Chapter Twelve Griffin
Griffin Hayes did not hate games.
People assumed he did because he disliked chaos, avoided public spectacle, and had once confiscated a fog machine from Tyler Donovan before Tyler could explain what he meant by “atmospheric vulnerability.”
But Griffin liked games.
He liked clean rules. Clear objectives. Honest scores. The particular satisfaction of knowing what needed to happen and doing the work until it did.
Truth Toss was not that kind of game.
Truth Toss was a fire pit, a stolen bucket, fifty neon cards, and Tyler standing on a picnic table wearing a referee whistle around his neck like a man who had never been allowed near consequences.
“Welcome,” Tyler shouted, “to Truth Toss: Feelings with Handles.”
Denise stood near the snack shack with her arms crossed, expression flat. “I still hate that name.”
“You hate art before history proves it right,” Tyler said.
“I hate paperwork before it proves me right.”
Coach Doyle sat with several alumni near the back row of Adirondack chairs, one ankle crossed over his knee, face unreadable in the firelight.
Nate stood beside Ava at the edge of the crowd, looking like a captain who had accepted that his team was emotionally supervised by women and occasionally by God.
Beckett held a laminated poster board covered in dramatic arrows.
Griffin pointed at it immediately. “No.”
Beckett looked down. “It is not paperwork. It is a portable emotional map.”
“It has arrows.”
“It has dreams.”
Maren, standing beside Griffin with her phone in one hand and the Truth Toss questions in the other, leaned toward him. “You are very passionate about office supplies.”
“I know what starts trouble.”
“Do you?”
He looked at her.
Mistake.
The bonfire had turned Lake Briar soft and gold around the edges.
The string lights stretched from the snack shack to the dock posts.
The lake beyond them was black glass, broken only by the reflected glow of the fire and the occasional ripple from someone’s abandoned paddleboard knocking softly against the shore.
Maren wore a blue sundress tonight.
Griffin had noticed that too quickly.
He had noticed the thin straps, the way the color made her eyes look brighter, the tiny gold hoops at her ears, the phone case held like a shield until she remembered she did not want anyone to know she needed one.
He had noticed the way she had laughed when Tyler announced the game.
He had also noticed the way she had checked the exits.
Not with fear.
With strategy.
With the careful calculation of a woman about to stand in front of a crowd and decide how much of herself she would let them see.
That made Griffin want to move closer.
It also made him stay exactly where he was.
Maren had asked for no lying.
She had not asked to be guarded.
Tyler blew the whistle.
Several people flinched.
Cooper, seated in the back with a bottle of water and the moral posture of a man attending under protest, closed his eyes. “I have been harmed.”
“Drama builds community,” Tyler said.
“Silence builds mine.”
Maren took the microphone from Tyler before he could whistle again. “Rules.”
The crowd settled faster than Griffin expected.
That was the thing about Maren. People wanted to hear what she said next.
“Truth Toss is simple,” she said. “You write a question. We read selected questions. The person answering can answer honestly, redirect honestly, or toss the question into the fire.”
Tyler lifted one finger. “Symbolically.”
“Symbolically,” Maren repeated. “Because Denise said no burning paper unless she is holding the lighter.”
Denise lifted her lemonade. “Correct.”
Maren smiled. “No humiliating questions. No pressuring anyone to reveal something private. No questions that start with ‘would you rather’ and end with someone needing therapy.”
Beckett slowly lowered his marker.
Griffin nodded once.
Maren saw it.
Her smile flickered softer for half a second.
Only half.
Enough.
Tyler hopped down from the picnic table and held up the bucket. “Questions have been collected, screened, spiritually sanitized, and judged by Maren Brooks, our content queen and reigning destroyer of beige.”
“Do not call me queen unless there is payroll attached,” Maren said.
The crowd laughed.
Griffin’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
He ignored it.
Tonight was already too full of devices.
Tyler pulled the first card. “For Nate. What is the most romantic thing Ava has done for you that she would deny is romantic?”
Ava groaned. “Pass.”
“It is not your question,” Nate said.
“It affects my brand.”
Nate took the microphone. His gaze moved to Ava, and Griffin watched the captain turn serious in a way that made half the crowd quiet without being told.
“She learned the exact coffee I drink before morning skates,” Nate said. “Then she pretended she already knew because she hates looking tender in public.”
Ava stared at him.
“You were not supposed to know that I learned it,” she said.
Nate smiled. “I pay attention.”
The crowd made a collective noise.
Tyler slapped both hands over his chest. “We are beginning with violence.”
