“Do you want to talk about it?” Dylan offered, giving Jared a sympathetic glance that made him squirm.
“I wish people didn’t know,” Jared muttered. “It’s….”
Dylan was already shaking his head. He was playing with the edge of his napkin, twisting it over and over. “You still don’t know these people,” he said. “You’re not the first and definitely not the last person who will get caught up in their games.”
“You used to be one of them,” Jared said. He refused to meet Dylan’s eyes.
“A long time ago.” Dylan sounded a little hurt at being lumped in with Clare and the rest. “Jared… Ryder told me what happened. Right now it’s going to seem like the end of the world, but you don’t realize how much you’re fucking with them at the moment.”
“I’m not fucking with anyone. I’m keeping my head down and staying out of the bullshit.”
“Exactly!” Dylan exclaimed. “Clare runs people out of town. It sounds dramatic but it’s true. The fact that you took the car….”
“How much do you know?” Jared asked curiously.
“Pretty much all of it.”
“How long have you known?”
Dylan gave him an unreadable look. “About a day and a half,” he said. “Trust me, Jared, if I’d known sooner, I would have told you.”
“I don’t trust anyone anymore.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Dylan said. “You don’t have to believe me. But I know Clare, and my sister, and Mia, and Chris and Adam. I’ve known them nearly all my life. I know it seems impossible, but you might actually be able to come out on top of all this.”
Jared snorted. “Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. Clare plays games with people, and she doesn’t care what the consequences are. I’m pretty sure she’s psychopathic, in the medical sense. She’ll either end up in an institution or in politics.”
Jared wasn’t sure if Dylan was serious or not, but the mental image was more than a little amusing. Or terrifying, depending on how you looked at it.
“I just don’t want her to win,” Jared said as their orders were brought over by the smiling waitress.
Dylan grinned. “She doesn’t have to.”
They ate in silence for a while—the food really was good—and Jared thought about what Dylan was offering him. It was hard to try and section out his life and slam the shutters on the feelings that had been brewing for Adam. He wasn’t sentimental, and didn’t think that Adam would forever be his “man that got away.” Nor would he be the man who broke Jared’s heart. Jared wasn’t going to let him have it.
“The worst thing,” Jared said, apropos of nothing, “is that I thought they were my friends.”
Dylan gave him a level look, scooped some rice onto his fork, and gestured for Jared to continue.
“Not like, you know, BFFs for life. Moving to a new place is hard, though, and the first time I went out, I was suddenly in with the cool kids.” Internally, Jared groaned at how awful that sounded. “Coming from a fucking backward corner of Texas, meeting all of them was a new opportunity. Chris just has this aura, you know?”
Dylan nodded. “Chris is a legend.”
“I know. He’s the sort of person who seems like he shouldn’t be real.”
“Larger than life?”
“Exactly.” Jared dropped his fork and leaned back in his seat, absently rubbing his over-full stomach.
“What about Adam?”
“Hmm? What about him?”
“You’ve mentioned all the others, but not Adam.”
Jared shook his head. “I trusted him. He won the bet. Did Ryder tell you that?”
By the shocked expression on Dylan’s face, Jared guessed not. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit,” he drawled. Then, “Shit.”
Jared snorted.
“Ryder doesn’t know,” Dylan said. “I know that much for sure. If she knew, everyone would know. Fuck, I love my sister, but she has a big mouth.”
“What do they think happened, then?” Jared asked. The only person he felt comfortable enough around to ask these things was Dylan. Everyone else was too involved.
“They don’t know, and it’s pissing them the hell off,” Dylan said with a grin. “There was some sort of argument at the white party?”
Jared nodded. “Yeah. When I found out about the bet, I confronted him about it.”
“Then you disappeared for a few days.”
“This morning was the first time I went back to school. They don’t call me out if I don’t show up for school because my guardian is the principal’s ex-wife, and he doesn’t have the balls to call her. Oh, and Chris gave me the car.”
“Hold up,” Dylan said, raising both hands. “Say that again.”
“Chris gave me Elvis’s motherfucking pink Cadillac,” Jared repeated with a grin. “I think he wanted to play with them all, fuck it all up a bit further.”
“That was the car Adam was supposed to win if he fucked you.”
“Yeah,” Jared confirmed.
“And you f—had sex with him.”
“You can say ‘fuck,’” Jared said, rolling his eyes.
“And then Chris gave the Caddy to you?”
Jared nodded, and for a moment, Dylan looked like he was processing it all. Then he burst out in hysterical laughter.
“What?” Jared said as other diners looked around at the noise. “Shut the fuck up, dude. People are looking.”
“Sorry,” Dylan said, wiping tears from his eyes with his napkin. “Fucking hell, Jared. They must be going out of their minds over there.”
Jared shrugged. “I don’t know about that.”
“Did you tell Chris that you and Adam slept together?”
“Sort of.”
“Did Chris tell Adam why he gave you the car?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Shit,” Dylan drawled again. “I can tell you this much. No one has ever, ever fucked with these kids as long or as hard as you just did.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Jared protested.
Dylan shook his head. “No, you did everything,” he corrected.
“Whatever.” Playing them back was retribution, sure. He wasn’t hurting anyone, so as far as he was concerned, it didn’t really matter. The waitress came to take their plates away and offered dessert, which
