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“Come sit with us and play.” He nodded to the seat next to the stripper.
I patted his shoulder and lifted his glass. “I’m good with drinks, bad with luck. Trust me, you don’t want me around your cards.”
He scoffed, and when I turned away, I felt his eyes drop to my ass. I gave the stripper a small smile and collected two more empties on my way to the bar.
Fifteen minutes later, when I stepped into the control room, I reached for my phone without thinking, then stopped.
“It’s a bad habit to break,” Lance smirked, watching me drop my hand with a frustrated groan.
Rick turned in his seat. “What? Tempting rich birthday boys?”
“No. Checking her phone.”
I pushed my bag away. “I swear, you guys need a new hobby—something other than watching me.”
Lance kicked his foot up and rested it on the desk, using it to swing his chair from left to right. “You can’t exactly blame us. Your current situation is much more exciting than anything we are up to.”
Rick tossed a handful of cashews into his mouth and nodded in agreement.
“So … why isn’t your phone working?” Lance looked at me as if he was about to analyze my response, and I pulled the fridge door open, grabbing a bottled water.
I twisted the cap off and took my time with a sip, thinking through how much I wanted to share. “I’m changing my number. Trying to ditch a credit card company.”
They exchanged a look at my fib, and I scowled at them as I headed for the door. Joining Britni behind the bar, I pulled glasses out of the dry rack and stacked them on the counter. “Thanks again for this weekend.”
She was covering my shift this Sunday so I could head home for my dad’s birthday. I hadn’t seen my parents in almost a month, and needed, for more reasons than one, a mini-trip away from this town.
“No sweat.” She loaded up a tray and I watched her turn, noted her effortless carry of a dozen drinks. Like me, she’d practically grown up in restaurants, had waited tables since she was a teen. Like me, she took classes during the day, partied as much as she studied, and didn’t have a life plan that extended past next semester.
If she had been the one to greet Dario, would he have gone for her and never known my name?
No. I knew that deep inside. The pull between us…
I hadn’t lived much. Done much. I didn’t know much, but I knew that our connection wasn’t normal. It was two planets colliding. Explosions. A black hole that pulled you in, regardless of the danger.
It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime connection, but everything around us was once-in-a-lifetime levels of fucked up.
I shouldn’t have gotten mad at him and stormed off. I should have acted like an adult and had an intelligent conversation. I regretted it but didn’t have a phone or his number to call him and fix things.
* * *
DARIO
He finished his work and stood, stretching. The condo was quiet, Gwen heading to bed a few hours ago. He was exhausted, but couldn’t leave things with Bell as they had. He couldn’t have that giant cliffhanger hanging over their relationship. He should have kept her in the car and forced her to talk, forced them to work it out.
But what was there to work out? He couldn’t accept her being with anyone but him. And he couldn’t leave Gwen—not right now. So, there wasn’t anything for them to really work out. There was only her, needing to accept his demands, even if they weren’t fair, even if he was a hypocrite.
He opened his closet and walked into the room, glancing at his watch. In two hours, Bell would be off work. Thirty minutes after that, he could have her naked and underneath him.
As soon as the thought came, he tried to kill it, to get the image of her, her back arching, eyes closing, skin flushing—out of his head.
Moving to the racks, he began to change.
* * *
BELL
Conner Brentwood had had too much to drink. Which, given his birthday and location, was pretty much a rite of passage. I switched his drink for ice water and yielded when he pulled me onto his lap, his clumsy hand trying to slide a green chip into my pocket.
“You take such good care of me.” He sang the final words, and I smiled at him, the thousand-dollar chip warm in my pocket.
“I’m trying to take care of you. You keep drinking and you’ll be hating me in the morning.”
He scowled and scraped his cards against the table, asking for another hit. Another hit … on two nines. A five came up and he tossed the hand away, another five grand lost.
A guy at the end tapped on his empty glass and I untangled myself from Conner’s grip. “Good luck.”
