Page 32 of All Bets are Off

I release a breath. “Oh. Well, as tempting as that sounds, we’d better get back. Jase is expecting us, and how would we explain the trip taking so long?”

“Yeah, I guess,” West mumbles, switching on the radio, treating me to his version of good music—country. Not my favorite. I decide to take a nap, and the next thing I know, we’re pulling through the gates at the beach house.

“Well, well, well,” Kasey greets us when we walk into the foyer with our bags slung over our shoulders. “If it isn’t Frick and Frack.”

“We’ve missed you to, Kase,” West says, winking at her. I’m already climbing the stairs, eager to unpack.

As I’m about to enter my room, I’m surprised to run into Dex coming out of it.

“Oh, Logan. I was just looking for you,” he says, then goes on to ask me about a specific exercise I’d mentioned to him before West and I left for Raleigh. As he walks down the stairs, I can’t help but feel there was something weird about the encounter. Shrugging, I enter my room and begin unpacking.

Later, when Jase and I go for a run on the beach, I find myself asking, “Did you mention West and I were coming back today to anyone?”

“No. Why?”

“No reason. Just curious.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dex

“Did you find anything?” Anna asks, sounding tense.

“No. And I almost got caught, too,” I say, unable to mask my irritation. Anna’s acting weird. I normally talk to my half-sister no more than a couple of times a year, and now she’s calling me all the time. Ever since she found out I’m working with her ex. I still can’t believe she dated a guy so much older than she is. West seems great, but talk about daddy issues…Anna has got to have some. Actually, knowing her father, it makes sense.

“Who almost caught you? Logan, you mean? Are they back?”

“Yeah. They’re back, and yes. He caught me coming out of his room.”

“What did you say?” she asks.

“That I was looking for him. But if he’d arrived just a few minutes earlier, he would have caught me red-handed, and what the fuck, Anna? I just got this job. I don’t want to lose it!”

“I don’t want you to lose it, either,” Anna says, which mollifies me until she adds, “You’re my link to West. It’s like a gift from fate.”

“It’s been over two years since he broke up with you,” I say, not for the first time. “It’s none of your business what he’s doing. I shouldn’t have listened to you. I wish I never told you he was here.”

“You don’t understand, Dex. You’ve never been in love.”

I want to ask her what she knows about me and love, but I don’t because that could lead to a conversation I don’t want to have with her.

“I didn’t find anything. I didn’t even really know what I was looking for. Maybe if you’d told me—”

“You would have known if you’d seen it,” Anna says.

“Stop being so mysterious. If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m not helping you anymore. In fact—”

“Okay, okay. West and I had something. Something really special. I know it. And then, suddenly, out of the blue…” She pauses dramatically.

“Well?” I ask.

“West told me he was in love with a man.”

Ah. Maybe I should have figured that out.

“I don’t want you to hold it against him,” Anna continues. “I’m sure he was just confused. He and Logan have been friends a long time, and in the Marines and all. Life and death situations can make you really close. I’ve thought a lot about this, and if I only had the chance, I’d talk to West about it. I don’t for a minute think he’s really in love with a man.”

“West told you he’s in love with Logan?” I ask, just to make sure I’m hearing correctly. The comment Jase made the night I arrived at the house—something about how Logan and West would fumble on forever before getting around to fucking—might not have been a joke as I’d first surmised.

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