Chapter 12
Evelyn
Oh my God, he’s here.
Jameson is fucking here.
Liam and Addy have disappeared to get cleaned up after she accidentally spilled a drink on him; Melissa has left to take a phone call; Hailey and Theo are still nowhere to be seen; Connor just stormed out of the booth.
I’m left with only the remaining bachelor party—John and Tyler—who are attempting to flirt with women on the edge of the dance floor and failing pathetically.
In other words, I am alone in this booth, frozen, as Jameson emerges through the crowd toward me. It hasn’t been long since I escaped his hotel room, yet his facial expression is still just as fierce as when I left.
“Do not let that man come anywhere near me!” I hiss to the bouncer guarding our booth, and he body-blocks some poor guy innocently bouncing in sync with the beat drop.
“No, not him. Him!” I point even more manically at Jameson while searching for an escape route in my peripheral vision, but there are none unless I dive over the back of the booth.
“This guy?” the bouncer checks with me as he stretches an arm out in front of Jameson.
“Yes, yes! He’s . . . harassing me,” I lie, and Jameson tilts his head to one side with an incredulous look as I shield myself behind the table of ice buckets. “Please keep him out of here.”
The bouncer hustles Jameson along. “The lady says no, so let’s keep it moving.”
“In that case,” Jameson yells over the music, “I guess I won’t be returning this.”
He holds up a hand, and I spot the thin, fragile chain of my broken bracelet pinched between his thumb and forefinger. I gasp, instinctively stepping forward to reach out for it, but he cruelly pulls it away.
“Funny, isn’t it? You try to steal my jewelry, but instead I end up having yours,” Jameson says with a smirk, pressed up against the outstretched arm of the bouncer.
The strobe lights dance over the emerald of his eyes, making them seem even brighter than they did back in his hotel room.
“Anyway, I just came here to taunt you. Enjoy the rest of your night, Evelyn.” He turns and promptly disappears into the thick of the crowd.
“Hey, hey! Hold up!” I yell after him, ignoring the confusion on the bouncer’s face as I scramble out of the booth and onto the dance floor.
I push through bodies, earn myself some justified cussing from strangers, and follow Jameson out of the club as he slips through the exit. The lines to get into the club are insane now, snaking down the corridor. I race after Jameson as he heads in the direction of the elevators back to the rooms.
“Jameson!” I bellow.
He glances back at me over his shoulder as he walks, then just shakes his head as he continues on.
I speed up, but I’m developing hot spots in these heels after rocking them for too many hours, and I can feel the blisters forming as I trot after him.
Stepping around his body to face him, I bring him to a halt.
First of all, I ask, “How did you know where to find me?”
Jameson flashes me a wicked smirk. He sticks a hand into the pocket of his pants and fishes out a crumpled ball of paper. As he opens it up and smooths out the creases, he reads aloud, “Midnight: check in for bottle service at Marquee,” and I gasp.
He’s holding my copy of the itinerary for the entire weekend—the itinerary that says exactly where I will be every single hour. It must have fallen out of my purse during our scuffle back in his room. Damn Hailey Clark and her fucking itineraries.
“I wasn’t sure if you were really here on a bachelorette party or if you were actually just some professional con artist, roaming the Las Vegas strip in search of your next unsuspecting victim,” Jameson says, tucking the itinerary back into his pocket.
The top few buttons of his shirt are still undone, exposing a sprinkle of dark chest hair.
“But I get it now, all of those double vodkas you insisted on ordering. It’s my fault, really, for believing we were having a good time together. ”
“I’m not a con artist,” I say with an indignant scoff, much to his aggravation. I quickly rearrange my features into a very serious, very apologetic expression. “I’m not a con artist,” I repeat. “I just really, really, really need to make some money.”
“I gave you money,” Jameson reminds me. “Back in the casino. I threw a hundred bucks into your machine, and you turned it into a few hundred more.”
“And that was great! But it’s still not enough.”
“Enough for what?”
I run my fingers through my hair with an exasperated groan.
“Look, I just . . . I’ve been drinking all day, and you sat down next to me at the slot machines, and I saw your watch .
. . And I thought it would fix all of my problems, okay?
I’m sorry. Can I . . .” I suck in a breath, because I fully understand the irony of the question I’m about to dare ask.
“Can I please have my bracelet back? It’s sentimental. ” I hold out my palm hopefully.
“And who says my watch isn’t sentimental to me?” he counters. That’s when I notice his wrist is bare now, the Rolex most likely triple-barricaded into his suite’s safe deposit box to keep it far, far away from anyone’s reach.
“I’m sorry,” I say with a heavy, drunken sigh of frustration. It’s not even frustration at him, at this point. I’m frustrated only at myself for being such a damn idiot, all of the damn time.
Jameson thinks. “I read that you fly home on Monday morning. So do I,” he says, mouth stretching into a sadistic grin. “That means I have another forty-eight hours to screw with you.”
“Screw with me?” I repeat, stepping back in shock.
“I’m here in Vegas to take my mind off something, and I was intending on doing that by losing too much money in the casinos and then drinking enough beer to forget all about it,” he explains, “but I think I’ll keep myself busy with you instead.”
