paced my living-room floor.
“Still need your help, Dev.”
I opened my mouth to say, Fuck no, but I couldn’t leave the man on his own to make a double-or-nothing bet his pathetic ass was sure to lose. Didn’t he know that’s what Tex wanted? For Paul to be so in debt that he was bound to Tex permanently? The pair of giants that had worked me over would murder Paul if he couldn’t pay.
My chest tightened, and the breath in my lungs seized when I thought of Paul being harmed. Or worse. Harming himself because he didn’t think there was any other way out. Like my dad. A deep, dark part of me knew that saving Paul wouldn’t balance out losing my dad. But fuck if I wasn’t drawn to help Paul anyway.
Rena’s sweet face popped into my head next. Unless I was trying to be worthy of the good girl. My stomach rolled. No. No fucking way was I trying to be “good enough” for the good girl. She was a preoccupation, a means to an end. That was it. That was all. I sure as shit couldn’t afford to go there.
Yeah? Then why did you tell her there’d be a next time?
Because I wanted her again.
On the drive home from her apartment, I’d tried to push the desire away. Tried to convince myself my need for her was only physical. Didn’t work. Desire was complicated. I needed to keep things simple. I could have her again as long as Rena understood the deal. If she accepted that she was a friend who would come and go. That’s all she was to me.
I ignored the voice in my head suggesting I was full of shit.
“I didn’t give him my bet for the games yet,” Paul interrupted, his voice small.
“Games,” I repeated grimly. “Plural?”
He was a junkie after all. He might not be addicted to cocaine or heroin, but he was an addict all the same.
“I have to, Dev. It’s the only way.”
“It’s not the only way. Pick up some overtime.” Did accountants have overtime? No idea. “Get a second job. Something.”
“The only money I have left is Caden’s college money. I won’t ask him to leave Ridgeway U because I owe some lowlife bookie money! No offense.”
I was too pissed to be offended. Silver-spoon-fed Cade could use a hard knock or two if you asked me. “Going to an overpriced university isn’t at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid.”
“The what?”
“He’ll survive,” I said flatly.
“And the car.” Now Paul was muttering to himself. “I can’t take away his Chrysler. I’m already behind on the payments. What if he finds out I gambled, that I lost my job, that—”
“What?” This was the first I’d heard about job loss. “When?”
A pause, then, “Eight months ago.”
I tipped my head and studied the high ceiling of my apartment. Everything in this place, from the sleek TV to the living room furniture, to the rarely used dining room table and chairs, had been purchased with Sonny’s money. Money I earned at Oak & Sage, sure, but it was tangled up with an agreement—a promise—I’d made to him long ago. And tied with the bow of illegal gambling—the very vice that killed my father.
Money I’d earned from encouraging guys like Paul to go “double or nothing.”
Paul being saved had nothing to do with “saving” my father. Helping him was about evening the score for him doing me a solid when I was eighteen and had nowhere to live. He wasn’t my father. Saving him wouldn’t bring my dad back. Nothing would.
“What do you need me to do?” No tone. My voice had no tone.
Paul’s, on the other hand, sounded like he’d won the purse for betting on the underdog. “Advice. That’s it. The next game is—”
“Stop. I’ll come over.” Doing this over the phone was making me twitchy. I wasn’t sure if I trusted him. But I owed him. If not for the time he’d allowed me to live in his house—with his wife and Cade—then because I was partially responsible for leading him astray.
He was thanking me when I cut him off. I hated the desperation in his voice. “Don’t do anything until I get there.”
I hung up on him and palmed my keys.
Chapter Ten
Rena
Melinda sidled up next to me, her eyebrows pinched. “Most frustrating shift ever. Did you see that old guy at table nineteen? He refused to order. Refused. He literally said, ‘Pick a meal for me.’ So, I did, and then