Page 29 of Heir

What is wrong with my friend? Why did she hurt me?

Now I could hear her fear, just as much as I could see it on her face and in her eyes.

Agony filled me. I’d hurt her. I’d hurt one of the only people in the world who loved me.

I was a danger to her now. To all of them.

“I . . . I need some air,” I said, heading to the front door and opening it. “I just need to take a walk and sort out my head.”

“You can’t leave,” the vampire said, using a white, embroidered monogram handkerchief to wipe up his face. Because, of course this pompous prick had an embroidered and monogrammed handkerchief.

If she leaves, it’ll hurt again.

Dammit, was I hearing his fears now too? What did he mean if I left it would ‘hurt again’? I glared at the man as he wiped his face with the handkerchief. He winced. Shit! Was I spit-roasting his gray matter again? “I can do whatever the fuck I want,” I said quickly, before opening the door and slamming it shut.

I sprinted down four flights of stairs, then burst out into the cool, May evening. It’d stopped raining, but the smell of rain on flowers and pavement soothed me. Everything would be so fresh, green, and alive tomorrow.

I wasn’t sure where I was walking, but I headed down to Fourth Street and took a left.

I’d nearly killed my best friend.

My only friend.

And the way she looked at me was something I’d never forget.

Gemma and I met our first year of college at Chase City University. We moved into dorm rooms on the same floor, right across the hall from each other. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to study, but I was set on mathematics. I’d always had a keen mind for numbers. What I would do with a math degree, I wasn’t sure, but it was what I wanted.

We bonded on day one and became inseparable after that. She even transferred into a couple of my classes so we could spend more time together. We rarely fought, and even when we did, they were more differences of opinions than actual fights, which we sorted out by talking like adults.

She came from a middle-class family and had one younger brother. Her parents didn’t make a ton of money, but what they lacked for in things, they made up for in love.

But right before Christmas during our sophomore year, her parents and brother were returning home from a ski trip and died in a car accident, leaving Gemma with no one—but me.

Of course, she inherited everything from her parents’ estate, but it wasn’t much. It paid off their mortgage, the funeral fees, and for the rest of her sophomore year. But by the second semester of our junior year, she made the tough decision to drop out. Her parents had a fair bit of debt and the remainder of her inheritance went to cover that.

So, I dropped out with her. We’d already been roommates since sophomore year, and I couldn’t go to school knowing she wasn’t going to be there too. I had a scholarship, but I gave it up so that Gemma and I could be together.

At first, we tried regular jobs, but I knew early on that I wasn’t cut out for retail, or any kind of customer service. People suck. They’re rude, entitled, and really fucking stupid.

Then I tried bookkeeping, which suited me better, but it was boring.

It wasn’t until I was bookkeeping for a bar downtown that I stumbled across the backroom poker games. I observed at first, but even just when observing, I could pinpoint the winners and losers. I could read their emotions. I could intuit their moves.

When I finally saved up enough scratch for a buy-in, I asked my boss if I could play and he said it was my money to lose.

But I didn’t lose. I won. Again, and again, and again.

I quit my job as their bookkeeper and started playing as many nights as I could, winning nearly every game. Then we went to Seattle, and Portland, even down to San Franscisco, where we heard about big underground games, and I won a lot there too.

After about six months of playing and winning, I heard about a big underground game in Vancouver. Only, I didn’t have a passport, and there wasn’t enough time to apply for one. So I went to a friend of a friend and had one made. Eventually, he roped me into his business of forged documents and IDs. When he decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting, he left me his business, clientele, and all of his equipment. But Gemma wasn’t comfortable with having something illegal like that in our home, or being part of it at all. So I gave it up.

I didn’t need the extra scratch that came from the side hustle, and it kept us both honest and aboveboard. The last thing we needed was some butthurt bozo I beat at poker, getting his thong in a twist and sending the cops after me for some asinine and bogus reason. Because if the cops showed up to search my apartment and found the forgery equipment, then we’d be toast.

I kept coming back to what Gemma said about me earlier.

That I was special.

I knew she meant it as more than just a compliment. And the more I thought about it, the more all the unexplainable things in my life started to make sense.

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