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Alice’s eyes travel over me, and I feel the path of them like a touch of the silk she’s wearing.

“You look gorgeous,” she says.

Gorgeous.

The word hits me harder than it should.

Not reliable. Not clever. Not dependable.

Gorgeous.

I don’t think I’ve ever been told I look gorgeous.

I clear my throat. “So do you.”

“Obviously,” Jack says. “She’s Soul Girl in a casino. The whole place has improved by at least forty percent by her presence.”

“Only forty?” Alice laughs and nudges him with her elbow.

I take the seat beside them because if I stand much longer, I may do something dramatic and irreversible. I may just grab them and go for it.

Sitting does not help. Not in the slightest. My hard-on is like an awkward truncheon in my suit trousers.

Alice is close enough that her perfume tangles with the scent of the room. Jack is on my other side, all heat and mischief as he plays the wheel.

His eyes are like a hawk’s, the chips in his hand like power pieces as the roulette wheel spins.

The small ivory ball clatters around its rim and Jack cleans up by backing red. Lucky hand.

He places a stack of chips in front of me.

“Your turn. Pick a number.”

“I don’t gamble.”

“Don’t be a dull bastard, BT. You do now.”

Alice leans closer. “Go on, Bryce. Do it. Live dangerously. You know you want to.”

Her voice is gentle. Her eyes are anything but.

Her eyes dare me.

So do Jack’s.

The tension between us doesn’t hum quietly under the surface. It thrums, thick and electric, vibrating through the velvet edge of the table, through the brush of Alice’s knee against mine, through Jack’s grin as he watches me watching her.

I should warn Alice about her father.

I should tell her about Christopher.

I should tell them both everything.

Instead, I put one chip down.

Number 7.

Jack laughs. “Safe choice?”