Page 22 of Between Never and Forever
I was armed now. Ready to endure whatever I needed to for the sake of my family.
ChapterNine
KEELANI
I toldhim I’d meet him at the slots, and now I regretted that because of course he wasn’t there. Granted, I’d made him wait an hour instead of twenty minutes, but I’d obviously needed to decompress or maybe build up the courage to face him again.
I sat down at the machine. Betting a penny and pulling the lever was supposed to add a bit of a thrill and a little hope. But I didn’t hope at all now. I’d lost more than once tonight and knew I’d lose again and again.
Going up against Dex Hardy would be a colossal mistake too—whatever he wanted to discuss, our conversation was long overdue.
Rightfully so. Our past had ruined us. Ripped our hearts apart and left the destruction for us to clean up. We’d mended ourselves in the only way we knew how. I didn’t text or call him after that last day together in the woods. I tried my best to move on. But when someone breaks a person’s heart, their words echo around them forever.
I don’t love you.He’d said it so easily as I sat in the grass at his feet years ago. And then he’d walked away. I hadn’t moved that night. I’d slept there with the lilacs around me, crying for hours.
Luck hadn’t been on my side then. And it wasn’t now either. I pulled the lever again.
A penny lost.
I pulled it again.
Another penny lost.
I sighed and kept on. I still had twenty bucks to lose before I left for the night.
I’d wait as long as I’d made him wait. But he showed up sooner than I had.
“So, what exactly is this?” I heard from above me, and the rumble in that whisper of his had my heart lurching. Not away from him but toward him, like it was waking up from hibernating away until its long-lost love came back.
“What exactly is what?” I asked without looking up at him. I kept my eyes on the slot machine screen, hoping he would elaborate without my eye contact.
Dex waited in silence, practically forcing my gaze his way. When I scanned his face, I saw he wasn’t looking at me but the ring still on my left finger.
That stupid heart of mine picked up speed and raced much too quickly for what I was used to. It’d been in hibernation for a freaking long time. I was trying to get accustomed to its erratic behavior around the man I was supposed to not care for anymore.
“You think I’m going soft, Kee?” I frowned in confusion. I never said any such thing. “I know I agreed to your presence at the casino for six months.” He’d argued with Dimitri, I knew that. “Yet, you can’t possibly believe I’m going to allow you to accept a proposal here, under my roof, the first night of this fucked-up contract.”
I shook my head and focused on the slot machine in front of me. Another penny lost, another pull on the stupid lever. This time, my eyes filled with real tears and not because I’d lost another damn cent. Dex Hardy’s voice somehow still had a hold on me. He wanted a truth I couldn’t give him right then. He’d wanted the truth for years.
He’d never get it, though, and he’d never forgive me. I’d left him behind even though I’d always looked back, and he’d never known it.
Dex set his drink down slowly on my slot machine and walked up behind me before he bent down so his mouth was close to my ear. Then, he whispered, “You come to my casino, my resort, have your fuckboy of a boyfriend propose on my property. And you’re wearing his ring like it belongs on your finger. Tell me it’s a joke. Say. It.”
Dex had aged beautifully, and his mouth had become much more lethal too. Each word sliced through my flesh and cut me straight to the bone. Still, I chewed my cheek rather than start the war I knew was brewing between us and pulled the lever again.
Another freaking loss.
He grunted out a sound of disgust near my face and said, “You’re doing it wrong.”
I turned to see his forest-green eyes assessing the machine before he pressed a few buttons. He maxed out my bid and pulled the lever as I immediately glared. “That’s too much money!”
As I finished saying it, though, the machine slowed and lit up like a Christmas tree. The earnings flashed on the screen with sirens going off, doubling, tripling, quadrupling the twenty he’d just gambled.
“You know, Kee, without a risk, you don’t get a reward.”
I scoffed and jackhammered my finger into the button that brought my bid back to a penny. “It’s no risk at all when it’s not your money.”
He hummed. “Technically, since I own most of this place, I’m paying you, heartbreaker.”
