I’ve already got the full house in my hands.
I keep my face blank, but inside I’m a riot of math and adrenaline andfinally. This is how I win. This is how I prove I’m not always the careful one. I can take risks and still come out on top.
The final card drops: six of hearts.
Full house. Queens over sixes. Practically unbeatable.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood, trying to school my expression into disappointment. Even throw in a fake sigh for flavor.
Then Harper pushes in her pile again.
“All in.”
She says it the same way she did last hand—cool, effortless, and like the outcome’s already decided. And this time I don’t wait. I shove everything I have into the center, too.
“Call,” I say, trying to sound bored. I can taste the win already.
But Harper startslaughing.
That big, musical laugh again, like I’m the punchlineand she’s been setting up the joke all night.But so goddamn sexy.
“Hey!” I reach for the pennies, half-rising out of my chair. “I called. I said call.”
She grins, wide and wild. “Oh, right. The grand reveal.”
Then—slowly, deliberately—she flips her cards.
Ten. Jack. Queen. King. Ace.
All spades.
Royal flush.
I feel my mouth drop open. I stare at the cards like they’re cursed.
“You—how?—?”
Harper shrugs, already pulling her winnings toward her in easy, practiced handfuls. “Luck,” she says breezily. “And the fact that you, sweet overachieving Boy Scout, fell forevery single bluff.I’ve had absolutely shit cards all night before this hand.”
“That’s cheating,” I say, even though I know it’s not.
“That’slife.” She stands and stretches, and I can’t stop my eyes from tracing the curve of her waist as her shirt rides up. “You think if you play safe and clean, you’re guaranteed to win? That’s not how the world works, Caleb.”
That’s when we hear it.
A crash from upstairs. Then what sounds like something rolling down the stairs—a series of rapidthump-thump-thump-thumpsfollowed by a skittering sound.
Oh no.
Everyone’s heads turn toward the doorway.
Sox appears like a gray-and-white missile, moving atfull speed, clearly fleeing from whatever she just destroyed upstairs. She’s gotten huge since I first met her—all legs and teenage-cat energy—and she’s hauling ass.
How did she get out?
She spots the dining room. And the table.
Spots what must look like the world’s greatest toy: a pile of shiny pennies.