Ava took the microphone. “For the record, romance is not coffee. Romance is not making a man emotionally collapse before a crowd because you have dimples and poor boundaries.”
Nate grinned. “Sure.”
Ava looked at Maren. “I hate this game.”
“You are glowing,” Maren said.
“I will end you.”
The crowd loved it.
The official account would love it too.
Griffin glanced at Maren’s phone. She had not lifted it.
Not yet.
She was present first.
Working second.
He admired that more than he wanted to.
The next questions went easier. Beckett admitted his biggest fear was being misunderstood by people with poor lighting.
Cooper said his biggest fear was group activities, then refused follow-up on spiritual grounds.
Miles confessed he once practiced an apology in the mirror and accidentally apologized to himself so well he got emotional.
Tyler answered a question about his worst idea and said, “This depends on whether you define worst by danger, dignity, or whether Denise had to use her outdoor voice.”
Denise said, “All of them.”
The crowd laughed until even Coach Doyle’s mouth shifted.
Griffin felt the event settle.
That was what good structure did.
It made space.
Maren had done that.
She had taken the thing people wanted to turn into a spectacle and built a fence around it without making it feel like a fence.
He looked at her.
She was smiling at Tyler, but one finger tapped against her phone case.
Nervous.
Still.
Then Tyler reached into the bucket and pulled out a bright orange card.
His grin changed.
Griffin hated that grin.
Maren saw it too.
“Screened question?” she asked.
“Screened,” Tyler promised. “By you.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
“Because destiny selected a font.”
He cleared his throat with great ceremony.
“For Maren and Griffin.”
The crowd reacted immediately.
Phones lifted.
Griffin felt it like weather shifting against his skin.
Maren’s smile stayed in place.
Her tapping stopped.
Tyler read, “‘What part of the Bad Idea Bet is real?’”
There it was.
Not cruel.
Not even unfair.
The question everyone had been asking with comments, tags, jokes, and little hearts under posts they thought were harmless.
What part was real?
Maren reached for the microphone.
Griffin caught the movement.
Not to stop her.
Just to be ready if she looked his way.
She did not.
She stepped forward, into the circle of firelight, blue dress brushing her knees, shoulders relaxed, mouth curved in a shape that only looked easy.
“The work is real,” she said.
The crowd went quiet.
Good.
They should listen.
“The content is real,” Maren continued. “The team is real. The chaos is, unfortunately, extremely real.”
Tyler pressed a hand to his heart.
“The boundaries are real,” she said.
Griffin’s chest tightened.
Maren looked toward the crowd now, not at him. “The fact that this has been fun does not make it fake. The fact that it performs well does not make it manipulative. Sometimes something works because people can feel that there is actual life inside it.”
Her voice wavered on life.
Barely.
Griffin saw the tremor and wanted to step in front of it.
He did not.
Maren lowered the microphone a little.
Then she turned to him.
“Your turn, Hayes.”
The crowd shifted.
Griffin took the microphone from her hand.
Their fingers brushed.
He had been prepared for the crowd.
He had not been prepared for the contact.
Awareness sparked up his arm, bright and immediate, but Maren did not look away this time.
Neither did he.
The question sat there.
What part of the Bad Idea Bet is real?
He could answer the safe way.
He could say teamwork. Morale. The account growth. The fact that Tyler should never again have access to signs.
All true.
Not the clean part.
Griffin looked at the crowd first.
Then at Maren.
“The part where I trust her,” he said.
The fire cracked.
Someone made a soft sound near the back.
Maren’s face changed completely.
No armor.
No gloss.
Just the hit of being seen in front of people who had been trying to decide what she was worth all weekend.
Griffin kept his voice steady because she deserved steady.
“I trust Maren with the story,” he said. “I trust her to know the line between funny and careless. I trust her to see when something matters before the rest of us catch up.”
He looked at Tyler for one second. “I trust her more than I trust anyone else here with a whistle.”
The crowd laughed.
Tyler shouted, “I accept that as growth.”
Griffin looked back at Maren.
“But yes,” he said, quieter now. “That part is real.”
Maren did not smile.
Not right away.
She blinked once, fast.
Then took the microphone back with fingers that were not quite steady.
“That was almost too good,” she said. “People are going to think I scripted you.”
“You did not.”
“I know. I would have added a joke earlier.”
The laugh came back.
So did her smile, but it was softer now.
Griffin wanted to keep looking at it.
He made himself look away.
Tyler, who had the survival instinct of wet cardboard, reached for another card.