Not My Match (The Game Changers 2)

The air feels thick as we rise to the top.

He lets go of my hand.

“So did you confess to doing the lacrosse player’s homework and get him in trouble?” he asks.

“Worse.”

His arm brushes mine as he takes Pookie from me and arches a brow, the one with the piercing. I have the insane urge to lick it. “Spill your devious ways, Giselle. What did you do to him?”

“My stories can get long, Dev.”

“I want to hear them.”

Butterflies dance in my chest, and I push them down. This is Devon. Friend.

“That night, I sat at the hospital and forgot about Carlton for the moment—that was the lacrosse player’s name.”

“Last name?”

I smirk. “Anyway, Daddy passed that night. When I checked to see if Carlton had posted the video, he hadn’t. Maybe he heard about my dad—it is a small town, and Daddy was the mayor, and news travels fast, so perhaps he felt bad. I don’t know—maybe he never intended to make the video public but planned to use it to hold over me in some way. School was set to start the next day, so I was terrified he planned to do something with it on the first day back. What he didn’t know was that I may be the quiet sort, but I will make a plan.”

“Revenge?”

I nod.

He grins. “You’re fierce.”

My lashes lower. Oh, if you only knew the thoughts I’ve had about you. “I worked at the school office, organizing and cleaning. I had access to info you’d never believe. Records, test papers left on the copier, teacher’s computer passwords—I never used those, by the way.”

“Of course. But you wrote his paper.”

“A mistake. Anyway, I came to school the next day—Mama had no idea. I was exhausted and heartbroken, and my head wasn’t right, but I was angry—God, so angry. At everything.” My breath hitches. “I wasn’t myself.”

He puts an arm around me and tugs me to his side. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

I nod. “I didn’t get my name on the attendance roll, because I wasn’t planning on staying, just slipped into the office, hugged the secretary—she was the sweetest old lady and had heard about Dad—then grabbed Carlton’s locker combination. Keep in mind all students had to leave their phones in their lockers. Then, while everyone was in class, I opened his locker and swiped his phone. I left the textbooks. A man needs an education. With the state I was in, I wanted to blow up everything he had.”

“Ballbuster.”

“Are you bored yet?”

“You never bore me.”

“People put crazy things on their phones. I went home—because remember, I was never at school—and found two videos of him drinking and snorting coke at various keggers over the past years.”

He gives me a surprised look. “How did you get the passcode?”

I tap my head. “I’d watched him unlock it several times, and I mostly never forget what I see. I sent the videos to his parents from his own phone. Pretty easy since I had all their contact info. If you think about it, I was helping him. He was on the road to drug addiction. His parents got him in rehab the next week, and he missed half of our senior year.” I pause, feeling the weight of his stare, green and intense. “Too hard core?”

“Hell no. I’m kind of . . . turned on.”

A blush steals up my face. I see it in the reflection of the elevator. “Interesting.”

A long second stretches out—until the ping of our arrival makes me jump.

He pulls me along as the elevator opens, and we walk down the hall. “No one ever saw your video?”

“Just his buddies, I assume, but then they saw it firsthand anyway. There was some talk amongst their crowd, sly jokes directed at me, and it hurt—it really did—but I just put my head down and kept going. Losing my dad had me in a haze anyway.” I think about those blurry days of dealing with my father’s death. “If Mama had seen that video . . . she couldn’t take any more. She would have been arrested for killing him.”

“Huh. Did you get your revenge on Preston?”

I shake my head.

“Why?”

I shrug, feeling the weight of his question, wondering the same thing myself. “I don’t know.”

We reach his door, and he opens it for us, a grin twitching his lips. “Welcome to the fuck palace, baby.”

Laughing, we walk in. He sets down a squirming Pookie, who promptly finds a pair of sneakers by the door, squats, and pees.

Devon blinks. “Shit.”

“Just pee. She only does that when she’s nervous—which is ninety percent of the time.”

“Great.”

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re now living with two females.” I hit him with a blinding smile. “Let’s hope our cycles don’t sync up. We’ll clean out your ice cream and cry over nothing.”