Seven Card Stud (Stacked Deck Book 7)

by Emilia Finn

  “And you figure those are things I could give her? Shiny baubles, fancy cars, family money. What’s her ticket price, Will? How much are you selling her for?”

  “I’m not selling her,” he rasps out with desperation coating his every syllable. “Never for sale. But there are certain attributes I can search for in a man she might be interested in. My sister likes the sporty type, the funny kind.” He points at me. “Check and check. She likes tall, she likes dark—”

  “If you call me handsome, we’re gonna have to talk about clichés.”

  “Girls look for what they look for, and she’s old enough now that I can’t say much. I mean… I’m still gonna beat the shit out of whoever she chooses, and that’s if she ever chooses anybody, seeing as she’s firmly uninterested in anything except me and dance. But while she’s daydreaming about handsome and funny, I can run some background shit and check where he comes from. I can filter out the guys who are looking to score, the guys who want to use, rather than help. And I can let guys like you pass through to the next round.”

  “Guys like me?” I lift a brow. “Like me how?”

  “Safe,” he growls. “Secure. Private.”

  “Money.”

  He takes a step back and shakes his head. “Money sure as hell helps. But I wouldn’t hand her over to any rich fucker. All I’m saying is not everything is as obvious as it seems, and maybe Cam isn’t as straightforward as she sounds. She gives you a hard time, turns you down, acts cold, and damn, she’s smart and quick enough to be convincing. But she feels.” He presses a hand to his heart. “She feels deeply. And we’re too close to the poverty line for comfort. Between us, we make the rent. We buy groceries, we do alright. But if shit was to ever go pear-shaped, we’re so close to the edge that, if I fall, she’ll fall too. This is me making sure she has a safety net.”

  “A safety net?”

  “I might not always be around to pay my half of the rent, that’s all I’m saying. Life for the Quinns means lemons. No lemonade.” He takes a step back when I step forward. A dance. An exchange of power. “I’m just doing my best to make sure she’s okay.”

  And then it hits me like a sledgehammer against my heart. “You’re leaving her?”

  His eyes flare wide. “No! Never. Not on purpose, anyway.”

  “You’re leaving her… by accident? Is this like the accidental pickpocketing?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he grits out. “I will not leave my baby sister all alone in this world if I can help it.”

  “But…?”

  He lets out a grieving sigh. “But I’d like to set her up in a way that, should my rental contribution dry up, she’ll be okay.”

  Cam

  Hopes and Dreams Are Too Damn Expensive

  It’s funny how every time I’m in the snow, I rush to get where I’m going; I hurry to get out of the annoying sprinkles like my life depends on it, and then I escape indoors, shake the crap out of my hair, only to sit by a window, open it up, and duck my head back into the freezing sludge because I missed it.

  It's because the snow is whimsical. Romantic.

  Gentle and refreshing.

  I bolted out of the Rollin On Gym much the same way I escape snow after a shift at Mr. Han’s, I ran across town using the GPS in my phone to lead the way, and now here I sit, somehow ridiculously missing the person I ran away from.

  I don’t know Jamie Kincaid. I have no clue who he is deep in his heart and soul. But I do know that, for a girl like me, his attention feels nice. The way he watches me like I hung the moon and the stars, the way his infatuation is utterly impossible, and still, a part of me wishes it could be true.

  It’s all so dreamlike. So perfect and innocent.

  Sleeping Beauty – the fairytale, and the ballet – is so unbelievably romantic, and I’m the little girl who begged for years to go.

  It’s not safe, Bubbles.

  It’s too expensive, Bubbles.

  It’s dudes dancing in tights, Bubbles!

  I wanted to be Beauty, and the life I live now – Mr. Han, Sly’s club, the hole in my kitchen floor – these are all happening while I sleep in a magical trance. But if the story persists, that means my prince will soon come, he’ll kiss me, and I’ll wake into the real world, the world of magic and endless possibilities.

  But perhaps Jamie is my Charming, and the kiss we already shared is now tainted. I liked it — a part of my heart loved it — but then I opened my eyes again, and the world remained the same. The cruelty, the cold, the hunger. It all remained the same.

