Page 58 of All Bets Are Off

He didn’t see them. Not at all. I was starting to think that the problem was he didn’t see himself either. “They’re not so bad.”

“If you say so.” He was surprisingly light on his feet. “Just … give me five minutes. I need five minutes to think. Then we can discuss … whatever it is you want to discuss.”

“Fine. I’m going to remember you said that when I want to discuss the book I just read, though. It’s grumpy-sunshine and the sex scenes were hot. You’ve been warned.”

He scowled. “You always have to take it there, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “It’s the only card I have to play.”

14

FOURTEEN

Olivia was reticent as I led her to the dance floor. I could feel the unease rolling through her but I didn’t care.

She was driving me crazy in that dress.

She was beautiful when hanging around in her sweats and tank top. Okay, she was sexy. Still beautiful, but sexy. This dress was otherworldly, though.

I tugged her against me and started to sway. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I could keep a beat. I’d been to enough parties where dancing was required that I wasn’t in danger of embarrassing myself.

When her body melted against mine, a sense of calm washed over me. She was still short, but it was as if our bodies had been designed to fit together. And didn’t that make my head want to implode? The calmness that had been there a moment before disappeared when I started thinking of other things, like how else our bodies might fit together.

“You move pretty well,” she said, breaking the silence that was threatening to drown us. “How do you even know how to dance like this?”

I looked down and realized we were actually doing a sort of dance, not just swaying. When did that happen?

“I don’t know,” I replied, my hand massaging over her hip. The sequins were rough but the flesh below was soft. So soft I wanted to strip her dress off and feel it all, taste it all.

“How did you figure out where we were?” she asked. “You don’t have an AirTag on me, do you?” Suspicion lit her eyes when I glanced down.

“How would I have gotten close enough to put an AirTag on you?” My voice was lower than normal, husky. She was having an effect on me, and it was one I didn’t know how to describe. I’d never felt this way around a woman before.

She pushed every button I had. The good and the bad.

She made me want to shake her one moment and kiss her senseless the next.

When she was a kid, it was easy to shutter the affection I felt for her. She was Rex’s younger sister. I needed him because he was the only regularity I had in my life. My parents never understood our friendship. They didn’t have any ill feelings toward him, but more than once they’d said he was destined for a “normal” life. To them, that was an insult. I thought a normal life sounded good.

The Carter house wasn’t full of belongings. It wasn’t a dump or anything, but it was well loved. When I walked through the doors, I felt something I’d never felt in the overblown mansion monstrosity I’d grown up in. I felt as if I were coming home.

As Olivia got older and started filling out, I realized that I was feeling something else for her. At first it was amusement. Then it was genuine fondness. The way she looked at me—her crush obvious—caused something to burn in my chest. Sure, I knew that it wasn’t love or anything. At least not romantic love. Not then. It was real, though. Then when she turned eighteenand finally hit her growth spurt, the things I was feeling turned hotter.

She was beautiful. Somehow she’d grown into a beautiful woman. The braces were gone and her smile was unveiled. It was flirty and sweet, even though she had no idea what she was doing with boys. My sisters hadn’t been late bloomers, so all the stuff they figured out when they were fifteen and sixteen Olivia was figuring out as an adult. I’d been so afraid that somebody was going to take advantage of her because of that.

I’d started watching her. From afar of course. Rex was protective, but he was King Kong thump-your-chest protective. If a boy made Olivia cry, he would tell her she was better off without that sort of drama in her life. Then he would threaten the boy with bodily harm if he even looked at Olivia funny.

Rex didn’t see it of course. In his mind, he was just doing what a brother was supposed to do. His parents had drilled it into his head that Vegas was a dangerous city. Women especially could be taken advantage of, and Olivia’s naïveté meant that she was open to be manipulated. Rex was determined to make sure that didn’t happen. What he didn’t see was that I was on board to help.

My sisters being older meant that I was never protective of them. They had each other. Also, I pitied the man who ever wronged one of them because they all joined together as a pack of wild hyenas for retribution. They were clever, vindictive, and more than capable of taking care of themselves. They were all hard edges and snark.

Olivia was different, though. Once, when Rex and I took her to see an Irish dance group when she was nineteen, I’d spent more time watching her than the show. Wonder poured off of her in waves. It was as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, like she’d been stuck in a world with only black and white televisions and now she was finally seeing color for the firsttime. She’d made soft gasping noises that struck a chord inside of me. I was constantly readjusting myself because those gasps were sending zings to a part of me that had never reacted to her before. Or, maybe I had reacted to her that way and simply didn’t realize it.

In that moment, I understood that Olivia had crawled into my heart and taken up space. That corner would always belong to her. Nobody else would be able to inhabit that part of me that was now dedicated to her.

I couldn’t act on those feelings, though. It wasn’t just that Rex was my best friend and I couldn’t fathom the idea of losing him. His parents had become my touchstones, too. When I had a problem that I needed legitimate advice on—whether it be women, work, or just my general wellbeing—I went to them.

Olivia was always there in the background, getting more and more beautiful. She was blossoming without even realizing it.

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