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She makes a show of selecting a card, lifting it up to study it. Her mouth curves down into a hard line, like she’s really working on memorizing that shit, but her blue eyes flick past the slip of paper to meet my gaze. “What now?”

“Put it back, sit back, and let me do what I do best.” I wink again, and she blushes as she returns the card to the fold.

My hands go to work. Shuffling, flipping, making a grand old show out of it, luring in both her friends to peer over her shoulder and watch me.

Can practically feel Gabby rolling her eyes in my direction. She ain’t impressed with my fuckery, as she calls it. The Bear Brothers are watching, though, ’cause fuckery or not, it’s pretty. Even Jason props an elbow on the bar to observe.

“Ready?” I fold the cards together into a neat stack between my palms. Got them all now, little fish on hooks, even Gabby, much as she pretends like she doesn’t get drawn in.

“Yes! So ready.” Blue Eyes nods, as do both her friends behind her, all three of them watching with unblinking and unabashed interest.

“All right. It’s your turn again.” I unfurl the cards out, face up, onto the bar top in front of her, in a nice long line. “I want you to take a quick peek, find your card for me.”

“Find it?” Her brow furrows in confusion. “How’s that a magic trick if I find it? Aren’t you supposed to do that?”

“Lend me a hand, won’t you, love?” I murmur, giving her half a crooked grin, the one that accents the adorable, lovable, innocent dimple—the one people just can’t seem to resist.

Okay, this time I actually do feel Gabby’s eye roll. It’s a good thing she’s set me firmly on the Bar Kid side of her family-tree slash shitlist.

“Wait . . .” Tall Girl leans over my arrayed deck. “I don’t see it. Why isn’t it here?”

I hold my practiced mask of innocence. “It’s not there?”

“No!” Blue Eyes spreads the cards further with her hands. “I don’t see it. Where is it?”

“Hm.” I lean a little closer, pretending to study the splayed deck. “Maybe I misplaced it?”

She tilts her head toward me . . . and I lift my hand, let my fingers brush past her ear to pull a card from thin air, twirl it around for her to see. Her eyes go big as silver dollars even before I speak the words. “Is this your card?”

All three of them just fucking stare. Moses and Larry stare. Jason stares. Gabby snorts and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “fucking cuntwaffles,” but I can neither confirm nor deny such suspicions without outright asking.

“How did you . . .” Blue Eyes trails off as I hand her the card. She takes it, fixated on that little slip of varnished paper. Those eyes flick up, the question written too clearly in the pale blue.

I wink. “Not magic, I promise you that.”

Definitely not magic—why you think I’m kicking it East Coast? I didn’t scrounge my way across the border with nothing but the clothes on my back ’cause it was fun. I did it cause I ain’t touching that dark shit with a ten-foot pole.

“Jaxy, you need a new hobby,” Gabby groans. “Or a new challenge. Something else to do with your time.”

I lean back on my stool toward her. “Love you too, Gabs.”

In the corner of my eye—the one always watching the door—something moves. A faint flick, but enough to garner my attention; I always got one eye on the exits.

The bell tinkles.

Softly.

The mark of a regular slipping through the entry.

I leave the cards slashed over the countertop like a gutted wound. Slip across the room toward the new arrival, rubber soles clinging to a floor tacky with years’ worth of sloshed beer. Silent as a shadow.

The new arrival takes a seat at the first table. Right by the window, like if shit goes rogue, he’s prepared to bust through the dusty, grease-streaked plate glass.

He might actually manage it.

“Ricky.” I plop into the chair across from him. I don’t care if the girls at the bar are watching me, wondering why I’ve ghosted. The way me and Ricky sit, I don’t think anybody’s gonna bother us.

Well, mostly, I don’t think anybody in their right mind has ever had the balls to bother Ricky. I surely wouldn’t.