Chapter 8
AMELIA
Ihated driving through New Jersey. Everyone sucked.
Maybe I was just in a mood.
But if I was just in a mood, then it wouldn’t have passed as soon as I crossed into New York. Now, I was just tired.
Driving four to five hours every other day and staying in a cheap hotel every other night was wearing on me.
Just a few more nights.
I had no idea what I would’ve done if I had classes to teach this summer. Joel would have been up a creek without a paddle even more than he already was.
The Connecticut state line was both a reprieve and a sick tease. I was so close to home, yet so far away. Driving through Connecticut took forever.
I curled and flexed my fingers around the steering wheel as I tried to stay awake for the last hour of the drive. By now, I was usually wiped, but the adrenaline hadn’t subsided after running out of the Four Horsemen with my phone and thirty thousand dollars in my bag.
I’d needed to play longer tonight. I was on a winning streak, but something about the tone of Jude’s voice when he cornered me in a supply closet struck fear into my bones.
Maybe it’s because he sounded afraid too.
He wasn’t just telling me to stop playing because he was annoyed I was there. He told me not to touch my drink.
He even said that if I stayed, I wasn’t to touch the drink.
Had someone tried to drug me?
I was around college kids enough to know that it happened way more often than people wanted to admit.
I’d gotten too comfortable. On Monday, I had tried to play at a different casino, but there were too many distractions.
It was too loud. Too many lights and sounds from slot machines.
Too much going on to focus. It was why I had gone back to the Four Horsemen.
I needed to win, and that was where my luck was.
At this point, I would wholeheartedly believe in every superstition in existence if it meant I’d get the money.
I groaned and squeezed the steering wheel. Once I got a few solid hours of sleep, I’d make a new game plan.
After a few nights of playing, I had won a little over forty thousand dollars. Unfortunately, I only had three days left to get the other sixty thousand. Really, it was just two days. I needed time to get the money to Joel so he could give it to the scary boogeyman waiting in the shadows.
Two days. Thirty thousand each.
Technically, I needed more, since I’d be taxed out the wazoo on the winnings, but that was a problem for after getting Joel off a hit list.
If the previous three days were the precedent, I could do this. I could win six figures—so long as I could stay at the table.
Games of blackjack at the Four Horsemen were a sure bet, but the casino itself felt like a risk.
I really needed to find a new spot to play at—maybe hop between a few casinos.
But each casino was different. I couldn’t waste time learning the individual security measures Joel had talked about.
Big casinos with dozens of blackjack tables made it harder to watch and follow the counts.
And if the dealers or security caught on that I was trying to find a hot table to jump into, I’d get kicked out.
Playing at the Four Horsemen was risky, but reward didn’t come without risk.
Blackjack, I had learned, was as much science as it was luck. It was possible to beat the house.
I just had to get in and get out before the house realized it was losing.
I pulled into my apartment complex’s parking lot, cut the engine, and sank into the seat. I was bone-tired and far too exhausted to climb the stairs.
Sixty thousand.
I had about ten grand left in my trust. I didn’t want to touch it—I really wanted to buy a house and get out of apartment living. But if it meant keeping Joel safe, I’d give it to him in a heartbeat.
I let out a long, slow breath, then hopped out of the car and headed up the stairs. In a few hours, early risers across the complex would turn on their lights and get ready for work. And here I was, dragging my feet up the stairs, smelling like liquor and cigarette smoke.
I had no idea how people worked the night shift. I was three days into a nocturnal schedule, and already my sanity was slowly slipping away.
The light in my living room glowed from the small windowpane beside the door. I clutched the bag that held my winnings to my chest and didn’t release the tension in my muscles until I was inside and had flipped the lock and the deadbolt.
Joel wasn’t in the living room. Maybe he had just left the lights on since it was painful to move around the apartment, even on his crutches.
The light glowed from beneath the guest room door that had become his bedroom when he moved in.
I knocked quietly, just in case he was asleep. When there was no answer, I turned the handle and poked my head in.