“So you’re . . . What? Just going to follow me around, dangling my bracelet in front of me?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he says, and I gape at him as he pushes past me.
I can’t remember his room number, so if I lose sight of him, then I’ll have no way of finding my bracelet again without waiting for him to seek me out first .
. . Which, by the sounds of things, is what he’s planning on doing.
How am I supposed to explain any of this to the rest of the bachelorette party?
How do I warn them not to be alarmed when some random man keeps on apprehending me over the weekend?
If I tell them the truth, they’d kill me for getting myself into this situation in the first place.
Once again, I chase after Jameson. I slip into the elevator behind him, and he crosses his arms over his chest with a sigh as he leans back against the wall.
“Are you obsessed with me?” he asks coolly.
“Are you obsessed with me?” I fire back. “You’re the one who waited in those crazy lines to get into the club just to come and find me.”
“You shouldn’t have made an enemy out of me, Evelyn.”
My nose scrunches as I glower up at him, like an overly dramatic pouty toddler.
If only he wasn’t so fucking hot, I’d be much more willing to physically fight him for my bracelet .
. . But ugh. I kind of liked him back on the casino floor, but now I will never have the chance to kiss him for real, because I stupidly decided to try and rob him instead of actually getting to know him more.
Abruptly, someone sticks an arm in between the closing elevator doors and the doors ping back open again.
My brother steps into the elevator with Hailey still handcuffed to him, and it’s almost a relief to see them both, to have the protection of familiar faces around me in this elevator.
Almost. Because Jameson is here too, so there is also a beat of panic in my voice.
“Theo! Hailey! Oh my God, where have you guys been?”
I don’t know why, but Hailey looks kind of embarrassed .
. . Then again, Hailey is perpetually shy.
As she presses the button for the forty-ninth floor, she says, “We’ve just been doing some exploring, but I need to .
. . I need to grab something from my room, and then we’re going to join everyone. ”
“Again?” Didn’t they already disappear earlier to grab something from their rooms?
“And where have you been?” Theo asks with a suspicious undertone as he not-so-discreetly looks Jameson up and down.
“In the club,” I say. Not a lie. I was in the club, like he and Hailey should have been.
Theo fixes me with a knowing look, one that’s also full of stern disapproval, and he’s doing that thing again, the same thing Addy always does, where they embrace their older-sibling complex and treat me like a child. “And you’re not in the club right now, why?”
“Hey,” Jameson says, and I glance at him in horror for daring to open his mouth right now, because what the hell is he going to say? “I’m Jameson.”
“And I’m Evie’s brother,” Theo states, like it’s a threat.
“You’re here on the bachelorette party?” Jameson asks, almost teasing.
I will the elevator to ascend through the floors at lightning speed to save me from this conversation. Twenty-three . . . Twenty-four . . .
“No, I’m here on the bachelor party.”
“Oh, you didn’t mention the bachelor party was here too. What a fun weekend!” Jameson says chirpily as he smiles at me, and I sneer back at him. The elevator stops on the forty-first floor and the doors slide open. “Anyway, this is me. I’ll see you guys around, maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Theo says unconvincingly.
As Jameson walks out of the elevator, the three of us wait in silence for the doors to close again, and the moment they do, Theo has something to say, of course.
“Seriously? How old is that guy?”
“What?” I say innocently, widening my eyes.
“Go to bed if you’re so drunk you’re wandering off alone with guys that are way too old for you,” he mutters, and I hold up my hands in faux confusion, looking to Hailey for backup.
“I was not wandering off alone with him. You’re not the only ones who are allowed to run back to their room to grab something. I was on my way to . . . to grab a tampon, okay?”
“Ohhh-kay,” Theo says with a grimace, immediately changing the subject. “Are Addy and Liam having a good night?”
“They were, right up until she spilled her drink down him,” I say with a sigh, because it’s not like Addy to be so clumsy. “They’re off getting cleaned up. Melissa was on the phone somewhere, and the rest of the guys are still in the club.”
Hailey shakes her head in dismay. “I think we may need to just scrap my itinerary for this weekend.”
“Yes,” I say, a bit too quickly, as I somehow manage to resist glaring at her for giving each of us printed copies of it in the first place. “Scrap the itinerary. Let’s make new plans.”
She manages a small laugh, but I can tell she’s kind of disappointed. “It seems we have no choice . . . We’re all scattered all over the place, and I have a feeling this might be the case all weekend.”
Theo nudges his arm against hers and reassuringly says, “I’m sure there are still parts of the plan we can all stick to. Or at least, you girls can stick to, since us guys were never part of the plan in the first place. Don’t worry. All your planning won’t have been for nothing.”
God, Theo is down bad for her. It’s so hard not to roll my eyes right there in front of them.
The elevator reaches our floor and we head down the long corridor toward our rooms. When we reach the two side-by-side doors, we all awkwardly look at each other, and I get the weird sense that I’m not the only one lying about what I’m up to.
“Well . . . See you guys in the club?” I say, scanning my key card.
“Yeah. See you downstairs,” Theo agrees, and as we slip into our rooms, I hear him say, “Hails, we have a problem. I need to pee.”
I snicker. I’m not the only one around here who needs good luck; it’s clear that Hailey needs some too.