Game of Hearts (Stacked Deck Book 3)

by Emilia Finn

  “Please stop,” I cry. “You don’t have to do this.”

  When Daddy says nothing, Mac pries my hand from his own. He has to fold my fingers back, peel my hand away.

  “Mac! Stop.”

  “I’ll just be at home.” He steps closer so his words are only for us. “I’ll always be close, I promise. Go inside, talk it out with your dad. Then I’ll come for you when you want me to.”

  “You will not come for her!” Daddy races forward a half a dozen steps to stop at the top of the porch. “You will not come for her! You will never have her. Because she’s mine. She’s fucking mine, and you lost her when you let her strip for men.” His face contorts with disgust. “What kind of man does that, Mac? What kind of man will stand around and watch the woman he claims to love dance for money?”

  “Daddy, it wasn’t like that!”

  “I let her dance,” Mac says quietly. “I did, I let her. Because it’s what she wants to do. And of all the people in her life, of all of the ears that could listen, I make a point of being the one that hears her, even when she’s not speaking.”

  “Get off my property!”

  “Jim.” Uncle Bobby races across the lawn, blows past me, and stops in front of his brother. “You need to cool it.”

  “Kinda feels like déjà vu, huh?” Daddy thrusts a hand toward me and Mac. Toward me, specifically? “We’ve done this before. I lose out every fucking time.”

  “You didn’t lose. She’s right there. She’s safe.”

  “Come on.” Ben places his hand on Mac’s shoulder and pulls him back a step. Two steps. Three.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I cry. I look back to Daddy. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for the things I said at the gym. I’m sorry for disappointing you. But this isn’t Mac’s fault.”

  “No, you’re right.” Daddy pushes Uncle Bobby’s hands away. “It’s not his fault. But he still knew, he still let it happen. And I’ll be fucked if I trust my little girl to a guy so fucking cavalier about your safety and self-respect. You can do better.” He looks to Mac. “Last chance, kid. Get the fuck off my property. Don’t come back.”

  “I’ll go.” Mac lifts his hands in surrender. Walks backwards as Ben steers him toward the car. He looks to me. “Fix it. Stop crying and fix it.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “I’ll be around.” He smiles. It’s forced and fake and a horrible effort to comfort me. “I’ve always been around. Go inside, Luce. Get out of the cold.”

  “Ben?”

  Ben nods. “I’ll stay with him. I got it.”

  Smalls breaks away from Ben, lets him take Mac away, and joins ranks with me as I step toward the stairs. Ben gets Mac into his car, climbs into the passenger seat, instead of following him out in his truck. The loud engine starts, roars, and in the otherwise silence, Mac backs his car away from my home, from my family, and heads through the gates.

  As soon as he’s gone, and the engine, while it can still be heard, grows quieter and quieter the further he drives away, Smalls tucks her arm in mine, her show of solidarity, and brings me up a step.

  “I’m so sorry, Daddy.” My hands shake as we move up the steps. “This has all been blown way out of proportion. It’s just dancing. And then—”

  “You sold your body,” he snaps. “You gave away your dignity, and then you implied I never loved you enough.” For the first time in… ever, tears fill my dad’s chocolate eyes. “I worked so fucking hard to make sure you knew I loved you. I wanted so much for you to never feel left out. But you harbored these feelings that no one knows about. You hated me in secret, and kept it all bottled up so fucking long that I get no chance to make it better.”

  “I don’t hate you,” I sob. “I never hated you. I could never. Please, just…” I let Smalls go and bound up the stairs. I open my arms, intend to wrap them around his hips and cling to him until he accepts my apology.

  But for the first time in my life, he sidesteps me. Bats my hands away. And throws his up in exasperation. “I can’t.”

  He shakes his head and turns toward the front door. He passes my mom, and wipes a hand over his cheek.

  “Jim, stop.”

  “I can’t right now. I can’t…” He shakes his head. “I just need a minute alone.”

  “Oh god. Oh god. Oh my god.” I press a hand to my chest and try to breathe through what I’m certain might be death. But when the front door slams closed so hard that I could swear the whole house rattles, I spin, breathless, and sit on the steps halfway up to the porch. “Oh god.”

