“Forget it. Just leave like everyone else does. You’re better off without me,” he mutters.
“Dex, what the hell is going on? Where is this coming from?”
“I’m helping my father run an underground casino, okay?” he yells at me.
My jaw slackens. Of all the things I thought he might say in that moment, that wasn’t one of them. “What?”
“The FBI might be following me because of it,” he says, his voice quieter now. “Or maybe someone’s trying to get to my dad through me. Someone with a grudge, someone who lost it all because of him.”
My gut reaction is absolute and totalfury. He’s the one who brought up open communication and then withheld what he was actually doing on Tuesday nights. Is he fucking kidding me with this? He’s running anillegalunderground casino, and someone with a grudge may be following him? Me? Us?
“You’re putting the baby and me in danger by doing this,” I say, my voice controlled and quiet. Almost eerily so. I don’t feel controlled or quiet. I feel rage building inside of me.
“It’s why I didn’t tell you,” he says. He reaches over and places a hand on my thigh, and I bat it away.
“Ains, come on,” he begs.
I shake my head and fold my arms over my chest. “Take me home.”
“We have reservations.”
“So call and cancel. I don’t want to go to dinner. I want to go home.”
He blows out a breath, but he starts heading in the direction of home anyway.
I think about this situation for the rest of the ride home. I think about what to do. How to protect Jack. How to protectmyself.
I don’t see any other choice. There’s too much wrong between us for this to ever work. We’re from two different worlds. Two different decades. Two different timelines, and ours wasn’t one that was ever meant to merge together.
So once we’re back home, once flared tempers have calmed, and once Jack is in his highchair with some puffs, my eyes meet Dex’s across the kitchen. “I can’t do this with you. I can’t get invested in you and your baby knowing you’re not telling me the whole truth.”
“What are you saying?” he demands.
“I’m saying I’ll take care of the baby until you can find another nanny.”
“We have a contract,” he hisses.
I press my lips together. He’s not giving me much choice, but he probably also doesn’t have the time to find a new nanny now that his first game of the season is Sunday in New York. “Fine. Then I’ll stay until the end of our term. But that’s all it is now. A contract. This? Us? We’re done.” I slide the ring off my finger and set it on the counter.
He stares at it for a long beat, and then he spins on his heel, heads toward the door, and slams it shut behind him, the sound echoing and reverberating in my chest as my heart smashes into a million pieces.
Maybe I made two friends today.
But it appears I might’ve lost one, too.
CHAPTER 42: Dex Bradley
Coax
The thing about having a driver for your building that will take you anywhere you want is that he signed an NDA long ago.
“Take me to Coax,” I say.
It started as a secret sex club owned by the manager of the Vegas Heat, Troy Bodine, and a few others. Over the years, it’s become Vegas’s worst-kept VIP secret.
I’m sure it’ll be all over the news that I went to a sex club when I’m married. It won’t be great for the wholesome image I’m supposed to be working on, but fuck it. I’m not going to the club to have sex.
I just need to get away for a little while, and it’s a place where I know I can find my friends but also where I know my father has zero influence and zero people on his ass—and therefore, zero people onmyass. The place has a study with a bar and the most comfortable chairs I’ve ever sat in, and between that and the view by the pool outside, it’s where I feel called when I need to relax away from the bright lights of the Strip.
