“You blinked twice when you missed last time,” I say. “That’s a tell.”
“That was dust.”
“Your eyes don’t water for dust.”
“Sometimes they do.”
“Sometimes you lie.”
He huffs a laugh and stays still, but his chest expands a hair. Got you.
I shift the tweezers a millimeter. My hands don’t shake, but my heart does. That’s been the rule since the container: do not show the tremor where anyone can call it fear. I wedge the points under the curl of plastic and breathe out like my therapist taught me—count down, not up. I feel the wishbone loosen. I lift. The metal tip grazes the sidewall. The red nose blinks once in warning. I freeze, readjust, lift again, and?—
BZZZT.
The room groans. Jace drops his head to his hands. Ortiz sits back like he just watched his team miss a chip shot in the playoffs. Bear’s smile splits his face. He does a little shoulder shimmy that would be insufferable if it weren’t so rare to see him soft.
“One more,” I say quickly. “Tiebreaker.”
“That was the tiebreaker,” Ortiz says.
Jace checks the tally sheet he insisted on keeping like this is a sanctioned tournament. “She’s right. Eleven-thirteen.”
Bear looks betrayed. “I thought I was at thirteen.”
“Youwere,” Jace says. “Then you buzzed twice in a row on the ankle bone.”
Bear glowers at the ankle cavity like it owes him money. “Rematch,” he tells me.
“Rematch,” I agree, because my stomach has been a fist all day, and the only time it unclenches is when I’m doing something that requires my whole attention.
The suite smells like lemon cleaner and coffee gone cold, just like home should. The curtains are drawn against the afternoon and the river view beyond them. We’re hiding in the place no one would think to look: the Titan-Wynn, high floor, corner unit, the same floor plan I used to clean on Sundays for extra cash.
I walked into the lobby this morning with Zeus on his new harness and asked Kendra to book me a suite. Kendra did not blink. She slid me a key. She used my name. On purpose. The men don’t know I’m here. The staff does. Loyalty travels fast when it’s attached to someone who remembers your kid’s birthday and the fact that you hate the smell of bleach.
Oh, and I guess they like that I stand up for them and am willing to fight for every single employee.
We’ve been “dark” for twenty-four hours like Spencer wanted. Enough time for the preliminary test to calm the worst fear—that I’m a Masterson by blood. Enough time for the operators to rotate shifts without calling attention to the extra bodies on the floor. Enough time for me to start managing the front officefrom a couch no one can see, a tablet on my knee, my name at the bottom of memos without a title. Because apparently I don’t even need that in order to run the front of the house.
“Let me take the heart,” Bear says, magnanimous. “You take the wishbone. We’ll call it fair.”
“Because your hands are too big for finesse?” Ortiz needles.
“Because I want her to think she beat me,” Bear fires back, deadpan.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, which is becoming a habit. “How about this,” I say. “We both go for the wishbone—me first, you second. Whoever gets it takes the game.”
Bear nods, solemn. “Deal.”
I tilt the tweezers again. I steady my breath. The suite’s AC kicks on, a low hum that makes the board’s buzz seem louder when it hits. My hands are steady, but now the tremor moves to my mouth. I bite the inside of my cheek. It gives me something to push against that isn’t a memory.
“Queen,” Jace murmurs, not a warning, a support. “You got this.”
I do not. Not at first. The tip taps the wall and the nose flashes. I pull back before the buzzer and reset my angle. Bear doesn’t breathe. The piece bumps free and rises. There’s a split second where I think I’m going to lose it because the metal feels bumpy through the tweezers and my whole body wants to jerk to compensate. I don’t. I lift. I clear the edge and drop the wishbone into the little plastic tray with a clatter that sounds like a trophy.
The room goes quiet. Then Jace whoops, loud enough that someone two floors down probably flinched. Ortiz slaps myshoulder twice—once too hard, once exactly right. Bear bows his head like I out-boxed him, then flicks the red nose with one meaty finger and mutters, “Pussy game.”
I grin. It feels wrong on my face and right everywhere else. Zeus—a fuzzy comma of dog asleep under the desk—lifts his head, blinks, and thumps his tail twice. He’s eating again, which is more than I can say for me. He cheated Bear on his last bathroom trip by pretending he had to go and then bee-lining for the buffet leftovers someone slid under our door on a room service cart. I took the plate away after three bites and then ate none of it myself. The mind games I’m willing to play with my body should probably get me fired from my own job.