  “It’s gonna be okay.” Smalls sits beside me. She sits so close that we touch from ankle to head, then wraps her arms around mine, and rests against me. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  “I can’t make it better. I can’t…” I shake my head. “God, the way he looked at me.”

  “It’ll be okay, honey.” Uncle Bobby moves down the steps, only to kneel in front of us and peer up into my eyes. He draws in a deep breath and casts a look around to our crowd. He stops on Brooke first, his oldest daughter. Then his eyes come back to me. “He needs a minute, but you know he’ll be back soon. He’ll give you that hug.”

  “Oh god.” I burst into loud, keening sobs that bring my shoulders in until my chest almost feels like it might collapse. “He didn’t hug me. He refused. He hates me.”

  “He does not hate you!” Uncle Jon moves closer, gently pushes Uncle Bobby aside and draws me up until I’m standing on the step above his. He pulls me into a hug so tight that I can almost believe everything will be okay. “He does not hate you, baby, so get that bullshit out of your head right now.”

  “I was a mistake,” I cry. “I wasn’t supposed to be here. Mom was never supposed to know Ben’s dad. It was always supposed to be Iz and Jimmy, and it would have been if not for me. Now he’s inside, and I made him cry.” I press my face to Jon’s chest and sob. “God, I made him cry.”

  “I cried too.” He holds me so close. So unbelievably close. “When your mom told me she was having you. I cried. I guess I can relate a little to how your dad feels right now, because we give our everything, our absolute everything to raise you guys. We sacrifice everything, and sometimes, something happens. The plan goes square-shaped. And that hurts for a second. I cried when your mom told me. I was mean to her for a second. But I swear, I didn’t mean it. I just needed a second to adjust.”

  He lets out a sigh. “That’s all your dad is doing right now. He got a shock, it hurt him, and now he’s taking a minute to adjust. Soon, he’ll be back in your face, begging for your attention. I swear he will.”

  Except that was a lie, because my daddy didn’t come outside looking for me.

  After an hour of sitting in the cold in silent vigil, waiting for him to take that minute, we all got up, and made our way inside. He sat on the couch, blindly watching an old movie, and when I wrung my hands and made my way over to him – thinking perhaps I could climb into his lap like I used to when I was little – he got up again and walked away. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t acknowledge me. He merely tossed the remote aside, got up, sidestepped me again, and left.

  The next day, he wasn’t at the kitchen table for breakfast. Or for dinner.

  “He’s still not talking to me.” I lay in Mac’s bed now, Wednesday night, just two days before the first day of Stacked Deck. We’re mostly naked, though what we’re doing isn’t sexual. I lay with my head on his shoulder, my fingertip running the length of his fading scar, and ignore the tears that dribble along the bridge of my nose.

  I don’t think I’ve stopped crying in days.

  “He doesn’t wanna know me anymore. I hurt him too much.”

  “He needs ti—”

  “Yeah, time.” I roll my eyes. “That’s what everyone says. Give him time, give him more time, don’t worry about your own hurt feelings, because his are more important.”

  I sigh and twine my legs with his. “I’m so sad, Mac. So truly, deeply sad. But my mad is coming along too.
Because maybe I hurt him, but he hurt me too. But it’s the same as always, ya know? I have to push aside my own feelings, and cater to everyone else’s. It’s always been like that, because I was too much of a coward to speak up. Then I did speak up, and look what happened. He’s mad at me, and my feelings are still being shoved to the side. At this point, I could probably move out, and he wouldn’t notice. I could fight on Friday, maybe end up with a concussion and a busted face, and he’d shrug his shoulders and walk away.”

  “That’s not true.” Even without looking at Mac’s face, I sense his disapproval. “You know that’s not true. Only someone who cares as deeply as he does could feel this hurt. If he didn’t care, then he wouldn’t care… right?”

  “Shut up with the logic,” I grumble. “It’s annoying.”

  His chest bounces with soft laughter.

  “Plus, why are you standing up for him? He’s pretending you don’t exist too.”

