Cheated With Four Girls

Kade's shadow bled under the door gap.

A thin, wavering line of gold light, but it was enough. Enough to know he was right there, close enough that I could hear his voice—low, loose, the way it got when he'd had too much and cared too little.

"Nah, the blonde one, man. She had this thing with her—"

Laughter. Male laughter, rough and careless, rolling down the corridor like a stone.

I stopped breathing.

Ryker's hand was still clamped over my mouth. His palm was dry and warm, the calluses catching on the corner of my lip. I could feel every ridge of his fingerprints. The closet was barely big enough for one person, let alone two, and he was everywhere—his chest solid against my shoulder blades, his arm a bar of iron across my waist, his breath coming slow and even against the top of my head like none of this cost him anything.

My whole body was shaking. I couldn't stop it. The tremors started somewhere deep in my chest and worked outward, until even my fingers were vibrating at my sides.

Ryker noticed. Of course he did.

His thumb moved. Slow, deliberate—a single drag across the curve of my lower lip. Not cruel. Almost curious. Like he was testing the temperature of something he hadn't decided whether to burn yet.

I felt him inhale. Long and quiet, his chest expanding against my back. Taking in the vanilla of my perfume, the sweat underneath it, the fear. Cataloguing me.

Outside, Kade was still talking.

"—and the other one, the one in red? She kept saying my name like it was a prayer, you know what I mean?"

More laughter. A girl's giggle, high and performative.

The tears came before I could stop them. Hot, humiliating—they slid down over Ryker's fingers, and I hated myself for every single one. I squeezed my eyes shut. Don't. Don't do this here. Not in front of him.

But the image was already there, burned into the back of my eyelids. Kade on that velvet couch. Four pairs of hands. That hollow, glittering smile he'd never once turned on me like that—like I was something worth consuming.

Ryker went very still.

Then his hand shifted. Not away—never away, not yet—but his grip changed. His thumb and forefinger closed around my chin, firm enough that I couldn't turn my head, and he tilted it up and to the side, forcing me to face the dark where he stood.

I couldn't see him. The closet was pitch black. But I could feel his eyes.

"Don't." His voice was barely a breath, but it hit like a slap. Low and rough, stripped of any pretense. "Don't you dare cry over a boy who doesn't even know how to touch you."

I tried to pull away. His grip tightened.

"Look at me, Sienna. Look."

There was nothing to look at. Only darkness. But somehow I understood what he meant—stop disappearing into your own head, stop making yourself small, stop dissolving over someone who is out there right now describing some girl's body to his friends like a transaction.

My breath came out ragged. Broken.

"He doesn't—" My voice cracked. I tried again. "He doesn't even know I left."

Ryker said nothing. But the pressure of his fingers on my chin didn't ease. He held me there, in the dark, until my breathing slowed. Until the shaking dulled to something I could almost control.

Outside, the voices faded. Footsteps—Kade's, I recognized the lazy drag of his heel—moved away down the corridor. The line of gold light under the door thinned, then disappeared entirely.

Silence.

Ryker released my mouth. He didn't step back.

"He's gone," I said. Stating the obvious. Filling the dark with something.

"I know."

Neither of us moved.

The air in the closet had changed. It wasn't just fear anymore—it was something denser, something with weight and edges. I was acutely aware of how small the space was. How close his mouth was to my temple. How his hand had dropped from my chin but his other arm was still loosely around my waist, like he'd forgotten it was there, or like he hadn't decided to let go yet.

"You should leave," I said.

"Probably."

He didn't move.

I turned around. It was a mistake—it made the closet smaller, put us face to face with barely an inch of air between us. In the dark I could just make out the pale slash of his jaw, the glint of his eyes. That mouth, always curved like it knew a joke you'd never be told.

"What do you want, Ryker?"

He looked at me for a long moment. The kind of look that took inventory.

"Tomorrow night," he said. "Family dinner. The kind where my father makes speeches and Kade sits at his right hand and everyone pretends the Voss name doesn't have blood under its fingernails."

I stared at him. "What about it?"

"Come with me."

The words landed quietly, but they detonated on impact.

"You're serious."

"I'm always serious." A pause. "Come as my date. Sit across the table from him. Let him spend the whole evening watching you and wondering when you stopped looking at him like he hung the stars."

My chest tightened. "That's—you want to use me to humiliate your brother."

"I want to give you a front-row seat to watch him realize what he threw away." His voice dropped, something dangerous threading through it. "Those aren't the same thing."

They were. They absolutely were. And yet something in my ribcage pulled toward it anyway—some wounded, furious part of me that had spent months being invisible, being patient, being good, watching Kade look through me like glass.

I opened my mouth to say no.

Ryker moved.

His hand slid to the neckline of my dress—not rough, not grabbing, just two fingers dipping beneath the fabric at my collarbone. I felt the cool edge of something hard and flat against my skin before he released it, and it settled there, heavy and foreign against my sternum.

A card. Black matte, no visible text. The kind of card that didn't need any.

His fingers traced the line of my collarbone as he withdrew, the touch so light it was almost nothing. Almost.

"Buy the most dangerous dress you can find," he said. His voice was quiet, almost gentle, which made it worse. "Something he'll spend the whole night trying not to look at."

He reached past me and pushed the closet door open. Light spilled in, sudden and sharp. He stepped out like none of this had happened, like he hadn't just rearranged something fundamental in the air between us.

At the threshold, he glanced back.

"I want him to see exactly what he doesn't get to have anymore." The smirk returned, but it didn't reach his eyes. His eyes were something else entirely. "Eight o'clock. Don't be late."

Then he was gone, swallowed by the neon and the noise, leaving me standing in the doorway of a janitor's closet with his black card burning cold against my skin and the ghost of his thumb still on my lip.

I pressed my hand flat to my sternum, feeling the hard edge of the card beneath my dress.

I should throw it away.

I knew that.

I also knew I wasn't going to.