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“What are you talking about?” Reed throws up his hands. “We have money. That’s never been a problem for us, at least it hasn’t been since Darius’s success.”
“That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? It’s Darius’s success, not mine.”
Lines of confusion appear between Darius’s eyebrows. “I’ve always paid well. If you needed more money, why didn’t you just say something?”
Cade turns to his brother. “I did, remember? That investment a couple of months ago.”
“The one hundred K?” Darius checks.
“Yeah, that’s right. Only, I didn’t invest it. I paid off some debt.”
“What debt?”
“Gambling debt,” Cade admits.
“I don’t understand,” Darius says. “When did you start gambling?”
“Six months ago. I wasn’t always out chasing women.”
He shoots me a guilty look.
“But that still doesn’t explain why you hid your phone,” I say.
“I paid off that gambling debt, but then I ran up more debt. I borrowed money from the wrong people, and they were coming after me. I knew I couldn’t ask you for more money, Dax. I hated that I’d already lost you a hundred grand. These people are not good men. They threatened me.” He stares down at his hands, where they’re twisted together. “They threatenedyou, Darius.”
Reed’s eyes are wide. “Jesus fucking Christ. So, you thought what, exactly? That if these people thought you’d died in a plane crash, you’d be off the hook for the money?”
“I wasn’t thinking ahead. It’s just that after we crashed, all I thought was that here,” he gestures around us with his hands, “those men would never find me. They’d never find Dax.”
Darius’s scowl deepens. “So you decide we’d be better off dying out in the middle of nowhere rather than you having to face these men?”
“They’re not the kind of men you can just face. They’d have shot you in the back of the head if they didn’t get what they wanted.”
Darius throws up his hands. “So why not just ask me for more money? Tell me the goddamned truth for once in your life?”
“I was ashamed. Embarrassed. I fucked up, big time. I felt like I was just ruining your life. First, you lost your sight because I got you sick, and then I bring madmen to your door because I’ve got a gambling habit.”
His brother glares at him. “And then you get us stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere when you could have called for help!”
“I thought I’d bought myself some time, but I hadn’t expected for no one to find us. I was sure the plane would have some kind of emergency beacon on it that would alert rescuers to our location. I hadn’t considered that the battery would die before I got the chance to call for help, and we’d still be lost weeks, or even months later.”
Reed drags his hands over his face. “Fucking hell, Cade.”
Cade keeps talking, as though he hasn’t heard him. “Out here, as well, there’s no temptation to gamble. I thought it would be like going cold turkey, you know. It would be a win-win. Those men would think I was dead, and I wouldn’t be able to gamble anymore.”
I opened my mouth, still confused. “But didn’t it occur to you that they’d find out when you were found again? That it would be all over the news?”
“Honestly, I didn’t even think that far ahead. I was just so relieved not to have it as an immediate problem—that I’d get a fucking break from worrying about it all the time. You all felt this was the place where you were in danger, but for me it was the one place I was safe.”
I can’t believe Cade has done this to us. Could we really have called for help on Cade’s phone after the crash? Would the emergency services have perhaps been able to use some kind of tracking to figure out our location? I imagine an alternateuniverse where he’d made different choices, and none of the past month had happened. No illness. No finding a dead body in the roof space. No encounters with hungry bears.
But also no connection with the men. No experience of them taking care of me. No passionate sex and kisses. No sleeping with them curled up around me.
I never would have the kind of connection I have with them now if we’d been rescued right away.
What would that alternate universe have brought about? Would we have gone straight back to Los Angeles, only for these men Cade was talking about to find him? Find Darius? What if Cade had made that call, and we’d been taken back to LA only for those men to shoot Darius?
“You asshole,” Darius snaps. “You selfish fucking asshole.”
