For the next hour, she had to pretend she didn’t know D. Which, in fairness, she didn’t. Niko hadn’t introduced him. He hadn’t said his name at all. Where had he found him? Was he just some random dude at the bar? Was he pretending to be the bartender again?
She needed to pull out her inner Meryl Streep andgive a performance of a lifetime. This man was a stranger. He meant nothing to her. No-thing. He did not make her entire body light up with just a look, a word, a touch.
She had not spent the better part of the last eighteen months reliving the eight or so hours she’d spent with him, replaying them over and over and over in her head. Or imagined a million times what she would do if she ever saw him again.
No, he was a stranger. Strange-er.
Niko glanced around the room. “Yeah, they do seem to take the game pretty seriously.”
"JT's Trivia Night is not a game, it's a blood sport," Jenna corrected him. Her voice sounded a little better but not great. She pushed on and motioned towards Lana and her cohorts. "The reigning champs The Quizney Princesses haven't lost in five months. We almost beat them the last three times, and I would not be surprised if they poisoned Kiki and Robbie. They're monsters. Actual monsters. I think one of them is a medical examiner.”
Better. That was better. She was doing better.
"So, it’s high stakes, then," Niko stated flatly.
“Okay, welcome to JT’s. My name is Shelby Dorsey, and I am your host for the evening.”
Oh, thank god. Shelby started the quiz. It was now a countdown until it was over. Sixty minutes. Jenna could do anything for sixty minutes. Even pretend the man across from her had zero power over her.
“Tonight our teams are, You Can’t Sip With Us, The Quiz Khalifas, Let’s Get Quizzical, Bar Flies, We Thought This Was Speed Dating, Quiztopher Walkens, The Smartinis, The Quiz Lebowskis, Risky Quizness, The Drunken Know-it-Alls, The Brewsual Suspects, Tequila Mockingbirds, The Winnerz, Trivial Newton Johns, TheFellowship of the Quiz, The In-Quizitors, and the reigning champions, The Quizney Princesses!”
Shelby was going through the rules when Niko leaned forward and dropped yet another bomb, “Oh, and Deacon’s a ringer since he went to MIT.”
“Deacon?” Jenna repeated as her heart dropped to the ground.
No. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. She looked over at “Deacon,” who was staring at her in the same disbelief that she was staring back at him.
Niko motioned to D. “Oh, yeah, didn’t I… sorry, this is Deacon St. Claire.”
Deacon St. Claire. D wasDeacon St. Claire. Jenna saw the look in his eye. It was almost…apologetic. Just like his grin was when she’d said fancy car and fancy hotel and he’d told her the room was comped if it made her feel any better.
Her brain started replaying all of their conversations through a Deacon St. Claire filter, and in all scenarios she was coming out the idiot. Of course he was Deacon St. Claire. The private entrance. Him interrupting people before they said his name. James knew who he was. James texting:of course you’re at the st. claire. Him telling her to block James when he texted that.
Oh god, she’d said she always wanted to stay at a St. Claire hotel and asked if he stayed at them often. How stupid. And then the clothes he had sent up. She hadn’t even known that St. Claire hotels all have boutiques in them. She checked online later. What an idiot she must have looked like.
Sixty minutes. She just had to get through sixty minutes.
The first round began. It was general knowledge. Deacon and Tiana answered all the questions. She wasn’tsure why Niko stayed silent, she’d been too busy feeling humiliated.
The second round was “Movie Quotes.” By then, Jenna, who was moving through the stages of grief, shock—or whatever it was—quickly, had moved past embarrassment to anger, and she used that to fuel her competitive drive. She and Niko crushed it in all genres, from rom-coms to ’80s and ’90s horror and sci-fi.
When Shelby read out that We Thought This Was Speed Dating was in the lead after the second round, Jenna took it back into a celebratory old-school Arsenio Hall fist pump and nearly knocked over her water glass. Deacon reached across the table and grabbed it, saving her from getting a lap full of water and looking like she peed herself the rest of the night. As much as Jenna didn’t want to admit it, even his quick ninja reflexes were hot.
Was there anything about this man that wasn’t hot?
Oh yeah, he lied. By omission, but still.
The third round was general knowledge, which they all contributed to and did well. During the fourth round, Science and Nature, while Tiana and Deacon debated the atomic number of manganese, it dawned on Jenna that D, er Deacon, had been living in Hope Falls for months.
Months.That time that she walked into Sue Ann’s to pick up takeout for her and Peanut, he probablyhadjust been there. All those times she’d listened to women, and a handful of men, gush about Deacon St. Claire, they were talking about him. Her D. Well, not her D, buther D.
How was that possible?
Hope Falls was not that big.
Deacon St. Claire was D. D was Deacon St. Claire.
Wait, that meant that D was Poppy and Liam’s half-brother.
