one hell-bent on revenge!”
As if on cue, the door flies open, revealing a wide-eyed Macallan on the other side as he takes in the scene. Joey, lying on the bed, practically naked. Me, holding his clothes. Lana, standing a few feet from me, face red with anger.
“What the fuck is going on here?” He blinks and the look of confusion bleeds into something else entirely.
“What the fuck, indeed.” Lana speaks before I have a chance to. “I just came up here and found Joey drugged and naked. Maisie orchestrated the whole thing so that you would come up here and find them together.”
Macallan’s eyes find mine, his gaze narrowing as he takes in the scene more thoroughly.
“That wasn’t my plan. It was hers.” I hold up Joey’s clothes. “I was attempting to get him out of here.”
“Liar!” Lana points her finger at me. “She’s been planning this for days.”
“Enough, Lana.” Macallan’s voice turns lethal as he gives her his full attention. “I know your games well enough by now. But you’ve gone too far this time.”
“You can’t prove anything.” She smiles sadistically. “It’s her word against mine, and well, everyone knows she’s a slut.”