24. Chapter 22
Derek
“Is he still there?” I ask as I hand Xavier his refilled glass, taking my place back at the poker table.
“No.”
That is all Xavier provides me with, and with how tightly clenched he has been for the last hour, it’s what I’ll have to be happy with.
As much as I feel that the cameras in Emery’s personal space are a breach of her privacy, having her study group projected up onto my TV as we play cards is mostly reassuring.
Watching the jock put his arm around her was tolerable at first. But once the seemingly simple posture turned to shoulder touches, I had to fight the urge to log into the grading system and drop his average below what his coach requires to skate on his ice.
Only two things stopped me. One, I’m a benefactor of the Warriors and ultimately want to see the hockey team bring home the Frozen Four for the first time in almost a decade.
And two, everything we have already gone through to get to this point with Emery will have been for nothing if Thayne finds out I tampered with Romeo’s grades to keep him away from her.
Hudson retakes his seat and scoops up the cards, shuffling them for this next deal. “Do you know if she has opened the notebook?”
Xavier shakes his head.
Hudson simply stares at him, waiting for more. Since the weekend, Xavier has fully retreated back into himself, even further than before we met Emery. It’s concerning, but right now, we are fine to let him be.
We agreed that asking him about the weekend in any further detail than what he showed us about his past is not something we need to initiate right now.
Whatever this…mood he is in right now, we’ll let it sit until it starts to turn into something more.
As long as he is smiling when he texts with Emery or when he is watching her on his feeds, we figure he’s okay.
Well, as okay as Xavier can be.
Eventually, he looks up from his phone, having been scrolling through something. He makes a noise of annoyance before offering a little more information. “The notebook is on her side table.”
“And?” Hudson asks, pushing his luck.
I hide a smile behind my glass as I take a sip of my drink.
“And you made me promise to not touch the notebook,” Xavier shoots back, clearly offended by Hudson’s insinuation.
Hudson chokes on a laugh. “I didn’t think you would actually abide by that.”
“You threatened San Diego,” he mutters, breaking eye contact and going back to his phone.
I can’t contain my laughter at Hudson’s chuffed look. “You didn’t.”
“I did,” he replies with more than a hint of self-satisfaction, which morphs to chagrin. “In my defense, I didn’t think that was the reaction I would get. I’ve never seen a grown man move like that or so quickly in my life.”
Ah, yes. That memory is definitely one I bring out when I need to remember that Xavier is not some sort of emotionless robot.
“You know—” I start, but am interrupted by Darcy returning from the bathroom and dropping down into his seat.
“What did I miss?”
Hudson starts dealing, and we put out the requisite small and big blinds.
“William has left her dorm. Emery has the notebook Hudson sent her. We don’t know if it has been opened,” I cheerfully respond.
“And why don’t we know if it has been opened? That seems like something we would want to know, right?” Darcy asks, curiosity lacing his words as he looks at his cards, folding them almost immediately.
Hudson raises my big blind, doubling the amount required. I’m confident he hasn’t checked his cards, but that little smirk on his face makes me want to second-guess myself. I won’t. But the urge is there.
“A threat was issued,” I reply as Xavier tosses in his cards over his small blind.
Without looking at my cards, I call the raise, not letting him push his weight around just because he has managed to accumulate most of tonight’s chips and is currently the dealer, arguably the best position to be in.
Hudson deals out the flop. King of hearts, three of clubs, three of spades. A rainbow flop—all different suits—but one that is definitely interesting.
I don’t look at my cards and toss out a bet. “Two thousand.”
Hudson doesn’t even look and calls my bet immediately before picking up the cards to deal the turn.
Six of diamonds. A dead card, unless one of us has at least a six in our hands.
“Pot,” I state, which triggers Xavier to reach into the center of the poker table and stake the chips into piles for counting.
“Six and a half,” he announces once he is done.
I place my chips into the area of play and try not to look down at my incredibly diminished stack. I lost a very large hand to Hudson earlier in tonight’s game, leaving me to limp along for the last hour, trying to claw back some of the chips.
Hudson obviously notices the lack of remaining chips in front of me and nods. “All in.”
Normally, this kind of move would piss me the fuck off, this entire hand, really, playing blind like this. But not today. Not this week.
Emery is okay. She’s safe. And while there is nothing between the four of us and her right now, we have a plan, which she has access to if she would care to read the letter I gave her. I know that it is going to take time, and rushing her will only ruin things further between us.
And we don’t plan to rush her. She can take all the time in the world to come back to us. Or to really let us know that it’s over. But if she does decide to come back to us, to let us back into her life, then we will be waiting.
The power is in her hands.
All I can do is be there for her when she needs me and leave her alone when she asks me to.
Not having the pressure of trying to hold everyone’s futures on my shoulders has been such a relief that I’ve been a little high with it.
I can acknowledge now that it was a self-imposed pressure.
The compulsion to control all the pieces on our little chessboard is something I will always need to work on, but in this instance, I know it was my fear speaking.
Fear of losing the one person who feels like they’re the missing piece to our incomplete puzzle.
While that fear is still there, I have complete faith that everything is going to work out. Maybe not this week, or next, but eventually.
She hasn’t kicked Xavier out of her life.
She hasn’t changed classes.
She hasn’t returned her key card to the apartment.
She hasn’t disconnected from us on SugarLife.
All the signs point to her not being done done with us.
Just hurt, angry, and frustrated. She is one-hundred-percent entitled to those feelings, and I would never say otherwise.
To be honest, I’m glad she is having them, because it means that she still cares and that she isn’t ready to walk away from all this.
Losing her would be beyond devastating, but it’s put a lot of little things into perspective for me.
Like the outcome of this poker game.
“Call,” I answer and pick up the last of my chips and toss them into the center. “Another fifteen hundred.”
The bet barely makes an indent in the stacks in front of Hudson as he removes a pile before going to flip both of his cards face up.
“One card?” I interrupt, reclining back in my seat, before he actually flips his cards.
Hudson’s face pinches for a millisecond as he considers me, like he can’t believe that I, Derek King, would offer to make the game more fun. “Sure.”
We both place our cards in the center but only show one, keeping the other face down. I turn over the two of spades, and he turns over the king of hearts. He has two pairs, while I only have one.
To his credit, Hudson doesn’t gloat, externally, at least.
He picks up the deck and deals out the last card. Six of clubs.
“Ready?” he asks as he reaches for his face-down card.
In response, I reach for mine and flip it over, a tidal wave of relief slamming over me. A six. Full house, sixes over threes.
Thank fuck.
Hudson bursts out laughing when he shows a jack of diamonds. “I shouldn’t have played blind. You would have folded on the flop if I had looked at my cards.”
Grinning, I reach into the center to rake in my chips as noisily as I can possibly manage. “Most likely.”
“Okay, while that was fun to watch, will someone please tell me what the threat was?” Darcy interjects, fingers tapping on the felt tabletop.
“San Diego,” Xavier mutters, working to bring all the cards into a messy pile so he can shuffle for the next hand.
The grin that splits Darcy’s face is huge. “Ah, right. Yep, that will do it.”
Smiling, I put my small blind out next to Darcy’s and settle in for the next hand.
All there is left to do is wait and see what hand the kink gods deal us.
For all our sakes, I hope we get our queen.