  I don’t want a prince to save me from my evil fairy godmother. I want to save myself. I insist on saving myself. But having a prince to fight with me, for me, with his back pressed to mine, his sword shiny and sure… it’s a nice dream.

  Something girls like me can’t afford.

  A paper bag rustles to my right, alerting me to someone’s presence as I crouch under the eaves of the Ellie Solomon Dance Academy’s front entrance. My feet are frozen, my thighs long ago stopped burning, and now I’m simply a… lump.

  I’ve spent half an hour studying the insignia on the frosted glass. The pamphlets tacked to the window. The announcement for a December recital for little girls. Now a pair of black and gray Nikes step into my vision.

  I follow the line of sweatpants, thick thighs, a trim waist, and then a hoodie with the famous Rollin On Gym logo plastered across a broad chest. Jamie holds a paper bag in one hand, and a cup tray with to-go coffees in the other.

  When our eyes meet, he flashes a beautiful grin and steals one of mine in return. “You ready for our date yet?” He shakes the bag with the pure intention of being as obnoxious as possible. “Brunch, or jail, Miss Quinn. You agreed.”

  Instead of crying at his threat, or panicking, or running away, I only snicker and drop back to my butt so I can lean against the wall. I pat the concrete beside me, but only once, because the cold hurts my palm like the sting of a thousand bees. “Sit down,” I invite. “Sit close enough to keep me warm, but not so close that you make me worry for my life.”

  He grins and walks closer until his aftershave fills my lungs, and I’m left wondering if this is how the prince from Sleeping Beauty smells. Jamie brings with him frigid air, he fusses and sets his things down, and for the minute it takes him to settle in, goosebumps race along my skin. But then he gets comfortable, his broad shoulder presses to mine, and suddenly, the cold isn’t so bad.

  “Truce?” He turns to me and studies my eyes. “I won’t mention marriage or soulmates or happily ever after until you give me the green light.”

  “Really?” I study his eyes, and secretly love how dogged he is about this. “You give up so easily.”

  He snorts. “Until I forget. And then… well, you’ll have to remind me I said I’d be nice.”

  “Deal. Is that coffee?”

  “Hot chocolate,” he corrects. “You wanted coffee instead?”

  “No, I wanted hot chocolate.” I take one from the cup tray while Jamie rubs his arms to warm up. I grab the second, pass it to him, and smile when he not-so-subtly brushes his fingers over mine when he takes it. “Thank you.”

  “No.” He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth for just a moment and draws my eyes to the movement. “Thank you. And cheers.” He taps his to mine, then sits back to relax and exhales a noisy breath. “I pegged you as a dancer the first moment I saw you.”

  I sip my drink and smile around the lid. “Kinda obvious, if you know what you’re looking at.”

  Reaching for the paper bag, he selects a cheeseburger, and a box of nuggets. Holding them both up in offer, he grins when I accept the burger. “This is our friend’s studio.”

  “Yeah?” I unwrap the burger and groan at the heavenly scent of beef and cheese that was cooked at least an hour ago and left to grow bacteria under the heaters. “Sophia?”

  “Mm. My sister dances here. She has for a few years.”

  “She like it?”

  He nods. “I think
she loves it more than she’ll ever admit.”

  “Why won’t she admit it?”

  “Hmm. My sister is…” He takes a contemplative sip of his hot chocolate, and when he lowers it between his bent legs, I study the side of his face as his lips crinkle up with a smile. “Well, she’s the patron saint of all saints.” He pauses. “Is that a thing?” Then he shrugs. “Bean is selfless, and kind, and giving. She would sit in the snow with no shoes if she knew you needed a pair.” He turns to me. “She’s going to college to become a nurse.”

  “Okay…” I try to think his words through. I search for the hidden meaning, try to guess at the riddle he’s feeding me. “Nursing is the wrong degree?”

  He takes a bite of a second cheeseburger he pulled from the bag. “It’s a logical degree. Because her best friend—”

  “Evie?”

