“I’m about ready to head inside and grab a sandwich. Y’all hungry?” Max asks.
“We just ate,” I say, thinking back to the huge buffet Cane and I had for breakfast. “Or it feels that way, anyway.”
“I could eat again,” Cane says.
Kari looks at me, her eyes shining, and I know I’m in trouble. “I’m not hungry either, so let’s go shopping!”
“Yeah! Let’s do my least favorite thing ever on vacation!” The annoyance is apparent in my tone and I flop back in my chair.
“Well, it’s my vacation, too, and I wanna go shopping. Just come with me. Please. Otherwise, I’ll have to make Max go and he’s less fun than you, if you can believe that.”
“It’s the only thing you don’t enjoy with me,” he winks.
“True,” Kari sighs dreamily. “I’d love to partake in the more fun things with you . . . After shopping.”
Kari looks at me intently. I roll my eyes. I don’t want to go with her now or later.
“Jada,” Max begs, “do me a favor and go with her. I love her, but shopping with her makes me want to kill her.”
“See? It’ll make everyone happy!”
“Everyone but me!”
“It won’t kill you,” Kari says, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s sister bonding. Just go. Please.”
“All right. But not all day, Kari. Just for a little while.”
Cane leans across the space dividing us and kisses me. “Buy yourself something, okay?”
I groan.
“I mean it. Make sure she buys herself some stuff, Kari.”
“You mean, make sure she spends your money? Got it.”
“I knew you were good for something,” Cane grins.
Max pulls Kari into his side and kisses her forehead. “She’s good for a lot of things.”
“Keep it up, Quinn,” Kari purrs. She runs her hands over the tattoos dotting Max’s body. “Or you’ll not be having a sandwich for lunch.”
“Sandwiches taste better after sex anyway.”
“Let’s go on up to the room,” Kari croons. “I’ll make sure that sandwich tastes fantastic . . . a couple of hours from now.”
“No,” Cane says, standing. “You two can fuck like rabbits later. We’re going to lunch.”
“I’ve lost my appetite,” Max says, nipping at Kari’s bottom lip.
“Too bad. I’m starving.”
“I’m sure you fuckin’ are,” Max groans.
“I am,” Cane says, glaring at him. “And you’re fuckin’ hungry too. Remember, asshole?”
Max shakes his head and pulls his black Saints cap over his head. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s go eat.”
“That’s what I thought,” Cane says.
“This is gonna be the longest damn weekend of my life,” Max mutters.
I stand and put on my cover-up. I’m not looking forward to shopping, but I can tell Cane and Max have plans and I don’t want to get in the way. “Let’s get this over with,” I say to my sister.
Kari kisses Max before grabbing my bag off the ground. “Way to start this with enthusiasm, Jada. Love it.”
“I try.”
“Have fun,” Cane calls as I follow Kari out of the pool area.
“See you soon.”
JADA
“I don’t need more swimsuits!” I exclaim as Kari thrusts an orange bikini and a yellow one-piece with the sides cut out into my arms. I try to balance them on top of the sundresses she’s burdened me with. “Seriously, Kari. I’m not buying these.”
“Oh, you are. Try them on first, though.”
“Why? I don’t need any of this!”
“Because,” she says, adding a white sundress to the stack. “Cane instructed me to make sure you spent his money. He knows how I like to shop, so I’m taking it as he wants you to make a dent in his credit card. And I,” she says, tossing on a dark purple tank top, “am not one to disappoint.”
“Since when?”
“Since now!” She shoves me into the dressing room. “Pick a door. Any door!” She stretches her hands out to the side and I do as instructed.
I try on everything. Kari, of course, loves it all. Before I know what’s happening, I’m watching her deposit the entire load onto the counter beside the cash register.
“This is ridiculous!” I say, forking over Cane’s credit card. The lady hands it back to me after swiping it and Kari picks up my bags.
“No, it’s sweet.” She flounces out of the store and I follow, still not sure how I got talked into this.
“You didn’t even get anything!”
“Yeah. That purple tank top is mine. If it fits you, it’ll fit me.”
We enter the parking lot, find our rental car, and climb inside.
“Why does shopping exhaust me so much?” I ask, reclining back in the passenger seat. “I seriously feel like I’ve just ran a marathon.”
Kari laughs and starts the car. “Because you’re lame?”
