Page 94 of Holiday Home 3
“Which you well know,” she’d said to Avril, who only grinned.
After her, Avril sought to know if Tess had ever needed to cut anyone off back when she’d been bartending. Tess snorted.
“All the time. At least a few times a week, if not more, if I had weekend shifts.”
“Men?”
Tess looked at Avril pointedly, wise as the rest of them to the obvious but playful insinuation. “Mostly, yes.”
“I bet you made a killing,” Avril grinned.
“Not well enough to go back to doing it for anyone other than friends,” Tess responded. “Like Victoria and her house, I quite like my current career.”
“Oh, definitely don’t go back. I get to have you next semester. I can’t wait to be your favorite student again.”
Victoria hid a snort into her glass as the next round started.
Now that three of the four players had used their first lifeline back into the game, it was only a matter of time until they discovered how quickly Avril would escalate future questions. Before that happened, however, Liam could tell everyone wanted to at least put him on equal footing. He felt overly targeted during the next portion of the game, and for their wishes, he let himself stay in a few hands longer than he normally would have. Before too long, it’d either be him who bombed out or Tess. Her straight outdid his pair, and his fate was sealed.
Grinning villainously, Avril wasted no time in saying, “Alright, Liam, fuck, marry, kill. Your options are everyone here but Anna.”
“That is such an escalation over everyone else!” he complained, receiving agreement in the form of nods from Tess and Anna. However, they didn’t swoop in to back Avril off like they usually would have. He noticed that immediately, and Avrilcertainlynoticed that.
“You’ve won both rounds before this, so I’ve got to start you off higher, obviously.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Yes, I do,” the vexatious redhead said. “This is your question, so are you staying in the game or bowing out already?
“Why are you part of it, but I’m not?” Anna asked, buying him a few more seconds to make his decision. “It would have been all three other players that way.”
“Because we all know he’ll pick ‘marry’ for you, no matter what configuration of the rest of us I throw in there. It wouldn’t even be a choice.”
Anna blushed and frowned. “That’s not… a guarantee.”
“It is such a guarantee,” her best friend retorted. “I’d pick to marry you if I was in his shoes. Or even mine.” She winked and grinned. “Wouldn’t that just drive your dad insane, seeing us at the aisle together?”
Anna rolled her eyes and huffed once, though that was the end of her argument on his behalf—or hers. As neither Tess nor Victoria interceded, his time out of the spotlight ended. All eyes gathered upon him, curious if he’d answer or not. One or two of them, such as the terrible, terrible troublemaker and her bowtie, barely hid their glee as he decided to answer.
“Fine,” he grunted, though he was still scrambling internally about who he’d marry and who he’d fuck between Tess and Victoria. From the moment she’d plopped this issue on his lap, he’d decided he’d kill Avril off. She probably knew that too. If anything, she’d only changed the guaranteed option when she replaced Anna with herself.
“We’re waiting,” Avril hummed as ten seconds of silence neared twenty.
He grunted again but then finally shared his decision with the room. “I’ll kill you, fuck Victoria, and marry Tess.”
Victoria and Avril cocked their eyebrows in the same breath. Anna blushed again. And unbeknownst to anyone at the table, Tess hid a smile behind another sip of her drink.
“Explain those answers, please,” Avril said, motioning that he could start taking his half of the pot at the same time.
“You die for making me play this game, and then I’ll marry Tess because I know her better than Victoria, and it wouldn’t change all that much for me if I just moved overonedoor.”
“So, Victoria is just getting fucked because she has to be?”
“Apparently,” Victoria said dryly.
It was his turn to blush. “I mean, no, it’s just how things worked out.”
The olive-skinned professor smiled disarmingly. “I would have picked the same setup if our roles were reversed. Avril dies, certainly.”