“Stop.” She turned around at the numbers written on the white board above the register. She tried to pluck the ticket out of my hand, but I held on tight.
“I love you dearly, Miss Melissa, but there’s no way you’re taking that ticket out of my hands.”
She cackled. “You’re a smart boy.” She patted my arm. “You remember me when you cash that in, you hear?”
“Believe me, that’s not going to be a problem. You’re officially my lucky charm.” I picked her up and swung her around in a circle and pressed a smacking kiss to her mouth then set her down.
“That doesn’t count as my tip.”
I tipped my ballcap back off my sweaty forehead with a laugh. “That’s fair.”
I followed her to the register, my heart racing, and I was pretty sure my feet weren’t even under me.
She hurried around the counter to the lotto machine and printed out the winning numbers, pushing it across the counter. “Let’s just check one more time, shall we?”
I nodded.
The numbers wavered a little. Maybe I’d had a little heatstroke. It was still ninety-three degrees at eight in the evening and the AC unit in my truck had shit the bed.
I set my ticket down on the counter and read the numbers out loud one more time.
July thirteenth changed my life.
I was officially worth 647.3 million dollars.
2
ambrose
Present Day
I just neededto get through this set.
Four more songs.
The stage shimmered in front of me. Were those sparkles in the lit floor or...
I wavered.
I grabbed the prop couch and dropped into it. Not because I wanted to, but because my knees literally dissolved.
Thank God, I’d pushed for the couch to be real, not fabric covered cardboard.
I was Ambrose goddammit. I could demand anything I wanted. This time it was going to save me from face planting in front of tens of thousands of people.
I shook back my long hair. Also a prop. Extensions that took six thousand hours to put in—okay, not quite that long, but it had been a full day in the chair. My goddess of a hairdresser,Harini, had painstakingly put them in to cover up the fact that my hair was fried and falling out.
One hundred sixty-eight shows.
Each show had at least eight costume changes.
Stress.
Exhaustion.
Meltdown.
Take your pick, they all applied.