  “He’s my girlfriend’s father. Eventually, I’ll have to ask his permission to marry you.” I feel his smile as he presses a kiss to the top of my head. “He’s mad right now, but he isn’t usually. He has a massive fucking hard-on of hate going for me right now, but before this, he was my trainer, my mentor… my friend. One bad day doesn’t change that.”

  “You’re so forgiving.” I sigh. “He’s breaking my heart, Mac. He’s truly breaking me in ways I’m not sure I’ll be able to recover from.”

  His hand comes around my face, down to cup my chin, then lifts it so he can look into my eyes. “How about I love you enough for now, I can hold you together and mend some of your hurts. And when he’s ready to come back, he can take over?”

  “Mac…”

  He presses a kiss to my lips, to my cheek to collect falling tears. “Let my love be enough for today. We’ll deal with tomorrow when it gets here.”

  Mac

  Stacked Deck

  “I can’t believe she bet on me.” I sit at the Checkmate office just hours before I’m set to step into the octagon and try to work my way toward a title. Three days of back-to-back fighting. Three days of doing my fucking best and hoping I don’t screw it all up… again.

  The silver lining to this bullshit with Jimmy Kincaid, I suppose, is the fact that for once, I get to be Lucy’s support. I get to hold her up when she feels like she can’t stand on her own. I get to be her legs when she can’t walk, and her heart when she feels like hers might explode from pain. Concentrating on her means I haven’t had time to concentrate on my own troubles.

  We’ve trained at the gym all week, business as usual. But I’ve caught her sneaking out for an hour here and there… to dance. Lucy is at her most vulnerable right now, and though she has me, and she has fighting, she’s missing two very important elements in her life: dance and her daddy. One, she can’t control. But the other, dance, she kind of can.

  So when she thinks no one notices, she sneaks out and makes her way to the studio, and in secret, I watch her move to the music, all alone. The dance she choreographed, the one she says she intends to showcase next year. Jay-Z and Linkin Park are her only companions while she moves, and the one or two times Soph has walked through and caught me watching, she’s backed away without a single word muttered.

  Yes, I have to fight today, but here I am anyway, sitting at Checkmate and shaking my head as Eric and Spence sit across from me. “She bet on me, ten thousand fucking dollars, and she lost because I had a panic attack on the canvas.” I meet my stepfather’s eyes. “It would almost be better if I lost to a knockout. Put me all the way out, send me to sleep, and snatch that fucking belt like a true legend. But it’s almost like Iowa wasn’t my opponent that day. I was. My own head, my heart… I psyched myself out, gassed out, and tapped. And because of it, I cost her a fuck ton of money, and her relationship with her dad.”

  “Well… now you know better.” Eric sips his coffee and discreetly runs an appraising eye along my body. He’s trying to not be obvious about it, but he’s making sure I’m ready for today. Everyone is on notice for the tournament; we might be at the office right now, but Eric will be at the venue before I step onto the canvas. Mom will be there. All of the people I consider family, they’ll all be there to make sure I don’t die. “You know where it went wrong last year, so this year, you do better.”

  “I’ve gotten better.” I meet his eyes. “I don’t mean my fitness. I mean my head. All of that shit about making bank, about giving Lucy the lifestyle she deserves…” I shake my head. “She doesn’t need it. Her family crawled out of a fucking fort in the woods. No food, no heat. Just body warmth, a beanbag, and a blanket for a door. And before that, the Kincaids literally lived in the apartment I’m in now.” I sigh. “I forgot about that. She’s not the princess on a pedestal I make her out to be. She just wants me. She doesn’t give a shit about riches and fame.”

  “Took you long enough to figure it out.” Soph meanders into the office with a protein bar in her hand, wrapper torn open, and the bar half gone. “Jesus Christ, kid. I’ve been trying to tell you for a year that you were wrong, but would you listen?” She sits on the edge of Spence’s desk and shakes her head. “Stupidest man I know, and I know a lot of them.”

  “Whatever. I’ve gotta get moving anyway.” I drop my hands into my pockets in search of keys. “I’ll see you guys in a few. Don’t be weird and nervous; it’ll psych me out.”