  “No, her other best friend. Her boyfriend. Her…” He bounces his shoulders. “Her lover, I guess. Mac had a heart transplant back when we were kids.” He turns and grins when he notices me watching him. “He’s okay now. But still, it was a big deal to us all, it was life-altering to more people than just him.”

  “Your sister is becoming a nurse so she can take care of him?”

  “Yeah.” He picks his hot chocolate up again and takes a small sip. “She’s the eternal caretaker, so even though nursing isn’t what calls to her heart, it’s what she chose, because that’s who she is.”

  “And what’s the thing that calls to her?”

  He lifts his chin toward the glass doors.

  “My sister and I aren’t a hell of a long way apart in age. Not quite Irish twins, but not far from it, either. Bean has spent her whole life trying to take up as little space as possible. She doesn’t want to rock boats, and she’s naturally shy. Well…” He hesitates. “Shier than Smalls, anyway. But no matter how quiet she is, she can’t quite manage to hide from me what’s in her heart. She wants to be a dancer. Not a nurse, not a fighter, but a dancer.”

  “She’s a really good fighter.”

  He nods. “She is. She’s been wearing gloves since she was born, so it’s natural she’s good at it. But that just proves more who she is. She becomes world-standard at a sport she doesn’t even wanna do. Like, there are people who wish they were even half as good. And it comes so naturally to her, so my family thinks what she wants is obvious.”

  “It’s not?”

  He takes another sip and tucks his legs up so his feet almost touch his butt. “She lives and breathes dancing. The rest… the nursing, the fighting… she does that because that’s what she thinks people want from her. And she’s so used to being selfless, she hasn’t realized yet that she has a voice. She doesn’t have to do things that other people want. Anyway,” he exhales, then shrugs, “she wants to dance, and we just so happen to know Sophia Solomon. My sister is finally doing something she wants, even though she still keeps quiet about it.”

  We sit in silence for a moment, in quiet contemplation as I nibble on my food. “I wish I could dance.”

  Frowning, he turns his head against the brick and studies me. “You don’t? You sure as shit look like you do.”

  “I’ve self-taught from the internet since I was a kid.”

  His lips curve up into a playful smile.

  “Every single day, I would do barre class via YouTube. I found this one chick who uploaded videos. They were old, the picture quality was shit, but the content was solid.”

  “For how long?”

  I shrug. “An hour a day, for seven or so years. It’s not enough time,” I add. “An hour a day isn’t enough.”

  “An hour a day is a lot, ya know?”

  “Your fighters…” I turn and study his chocolate brown eyes. “The folks who just wanna get fit, how much do they train?”

  He takes a bite of his burger. “An hour a day.”

  I nod and turn back to study the studio. “And your contenders. The people who want to make fighting a career. Those who compete at your family’s tournament. How many hours do they train?”

  Understanding my point, he gives a gentle nod. “Six, seven, eight or so hours a day.”

  “Exactly.” I bring my drink up and take a long sip until the warm contents trickle right down into my stomach. “I want to be a professional dancer, but I only put in hobbyist hours. And they weren’t even hours with a real-life instructor in a real-life studio. They were me, in my living room, trying to learn something from a clip on the internet that kept freezing up, because the Wi-Fi we steal is slow and glitchy. I started in a real studio this past year since I last saw you, but it’s not something I get to take for granted.” I set my drink down between my legs and study Jamie’s face. “I scrimp and scrape money together for studio time, all to pay a bitch instructor with a power complex. Crystal was a professional dancer from way back, she busted her knee, gained two hundred pounds, and now she’s bitter and mean.”

  “Sounds like you need to find a new studio.” He nods toward the one in front of us. “Sophia’s knees are perfect. She’s mean, but she’s not bitter. She’s really effing good at what she does. I would know; she took my sister’s dream, and made it a reality. And she did it in one-hour-a-day slots.” He grins. “Hobbyist hours, since my sister is the pro fighter who puts in six hours a day at the gym on top of her schooling.”