“Funny.” I watch the city fly by as we make our way back to the hotel. “Want to tell me why we really just spent a few thousand of Cane’s hard earned dollars on things I don’t need?’
“Because you need them?”
“Seriously, Kari. I’m not stupid.”
“Because he wants to make you happy?”
I roll my eyes. “He knows this stuff doesn’t make me happy. Try again.”
“Because he doesn’t work very hard for his money?”
“Not true.”
“Because you look amazing in that stuff and that’ll make him happy?”
She bites her lip, her dark hair pulled into a messy bun on the top of her head. I can tell by the way she keeps re-gripping the wheel that something’s bothering her.
“I’ll take the last one just so we can switch topics.”
“To what?”
“To . . . what’s wrong with you?”
She releases a quick breath and glances at me out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t expect me to catch on, but I know her better than anyone. Something is definitely on her mind.
“Nothing,” she grumbles.
“You lie. You have that same look on your face you’d get when Dad would ask if you ate all of your broccoli. You’d say yes but we both knew you’d fed it to Snoopy under the table.”
A grin touches her lips. “It’s just . . . I don’t know what to do about Max.”
I turn to the side and watch her fidget in her seat. I’ve never been able to figure out their relationship. They seem completely together at one moment and then like they tiptoe around each other the next. It’s confusing to me, so I’m sure it has to be confusing to her.
“Because . . .”
“I just . . .” She sighs and smiles sadly at me. “I really like him.”
“I know you do. What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything.”
“Um . . . Care to develop that sentence a bit more?”
She laughs half-heartedly. “He wants everything. He wants what you and Cane have.”
“Yeah, don’t you?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. If I did, it would be with him, no doubt. He’s pretty perfect, you know.”
“I do,” I laugh. “I get Max. But I still don’t get you.”
“I don’t get me either.”
We pull into the parking garage of the hotel and she finds a spot. We grab the bags and head to the elevator. We’re silent as we enter the elevator to our rooms. I know she’s thinking about our conversation. I want to press the issue, but I don’t. I know some things you have to figure out yourself and relationships are one of them. As much as I want her with Max, if she doesn’t want to be, then she shouldn’t be. That’s for her to decide.
The elevator dings and we step out.
“What are your plans for this evening?” I ask, sticking my room card in and pushing the door part way open. I look at her doing the same thing to the room next door.
“I’ll call you. I believe bes
ides spending his money, Cane also told Max and me to fuck like rabbits later. I told you I’m not one to disappoint.”
I shake my head and sit my bags on the floor inside. “Have fun.”
“Always,” she says with a sparkle in her eye. “If there’s one thing I have figured out in life, it’s how to have fun.” She winks before disappearing inside.
CANE
The restaurant inside the hotel is busy, people darting in and out, the staff trying to keep up. The food was good, not great, but the service has been attentive.
The waitress makes her way to us. Tall, blonde, wicked green eyes, huge tits that are on display in a low-cut, tight top . . . our waitress is definitely an 8.5 on a 10-scale. A year ago, I would’ve been all over that. Or she would’ve been all over me, more likely, and I would’ve taken her up on her offer. These are the easy pieces, the ones you don’t even have to work for. Today, however, I have zero interest.
I take a swig of my beer and watch her approach. I try to gauge my response, try to see if there’s still something inside me that wants to fuck her sideways.
I wait for my dick to twitch. With each bounce of her round breasts, I wait for the indication from my body that it wants to release. In hers.
It doesn’t.
Not one fucking part of me reacts. And while this normally would’ve been a concerning reaction, I couldn’t be fucking happier about it.
She catches my eye and smiles, fluttering her lashes. I’ve seen this look a million times. It says, ‘if you wanna fuck, I’ll fuck.’ Instead of smirking like usual, patting myself on the back for not even having to try to get her attention, I look away. She huffs, but not before trying the same thing on Max.
I actually laugh out loud. There’s zero chance of me banging this chick, but with that being said, there’s less of a chance than that of Max doing it. I have loyalty. He has loyalty and morals.
“Can I get you guys anything else?” She holds our plates so her tits squeeze together, the tops rounding above the neckline of her shirt.
“I don’t need anything,” I smile, nodding to Max. “What about you?”
“Nah, I’m good. Thank ya though.”
I’ve always considered predictability a bad trait—boring, monotonous. But the longer I live, the more I’m starting to appreciate it. Sure, I still like being spontaneous. We are in fucking Vegas. But there’s a level of comfort, a feeling of being able to let your defenses down when you know how someone’s going to react to a situation. I always know how Max will react to things.