  “So you’re saying we should cheer for the other guy?” Spence’s eyes sparkle with laughter. “Because I can get on board with that.”

  “Do whatever makes you hard, Spencer. I’ll still be the guy holding the belt at the end of the weekend.” I grab my keys and turn away. “See you in a bit.”

  “I wonder…” Soph begins in that way she does. She goes for the mysterious, the puzzling, and captivates her audience on purpose. But I’m too busy to play games.

  “I have to get to the venue, so you can wonder with Eric and Spence.”

  “Did you know Lucy had a showcase tomorrow night?”

  That brings me up short, and when I turn, I find Soph’s victorious grin.

  “She would have the stage, the lights, the music. She would have the audience, the applause.”

  “She told me about it a while ago. Months ago.” I frown. “She said she had something for dance, and wanted the tournament dates to be moved, but Smalls said no dice.”

  “Did she tell Smalls why she wanted the tournament moved?”

  I shake my head. “She kept it on the downlow. Asked if the dates were set in stone, and when Smalls confirmed, she shrugged it off and went on with her life. She said she’ll dance again next year. Maybe showcase that thing she choreographed.”

  “Did you know I told her she should still do it, and blow off the tournament?”

  I scoff. “She would never. She’s the martyr. Her cousin needs her at Stacked Deck, so that’s what she’s doing.”

  Eric rolls his eyes. “Not surprised.”

  “So, what if I told you that her commitment to the tournament has nothing to do with Smalls, and everything to do with…” She lifts a brow. Points.

  “Me? I… she…” I pause. “Huh?”

  She pushes off the desk to slowly wander forward. “She’s the martyr, remember? Smalls doesn’t need her at that tournament, it goes ahead with or without her. But you need her. You can’t go ahead without her.”

  I stumble back a step. Press a hand to my chest. “She… for me? She called off her dance thing because of me?”

  She nods. “You act surprised. Like her complete devotion and selflessness is out of character. You need to win, you need to avenge your loss, your heart, your whole fucking life. And you need her right there with you, or you psych yourself out. She would never make you step up without her, and she would never ask you not to fight.”

  “She’s been training me,” I murmur. “Every single day, she works with me. She’s worked out my diet, my exact workout regime. She’s got me adding bulk, protecting my heart, getting stronger.�
�� I meet Soph’s eyes. “And all along, she had her own thing?”

  “And it’s not just a little thing.” Soph hammers her point home. “But a massive thing. The kind of thing that only comes around once in a lifetime. There are people watching her, Blair. People who wanna see her dance. Dance troops from all over the world wanna see her. They watch her on YouTube, see her choreography, and I swear, they wanna meet her.”

  “She never told me… A YouTube channel?”

  “Well…” she laughs. “In her defense, she doesn’t know about that. But she has her own channel, she has millions of followers. She has fans, and not just in the fight world anymore. She’s a big fucking deal. And it has nothing to do with her name or her family, and everything to do with her talent. Some of these people knew there was a show this week, so they asked that she be there. I told her to be there. And she told me she can’t. ‘Mac needs me, I refuse to not be there for him.’”

  “For me. She’s giving it up for me?” Just like the day my heart gave out, my eyes seek family. I look to Eric, feel the deep, painful thump in my chest. But no, I’m not dying today. It just feels like it.

  “Let’s just…” My stepdad stands and shoots a scowl at Soph. “Let’s just chill for a second. The tournament is happening, the showcase is not. So how about we focus on what we’re supposed to focus on, and stop messing with his fuckin’ head?”

  “I just feel it’s important he knew. She was never going to say, so I am.”

  “Why?” Eric snaps. “What’s the point of telling him now, hours from his fight, when there ain’t a damn thing he can do about it?”

  She shrugs. Coldly. Callously. “I never said nothing can be done. I was just giving you the background.”

  “You’re a fuckin’ asshole,” Eric growls. “Swear to god, ballerina. You’re gonna get yourself shot one of these days.”

  She scoffs. “I’ve been shot. It was… anticlimactic.” She looks to me. “I always have a plan. I always have a backup plan. And I so rarely listen when people tell me no.”