Chapter 181: Reid
Monopoly dies faster than I thought humanly possible.
Not because anyone flipped the board — though I wouldn’t have blamed them — but because Liam and Finn apparently decided to turn the game into a shared prison sentence.
“No shot,” Finn says as he rolls another double and lands squarely on Just Visiting for the fourth time. “I swear I’m cursed.”
“You’re not cursed,” Jake mutters, leaning back with a beer, “you’re just an idiot.”
“No, he’s cursed,” Liam insists, slapping down his fifth ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. “I gave him mine, and I think that makes me cursed by association.”
They’re both broke within twenty-five minutes. Madeline laughs so hard she snorts. I catch it, and she blushes, but I like it. It’s rare. Real.
“I’m telling you,” Finn says, pointing an accusing finger at the dice like they insulted his mother, “this game is rigged. It’s capitalism at its worst.”
“That’s the point of Monopoly,” Charlie deadpans.
“Bro,” Liam nods, completely missing the sarcasm. “Facts.”
Jake ends up bankrupting everyone by buying up the oranges and reds like a psychopath and slapping hotels on them before anyone realizes what’s happening.
“Don’t hate the player,” he says, stacking his fake bills, “hate the system.”
“You are the system,” Madeline groans, throwing a card at him. “You’ve become what we all feared.”
Charlie tosses the fake jailhouse token at Liam’s head. “Maybe next time try not to run into prison.”
“Hey,” Liam says, smug. “Finn said the odds were good.”
“I didn’t know the odds hated us!” Finn fires back.
It’s chaos. Loud, stupid, perfect chaos. For a second, I almost forget we don’t have heat, or lights, or anything but candle wax and half-warm wine.
Eventually, we toss Monopoly aside like it personally offended us and move on to Taboo. Mistake number two.
Jake and I end up on the same team. Bigger mistake.
It takes exactly three rounds for everyone else to realize we’re a nightmare duo.
“Go,” Madeline says, flipping the timer.
Jake stares at me with this smug glint in his eye. “Okay. Metal. Heavy.”
“Lead.”
“Bigger.”
“Steel.”
“Used in ships.”
“Titanium.”
“Close.”
“Aluminum.”
Jake groans. “Stronger.”
“Carbon steel?”
“Yes!”
Charlie groans. “What the hell?”
Next round:
“Okay. You were nine. I broke your—”
“Wrist,” I say immediately. “Trampoline. You kicked me in the face.”
“YES.”
Charlie drops her head in her hands.
“This is not okay,” Finn mutters.
“We should’ve split them up,” Liam says, genuinely wounded.
“They don’t even say real clues!” Charlie argues. “They’re just communicating in trauma flashbacks!”
“It’s legal,” Jake says, smirking.
“It’s bullshit,” Charlie corrects.
Madeline, sitting cross-legged between Liam and Finn, grins at me. She looks sleepy and sweet and entirely too into watching Jake and I burn the world down together.
“You guys are basically telepathic,” she says.
Jake winks at her. “Don’t be jealous.”
“Not jealous,” she replies. “Just concerned for society.”
By the time we cycle through another round, the game gets scrapped in favor of arguments over how cheating should be defined, and whether or not “shared childhood beatings” count as legitimate clues.
Jake and I say yes. No one else agrees. Shocking.
But it’s warm. Loud. Easy. The kind of night I didn’t think I’d ever have in this place — not with this many people.
Not until her.
Charlie sits forward, eyes bright in the candlelight like she’s about to start trouble. “Okay. I want to see something.” She digs in one of the paper bags by the couch and comes up with a battered Scrabble box. “Mads versus Jake.”
Madeline blinks. “Why me?”
Finn gestures between me and Jake. “Because you two are a hive-mind. Reid vs. Jake would just be grunts and a seventy-point nightmare.”
Liam nods solemnly. “And the rest of us are tragically underqualified to die on that hill.”
Jake’s mouth tilts. “Flattering.”
Madeline rubs at her eyes, then slides off the couch and scoots to the coffee table—right into the pocket of space between my knees, exactly where she sat that night at the team dinner. Back then she wasn’t mine. Now she is. Every cell in me says: pick her up, say fuck the game, take her upstairs. I keep a loose hand on my stomach and pretend restraint is easy.
Tiles clatter. Candles gutter. The board goes down.
They start civil, then stop pretending.
Jake hooks into a triple. “THALASSIC,” he says mildly.
Finn blinks. “English, please.”
“Of the sea,” Madeline answers, already scoring. Her mouth quirks. She lays off it without looking up. “PALIMPSEST.”
Charlie’s hand flies to her heart. “God, marry me.”
Liam squints. “What’s that?”
Madeline’s voice goes soft, teacher-clean. “Something rewritten over—old text ghosting under the new.”
Jake’s eyes flash like a match struck. He sets a cross, cool as a knife. “EURYHALINE.”
Finn makes a dying noise. “No way that’s real.”
“Species that tolerate wide salinity,” Madeline says, not missing a beat. “Estuary things.”
She threads a quiet ambush through two premiums. “COPROLITE.”
Liam recoils. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Fossilized poop,” she says, innocent as a prayer, with a little smile.
Finn collapses sideways. “Okay, I joined the wrong team.”
Jake exhales, amused, and slides in something mean. “CTENOPHORE.”
I hear Sloane snort—barely—around her earbud. She hasn’t moved from the couch corner all night, knee up, face turned away; the bass leaking from her headphones buzzes the cushion. She’s here, but she’s not here.
Madeline doesn’t flinch. She lays a quiet cross: “ZEUGMA.”
“Now you’re showing off,” Jake murmurs.
She tips him a look, cat-sweet. “You started it.”
Finn points accusingly. “Define or die.”
“Yoking one word to two different objects—like ‘she broke his car and his heart.’” She slides a tile, breath steady. “BATHYAL.”
Jake’s grin shows a tooth. He answers with “CACHALOT,” then knits it into a corner so clean I almost clap.
Madeline studies her rack, thumb worrying my cuff where it’s swallowed her wrist. The blackout has her in my clothes, in my space, in my head. She sets the tiles down like a verdict: “APOSEMATIC.”
Charlie wheezes. “You two are sick.”
“Warning coloration,” Madeline adds, eyes still on the board. “Bright means don’t touch.”
“Like Finn,” Liam says.
“Rude but fair,” Finn mutters.
Jake sits back, the smallest nod, conceding the punch even as he starts hunting for another angle. The room has gone reverent without noticing; even Finn’s heckling thins to a whisper. Tiles click like rain on glass. Outside the wind drags its knuckles along the siding; inside, wax puddles at the bases and the air smells like soup and wet wool.
I knew she could match him. I did. But watching her out-think him—calm, ruthless, luminous—does something feral and proud in my ribs.
I don’t move. I let her have the room. Let her own the dark. Let everyone see what I already knew: my girl is incredible.