“Did she take your offer?” Josh asks.
She offered to suck me off. I keep that to myself. It’d be too humiliating for her for me to air, even to my brothers.Consider it an old-fashioned courtesy from me to an ex,I think, imagining I’m saying it to Fiona. “Too much fucking pride. Funny, considering her family’s on the verge of bankruptcy.”
Ares shoots me a look full of skepticism.
“She’ll come around, though.” I feign nonchalance, even though the prospect of seeing her again sends a zing through me. She has no other option. Banks aren’t stupid—they know the family’s gone belly-up. But after the way I had her dragged out, she might just stay away to preserve what’s left of her pride, assuming there’s still any left.
She looked really desperate,a small, gloating voice in my head says.
“What other choice does she have?” I ask rhetorically.
“A sugar daddy?” Josh says. “SoCal is full of ’em. She doesn’t even have to limit herself to single men. Mistressing is a lucrative business.”
I scoff, even as the possibility of her all over a man old enough to be her grandpa fills my mouth with bitterness. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s too old for that.”
“She’s barely thirty.” Ares looks at me like I’m stupid.
Josh says, “Andshe keeps in shape. She looks like she’s twenty-two. A lot of guys would tap it.”
Has he seen her lately?She looks younger than her age, but not twenty-two. Besides, she doesn’t keep in shape. She’s too thin. Not sure why. Maybe she got a boyfriend who wanted her to lose weight after college. How stupid. When a man tells you to lose weight, you ought to crush his balls and find a man who’ll love you the way you—
Stop.Why am I thinking about this? Who cares about Fiona’s post-college love life? Still, the idea of her with another man feels…
I shake my head. The odd burning sensation in my gut isn’t from thinking about her with some other men. It’s from too much whiskey. “That’s disgusting,” I sneer to hide the weird heat in my belly. Another card—the queen of diamonds.Damn it.
Josh shrugs. “Not my fault she’s a babe.”
Ares throws in more chips.
“You seem confident,” Josh says to him.
“I’m always confident.”
“You taking your wife to the art auction exhibition?” I ask Ares, not wanting to discuss Fiona’s prospects as a trophy wife or mistress anymore.
Who would marry her anyway?Even the position of mistress seems too good for her. Maybe just a plaything at the most. Something you use once and discard.
That evening, I don’t win a single hand.
Chapter Seven
Bryce
Music loud enough to split skulls booms in the dimly lit VIP room at Z. Top-shelf bottles of liquor litter the bar, and women gyrate around in outfits that could get them arrested for indecent exposure. Strippers, strippers and more strippers.
This isn’t my kind of scene, but I need an outlet. I’ve been too restless since seeing Fiona a few weeks ago. Nightmares with Mom trying to kidnap us keep reoccurring, and they always end with Fiona calling my name. Recently, though, the finale to the dream has morphed into her not only calling my name but kissing me senseless.
Waking up with tingling lips and morning wood isn’t a good way to start the day, especially when they’re caused by a devious, duplicitous ex. I still can’t forget the way she looked in my bed with Jude, long hair disheveled and lips swollen. Or the cruel, taunting words she said, each one a bag of acid that exploded on impact.
The weird texts about her—and photos—that started in the last two weeks haven’t helped either. They constantly disrupt the calm I’m trying to achieve. I keep blocking them, but whoever’s behind the harassment continues to get new numbers.
If I find out who’s behind it, I might just feed them into a woodchipper.
–Unknown: Don’t you owe her one? So do the right thing.
Why should I?The taunting question begs to be texted, but I hold back. I’m not taking the bait. The longer I glare at the text, the more it seems like the culprit is Fiona. She has to re-engage if she hopes to get my money.Well, dream on, baby. I’m not playing the game.
After all, it’s a tired cliché. She texted me before leaving for Wisconsin, too, claiming she wanted to explain “what really happened” with Jude. I refused. There’s only one kind of bullshit excuse, the same kind Mom used when she got caught after almost killing Ares.
