ACE:Las Vegas Bad Boys(87)

Which is concerning.

As I wrap a towel around my waist, turn on ESPN, and flip through the menu for late night room service, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something. Missing some piece of the puzzle. Missing the point, of all of this. Life. Ambition. Goals.

The other thing I can’t seem to shake is that in those minutes when Claire straddled me, when she looked into my eyes with devotion, seeming to offer me everything she had to give in that moment, I felt whole.





CLAIRE


I get an Uber and arrive home within thirty minutes. Properly disheveled, but not at all properly screwed.

And I’m disappointed in myself for giving in to Landon. I never give in to men at the casino. But at Emmy’s wedding ... for a moment, Landon seemed different.

Which is dumb. Landon is like nearly everyone else, living in Vegas for money and sex and booze. But not me. I’m in Vegas for my daughter, to try and build a life for my little family.

I turn the key in Mom’s condo door and slip inside. I hear Sophia’s small cry right away, and I feel like shit for staying out so late.

“Sweetpea?” I call to Sophia, walking into the room she and I share at the back of the two-bedroom apartment. “Hey, love,” I say, looking down at my little girl.

Mom gives me a sympathetic shrug.

“Sorry, I know you were having fun,” Moms says, standing from where she was sitting on the edge of the bed Sophia and I share. “But Sophia just wants you. I gave her some more Tylenol, and a cool bath, I think right now the best cure is her mama.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I say, pulling Sophia into my arms.

“I missed you, Mama,” she says, her little arms tight around my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist. In an instant, she is home.

“I’m here. And Gram took good care of you, didn’t she?”

“Course she did.” I feel Sophia’s smile against my neck as she nuzzles closer.

“Thanks for everything

Mom shuts off the light to my room and I kick off my heels, pulling the duvet over Sophia and me. We sink into our bed with me still in my pink chiffon bridesmaid dress. Ace and Emmy’s wedding, their life at the Spades Royalle, and my time in Landon’s suite all seem like a dream. It always seems like that when I go down to the strip to work—all bright lights and glamour and glitz.

I don’t want or need a South Pacific honeymoon and the fourteen-jillion-carat engagement ring on Emmy’s finger. I don’t need a diamond tycoon’s son or a Grammy-nominated lover. I just want something more.

And that makes me feel like a terrible mother and a terrible daughter. I like my life on the strip. And I like my life in this apartment. I just don’t know how to bring them together.

I wonder if my life will always be here and there. Disjointed. Disconnected. Detached.

I wonder if my life will ever feel whole.

Cradled in my arms, Sophia is able to drift into sleep, her fever already fading with the healing power of being in the arms of someone who makes everything feel safe.

I close my eyes, wishing someone held me who could make me feel that way, too.

And, strangely, feeling like I had been held that way, for a sliver of a moment, when Landon hovered on top of me, looking in my eyes, seeing me in a way I didn’t understand.





4





LANDON


It’s been a solid two weeks since Ace’s wedding, and I haven’t seen Claire once. Not that I ever see her on the casino floor—her shifts are usually daytime, and I’m usually still sleeping at that hour.

Which is probably for the best. An awkward post-almost-rendezvous run-in isn’t something I necessarily want to have. I know once Ace and Emmy get back in town it will be inevitable, but what can I say? Avoiding confrontation is a fucking cornerstone of my goddamned existence.

I’ve just pulled up to the gym when the phone rings. My father.

Bloody fantastic.

“Hello?” I say into the now-parked car, Bluetooth activated.

“Landon, my boy, you sound exasperated. Surely you’re pleased to hear from your father.”

“Is everything alright?” I ask, not really interested in the never-ending small-talk-chatter my parents expertly engage in. Some English families are thrifty and sparse with conversation. My parents are not.

I don’t hold much against them, but their never-ending desire for me to join my brother Geoffrey as a productive member of English society, join in the cricket league in Hertfordshire, and stroll around in wellies with a bloody retriever fetching a ball before we break for a bit and shoot for sport makes me a bit ill. My father’s dream for me is a bit much.

Especially when I spend my nights in clubs until four a.m., sleep till mid-afternoon, and don’t even need to hire the strippers who dance for me ... let’s just say our life visions thus far haven’t quite intersected.