Page 18 of We’re All Going to Die Tonight!

I don’t exhale until it’s sitting safely in my palm.

“Nicely done,” Lucas says.

He knows it was an easy piece. He’s not really talking about that, is he? He’s complimenting me on my handling of Marlene’s question. He’s telling me it’s all right without saying those exact words.

My eyes sweep over the group until I find Emerson, still swirling the fucking ice cubes in his drink, and something in me snaps.

“Emerson,” I say. “Truth or dare?”

His weasel-like smile broadens, blue eyes flashing in the flickering firelight. He sets his drink down as he moves from where he was standing and flops onto the easy chair nearest to me.

“Dare,” he says. “Absolutely, dare.”

You can smell the alcohol on him, mixed with his shitty cologne. Actually, it’s almost definitely not a shitty cologne. It’s probably some bullshit he has imported from France or Italy, made in small batches by assholes who literally spend their entire lives studying scents or whatever. But on him, it just makes him smell like a douchebag.

“What are you going to have me do, Caulder?” Emerson says, excitement in every syllable. “Make out with someone? Strip down? Break something? Punch someone?”

“Can you just let me think?” I say, pressing my fingers into my temple.

What do I want Emerson Butler to do? I don’t want to subject any of the women in the room to his pawing, that’s for sure. And I’m obviously not about to encourage him to start a fight.

Shit. This was a bad decision. I should’ve just gone with Lucas or something. I have no idea what the fuck to say. And now everyone’s staring at me, waiting for me to come up with a dare.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Just…dance or something.”

Emerson’s face falls, immediately looking disappointed. “For how long?”

“A minute, I guess,” I say.

Emerson stretches out his fingers and cracks his neck, making Kaitlyn gag. Then, he gets up on the chair and gyrates. Lucas times him, and it’s as horrible as I imagined watching Emerson dance would be. But he’s not embarrassed. He loves it. He even thrusts in Marlene’s and Avery’s directions, clearly loving the way they hold up their hands to cover their eyes and shake their heads. They’re laughing, which eggs him on, until at last the timer sounds and he’s told to stop.

“That was traumatizing,” Kaitlyn says.

“You loved it,” Emerson purrs, then moves to examining the Jenga tower. “Which one will I pick?”

He makes a big show of looking at the tower from multiple angles. He leans in and out, asks for suggestions, until finally selecting a piece. Like the one I picked, it’s near the bottom, but it’s not surrounded by many other pieces. Still, Emerson zeroes in on it, carefully jiggling the wood out of its place.

Fall, I want to shout. Fall and give me another chance to punish this asshole.

But it doesn’t. The tower does sway a little, but it doesn’t topple over. And Emerson holds the piece up like a goddamn Oscar, grinning widely as he peers around at all of us.

“Now,” he says. “My first victim of the night.”

I wait for him to throw my pathetic dare back at me, but his gaze shifts almost immediately. Not onto Javi or Lucas or Marlene or Kaitlyn.

“Avery,” he says. “Truth…or dare?”

For as long as I’ve known her, Avery’s always had her tells. A small quirk of her lips when she’s trying not to blurt something out. A tilt of her head when she’s judging you. The tiniest shake of her hand when she makes a mistake.

A slight widening of her eyes when she’s caught off guard by a question.

It’s gone almost as soon as it appears, though. Smoothed out and hidden under her usual expression, which mixes boredom and annoyance, as if whatever you’ve asked her is far beneath her. She turns that expression on Emerson now as she lifts her chin.

“Truth.”

Chapter 10

Avery