Page 117 of Double or Nothing

I don’t ask.

Not yet.

Casino floors are not for confessions. They’re for impulse mixed with cold, hard savvy and watching people reveal themselves with every chip they place.

So I focus on what’s around us. The reckless ambience they’ve never known. I introduce BT and Soul Girl to the glory of the gambling kingdom.

My kingdom, even though it’s not the one I own.

I take them from roulette to blackjack, from blackjack to baccarat, from baccarat to the private tables where the air gets thicker and the smiles get smaller. Alice watches everything like she’s fixated by a blockbuster. It’s not about the money, or the glamour. She’s used to that. It’s about the flick of people’s fingers over sacred cards, the tension of anticipation before the reveal, the little rituals people cling to when chance is about to slap them around the face.

“It’s like painting,” she says as we watch a woman in emerald earrings lose five grand without moving a muscle.

I glance at her, pulling a face of what the fuck at her words.

“What?”

“These people here,” she says. “They’re all like artists in the flow. Trying to create a piece of artwork out of a night of luck and bravery.”

Bryce looks at her as though she’s just explained gravity in a language he forgot he spoke. I look at her like she’s talking arty fucking fluff again, because she is. Brushstrokes out of luck and bravery? Trying to show off and win some decent cash, more like it.

“You always did that,” Bryce says to her.

Alice turns to him. “Did what?”

“Made everything sound like it mattered.”

Jesus Christ, these two. Of course the casino night matters. People lose thousands in the blink of an eye.

I could barf over my cocktail when her expression changes, it’s so meaningful. Pure adoration in her pretty eyes. He just melted her mush of a heart even more, with a load of abstract bollocks.

Alice breaks the stare and looks away, but not before I catch the wet shine gathering in her eyes.

Ah ha. There’s the shadow in the darkness again.

Right under the gold.

Fuck, I hate how the emotion punches through my throwaway thoughts. The pang of my own that accompanies it, in my ribcage not my boxers. I’d much rather it was in my boxers.

I clap my hands to break the mood.

“Wonderful. Beautiful. Touching. Now, before we all start sobbing, who wants to see how to lose money with style?”

Alice raises her glass, buying in.

“Me!”

Bryce sighs. “You’re such an inciter, Jack. I dread to think.”

“That’s the spirit. Come on, BT. You love it really.”

I get them laughing again because that’s what I do. Push. Pull. Tease. I give the mood between us a shove before it collapses under the weight of too much goddamn sincerity. I’m excellent at it. Award-winning. If there were awards for emotional sabotage with a charming grin, I’d be a national champion by now.

But the thing is, I’m watching Bryce and Alice change in real time, dancing to my joker boy tune.

That’s the part that catches me unawares.

Bryce stands taller by the time we reach the poker room. Not fully. He’s hardly transformed into some reckless prince overnight. But more himself, and it’s hardly a surprise since he’s in a place like this, without the weight of the mundane like a necklace of bricks around his neck.