Page 6 of Gambler's Fallacy

I shake my head, that ugly feeling getting more intense the longer he stays on the phone. “No,” I tell him. “He texts sometimes, but he never really answers calls when he’s around me.” I frown, thinking. “He got a call and stepped out once. I wonder…”

I don’t say my suspicions aloud. As it turns out, I don’t have to.

“He doesn’t have a side piece,” Havoc says with certainty. “He wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Maybe,” I mumble, my shoulders slumping. “I don’t know. I’m… a lot.”

That’s one way of putting it.

I’m a walking train wreck, a disaster, and expecting someone to stick around me feels like too much sometimes. Could I really blame him if he did find someone else?

Though when he’d find the time to be with them, I have no idea since he’s always working or with me.

Vortex concludes the call and walks back over to us. His eyes instantly go to my expression, and he pulls me close, like I’m as easy to read as a book. “My sister,” he explains. “She’s…” He shakes his head. “She’s a handful.”

I wonder if she’s like Emily, who’s smart and pretty and perfect in every way.

“Is she okay?” I ask, determined not to think about my own sister. I should be relieved that Vortex doesn’t have someone else, not hyperfocusing onmyfamily.

Vortex grimaces. “Yeah. She has a habit of getting herself into trouble, that’s all. It’s nothing major.”

Not like Emily, then.Shenever has anything negative to say about her pride and joy.

The one she’d really wanted.

Unlike me.

Havoc lets out a small chuckle. “And here I thought at least one of us didn’t have a messed up family. What is she? A junkie? A gambling addict? Oh, maybe a cam…” He stops himself and shakes his head, and I wonder curiously what he’d been about to say. He doesn’t say it, though, instead going on to suggest, “One of those fake influencers online?”

Vortex’s face flushes red as Havoc runs through thepossibilities of what his sister might be. “No,” he snaps. “And it’s none of your business, even if she was.”

I touch his arm, like he always does to me when I’m getting upset, and tell him, “It’s fine. You don’t need to tell us anything.”

I wish he would, and maybe if Havoc wasn’t there, he’d let me in on the secret. But I know both of them well enough by now to understand that they don’t trust each other. Their fist fight in the bathroom is still vivid in my head, after all, and they haven’t really come that far.

“What, you know all about us, but we don’t get to know anything about you?” Havoc asks. He puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer to himself—and away from Vortex.

Vortex glares at him. “Idon’tknow much about you, actually,” he says frostily, “except for the fact that you can’t keep your temper in check for a whole twenty-four hours.”

“Guys,” I say, but they’re too busy with their bickering to pay attention to me.

“Like you didn’t read the full background check,” Havoc snaps back. “I bet Caleb told you everything, too.”

“No, actually,” Vortex says, “because unlike you, I respect people’s privacy and don’t go digging around.” He lets out a derisive sound. “Do you really think that little of Caleb?”

“Guys!” I say, a little more loudly.

A security guard, clad in a black uniform and wearing a walkie-talkie at his belt, approaches us from one of the big archways. “Sirs! If you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Havoc makes a frustrated sound. “Fine.” He glares at Vortex. “Look what you did.”

“Me?” Vortex starts to say, but one look at the security guard has him swallowing back whatever he’d been about to say. “Sorry, sir,” he tells the man, much more politely than he’d been speaking to Havoc.

“We were just leaving,” I say, my heart racing as I stare at the man. He’s about the same size as Havoc, and I bet that the two of them could take him if they really wanted to.

Not that they’d need to, I tell the paranoid part of my brain that keeps insisting that everyone who even remotely looks threatening is actually going to do anything.

Havoc’s fists stay clenched all the way back to the car. He kicks the tire and shouts, “Fuck!” Then he sighs and looks at me. “Sorry, Seven. We ruined your outing.”

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