Joel was sitting at his desk with his back to me. His leg was propped up on a hamper that was overflowing with dirty clothes.
I groaned at the thought of having to do laundry tomorrow, but Joel couldn’t carry the hamper to the washing machine. Still, I had been doing his laundry even before some psychopath had bashed his knee in.
He was wearing headphones, bobbing along to music only he could hear.
That’s when I noticed what was on his screen.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I spat out as my vision went blood red.
Joel looked over his shoulder and ripped his headphones off. “Mia—”
I held out a hand, as if he was charging at me and I was trying to stop him. Really, I was trying to stop myself from killing him. “I’m out here busting my ass and almost getting roofied, and you’re in here gambling away the money that’s supposed to get you out of this?” I shouted.
He reached for his crutches. “You got drugged?”
“Don’t change the subject!”
“Mia!” he said as he tapped a button and darkened his computer screen.
I stormed over, tapped the same button to turn the screen back on, and studied the betting site he was quickly losing money to.
My hands trembled as I tried to curb my temper, but I was irate.
“I have driven thirty hours back and forth. I have stayed in the shittiest hotels. I almost got drugged tonight. And somehow, you have the audacity to do anything other than kiss my fucking feet for sticking my neck out for you, when you got yourself into this mess!”
Joel groaned into his hands. “I’m trying to help. I figured I could win a little to add to what you’re doing.”
“You’re losing,” I yelled. “Badly. You’re impulsive, irresponsible, and emotional. And you suck at gambling. I’m trying my best to keep your other kneecap in the state that it is right now—or to keep something worse from happening—and you’re throwing it all away!”
I was shaking. I wanted to grab my keys, take all the cash, storm out, and leave him to face the consequences of his actions.
“You’re not supposed to be doing anything but sitting in bed, thinking about what you’ve done,” I snapped.
“Easy for you to say!”
“Don’t you dare turn this on me,” I seethed.
Suddenly, the smell of cigarette smoke and liquor, the haze of neon lights and ever-changing card numbers called to me like a siren.
So. This is how addictions began.
I’d never had addictive tendencies, but right now, I wanted the reprieve of nothing mattering except for getting to twenty-one.
I wanted Jude glaring at me from across the room.
I wanted the constant dance between the running count and the true count.
I wanted to go back in that closet with him . . .
I tucked my bag under my arm and pressed my fingers into my tear ducts as I tried to ward away the migraine that couldn’t be solved by anything other than this nightmare being over.
Losing my shit on Joel would only delay my ability to crawl into bed. Instead, I took long strides across his cesspool of a bedroom, yanked every cord out of the back of his desktop monitor, and hauled it off his desk.
“Hey!” he shouted.
Good thing he was too injured to chase me. I stuck the computer in my room, then went back for his laptop. Frankly, I should have taken his phone too, but I didn’t want to leave him without a way to call for help if something happened while I was gone.
“What am I supposed to do while you’re out partying?” Joel whined, as if he was a child and not a grown man.
“Partying?” I shouted as I cut back through the living room. “You think I’m out partying instead of jumping into your mess to get you out of it?”
Ever since our parents died right before Joel and I turned twenty-one, the four minutes between his birth time and mine grew larger and larger.
We were already adults. We should’ve had our lives together.
Instead of being Joel’s twin—instead of being his partner in crime—I became responsible for him. And he was more than happy to let me bear it while he floated through life, easy breezy.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Joel muttered.
“Yes, you did,” I hissed.
His head hung low. I knew he was frustrated. Deep down, Joel was a good person—he truly was. But somehow, he had lost sight of that. I had been too busy with my own life and career to see that he was in over his head.
I should have known. Should have paid closer attention. Asked more questions. Pushed harder. Stepped in sooner.
I shouldn’t have taken the extra workload this semester.
And I shouldn’t have gone back to the Four Horsemen tonight.
Without a word, I slipped into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and got ready for bed.
There were a few of those regrets I had learned from. But returning to the Four Horsemen would be a lesson I’d have to learn twice.