Page 31 of Twisted Little Game

I wash my hands and we head out onto the quad.

“What else did you have planned today?” he asks me.

“I brought a picnic blanket and my lunch in my backpack. Was going to go find a place on the quad to eat. I wanted today to be nice, and now I guess it’s kind of fucked up.”

He shakes his head. “The day is fine. Let’s go.”

He walks with me out onto the crisscrossing pathways along the grass. The leaves on the trees are starting to go gold, red, and orange now, and the canopy above the quad is beautiful. I walk with him down one of the long paths. I still feel like I have an emotional hangover, but he doesn’t seem to be judging me for going into full freak-out mode in the gym.

I don’t know if I’m ever going to see the unhinged, violent streak I saw in Roman that first night at the party.

Why is he so good at physically overpowering people?

Good with first aid, too… and absolutely covered in tattoos even at his young age?

Roman isn’t telling me everything.

And I’m going to fucking figure out what he’s hiding, because nothing else about him makes any sense.

Who the fuck are you, behind that wall?

I lay out the picnic blanket under a particularly shady tree and sit down, bringing out my lunch.

Roman goes and sits on a nearby bench, folding his arms and watching me.

“You know, you can just come sit with me,” I call over to him. “We both know you’re following me at this point.”

“I don’t want to sit with you. I want to sit near you, and observe.”

I pull out my little container of strawberries and pop one in my mouth.

“I saw you last night,” I tell him.

“Excuse me?”

“It was cute when you were following me on the quad at midnight with that clove cigarette,” I continue. “Didn’t know you smoke. Almost went up and asked you for one⁠—”

Roman stands up and finally walks over to my picnic blanket, his expression turning to stone. “What?”

“Quit blushing, Roman.”

“No. I haven’t smoked a cigarette in over a year, Tate. Who did you see following you on the quad?”

The smile falls from my face. “It was you. I thought it was you, at least?”

“Midnight last night, I was in the front room of Onyx House, definitely not smoking on the quad. I knew I should have stayed out to watch you. What were you doing outside?”

I narrow my eyes at him. “I’m not allowed to leave my cage of a dorm, now?”

“Why were you out?”

“Because I was bored and I wanted to fuck with you,” I tell him, irritation rising in my voice. “I was going to go for a walk around the quad, then come up behind you and scare you. But by the time I finished the lap, you were gone. Or… whoever it was, was gone.”

He shakes his head. “Not good.”

I bite my lower lip, thinking. “Wait. I guess that means that could have been the guy who left the stone with the note.”

He sits down on the picnic blanket, and the dark blue of his eyes lands on me like fire. “Tell me what you found.”