  I pull a long, cleansing breath through my chest until it fills my lungs. Then I let it out again and force a small smile. “I’m already bitter,” I admit. “I have zero tolerance for whiners. I’m low on compassion. And a part of me already hates your sister, despite the fact we’ve never met.”

  “Why do you hate her?” He frowns. “She never whines.”

  “Because although I know she works her guts out to get everything done – school, gym, dance – all I can focus on is the fact she has the world at her fingertips. She can have anything she wants, she already has Sophia. And shit, but I’m mad about that.”

  He lets out a soft, breathy laugh and dives back into his bag for chicken nuggets. “I could introduce you and Sophia.”

  “I will not take anything you offer,” I declare in a low, concerted rumble. “I will not owe you a damn thing.”

  “It would literally be as simple as telling her hey when we cross paths in the gym.” He rolls his eyes. “That’s not a favor done. There’s no payment required.”

  “There’s no point,” I press. “I don’t live here, I can’t dance for her, and even if I did, I can’t afford her fees. That’s three strikes.”

  “Or…” He tosses a nugget into his mouth and offers the box with a food-spotted smile. “You live in this town one week a year. So for that week, you could check out her classes. And since you’re not a resident, and therefore, would be a casual studio visitor, lessons are free.”

  My heart pounds at the dream he paints for me. At the excitement, the wonder. To dance at a real studio, with real ballerinas, even if only for a week a year…

  “It would be cruel,” I finally reply. “To offer a starving animal a meal, but only for a week a year. That might be the cruelest thing of all.”

  “So you’d rather starve all year round?”

  I take a chicken nugget from his box and nibble on the fried coating. “You probably can’t relate. But for poor kids, for hungry kids, it’s actually easier to stay hungry than it is to have that one week to gorge. Because when the week is over, that hunger comes back so much worse in comparison.”

  I meet his eyes. “You can’t relate. You’ll never know what I’m talking about. But it’s the truth. Kids like me and Will, we can’t afford hopes and dreams.”

  “My mom and her brother spent their childhoods living between an abusive home, a fort that their friends made, and squatting in my grandpa’s house when they thought no one noticed.” He nods when I turn and meet his eyes. He’s got my attention. “When the abuse was too much, they came to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. But when Grandma and Grandpa asked too many questions, they left again and lived in the
woods. Like genuine wild children who lived on peanut butter and moldy bread. My mom wore diapers until they fell off, then she learned how to squat and pee, and how to do it without getting pee on her feet. My mom and uncle learned how to divide food up so neither of them starved. But apart from the times Uncle Jon snuck in and stole food, they were never truly full.”

  His eyes flicker between mine. “Uncle Jon told me that every Thanksgiving, his best friend, my Uncle Bobby, would plate up this massive serving of turkey and all the trimmings. Stuffing, beans, gravy, potatoes. All of the sides. He said how it was a whole month’s worth of calories on one plate. He said that, every year, in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, he looked forward to the feast coming his way. He salivated at the thought, whimpered as each second ticked on and his belly felt hollow.”

  I press a hand to my stomach and let my eyes drop. I’ve never been truly starving. Not to the point of hollow.

  “But he also said that, though he looked forward to the meal,” Jamie continues. “He dreaded it too.”

  I turn back and meet his eyes. “Why?”

  “Because the day after Thanksgiving, once the calories were consumed, and the plate was licked clean, there would be no more. And shit, that meant he had twelve months to count down for the next one.”

  Setting the box of nuggets down, Jamie reaches across and takes my hand in his so he can slide the tips of his fingers along the lines on my palm. “I wasn’t that hungry kid, Cam. And I will admit that I’ve never known how that feels. But the concept isn’t as foreign to me as you’d think. We still play in the fort Uncle Jon built. The empty peanut butter jars sit in the corners as a kind of monument. The clips from the bags of bread fill the jars. My family isn’t so different from yours. But the difference is, my mom wasn’t as fucking stubborn about it when my dad told her they were gonna marry.”

  “You ass.” I snatch my hand away and hide my sniffle as I turn back to study the studio. “All of that was just so you could break our truce.”