I just wish I knew how other people would react to certain things . . .
“Wanna bring us the check?” I ask the waitress. She nods and flaunts off, swinging her hips for my benefit. “You about ready?”
“I wanna finish this beer first,” Max says, taking a sip from the bottle in his hand. “So, you ready for everything?”
“Yeah. We’ve got everything nailed down, I think. Can you think of anything we overlooked? You made a schedule and a bid list and everything for this, right?”
“Yeah, I’ve approached this like any other project we’ve been on. We have a schedule, contracts, the whole shebang,” he laughs. “I think everything is covered, but it’s not like I’ve done this before.”
“Yeah, well, this may be your practice round, but that doesn’t mean you can fuck it up.”
“I won’t.”
We exchange a look and I know he won’t. It’s Max, after all. He’s predictable. What’s important to those he cares about is important to him. And he doesn’t want me to kill him. That helps, I’m sure.
There’s a comfortable silence between us, the product of a friendship that’s spanned years. He’s seen me at my best and my worst, helped me make decisions, helped me bury my father. We’ve loved some of the same people, lost some of the same friends. Looking at what my life is now and what it’s going to become, he’s the only consistent part of my life both pre and post-Jada.
“Who would’ve thought I’d be getting married before you? Man, life’s fucked up,” I say.
“It is.” He watches the television above my head. His jaw tenses and the vein at his temple pulses.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re acting strange.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m fucking serious, Max. What’s up?”
He sighs and sits the bottle on the table, peeling the label back. He thinks about what he’s going to say. “Kari and I were watching television last night and a commercial came on about a wedding package or some shit. I made a comment about getting married. I wasn’t even insinuating that we should get married here because you know I wouldn’t do that. I was just talking in general and she completely balked. She put that wall up of hers and changed the subject.”
“You’ve said that before. She doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Yeah, man, she doesn’t. If she just would say, ‘I don’t wanna get married right now,’ I’d be okay with it. But she won’t even say that. She just gets pissed off or walks out of the room. And being here is making her even weirder about it. Like she expects me to drive her to a chapel and make her marry me.”
“Maybe you should,” I laugh. “It’d take the pressure off.”
“Yeah. She’d have my balls faster than I could blink.”
“What do you think is her problem? I don’t get it. She’s all crazy about helping Jada and I get ours together. And you want to get married.”
He shrugs and I feel sorry for him. He’s a great guy. There’s no reason Max Quinn shouldn’t be married and having babies, except for the fact that the one girl he wants doesn’t want either thing. It sucks.
“We’ve all had time to run around, play the field. I don’t get what her hang-up is. She obviously loves you.”
“I don’t know. I can’t figure it out to save my soul.”
“So, what do you do? I mean, do you just stick it out with her and hope she comes around? Or do you just call it quits and find someone that requires less work?”
He shrugs again. “I don’t know, Alexander. I love her. I love her more than anything, you know that. But I feel like I can’t make any progress with her because I don’t understand her. And she won’t let me in far enough to figure it out.”
“Well,” I say, climbing out of the booth. “I, for one, am totally for the white chapel shit. I’ll drive you there myself.”
“I bet you would,” he says, tossing a twenty dollar bill on the table. “You’d love to see her kill me.”
“Kari’s a good girl. If you don’t lock her up quick, you might get stuck with something like that.” I grin and nod towards the waitress coming back our way. “She’d be a good piece of ass.”
Max quirks a brow, not wanting to encourage me to continue.
Too late.
“You might want to try that out since you’re so unsure about what you’re gonna do with Kari. Sampling the goods never hurt anybody.” I smile, trying to gauge his reaction. I want to rile him up just a bit. “Hell, she might be down at the pool right now getting some—”
“Shut your mouth, Cane. I’m not fucking kidding.”
I roar with laughter. “Now we’re getting somewhere!”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“It’s been said before.”
JADA
The casino is bursting with people. There’s so much to see and do that it’s hard to focus. I have no idea how people pay attention to the games enough to win anything. Everything is one giant distraction.
The guys played in a poker tournament earlier this evening. Kari and I had a late lunch at a little bistro in the hotel and then played slots while our boys finished up. Cane was eliminated in the fourth round and Max made it a little longer, but they both came out empty handed.
We meander through the maze of machines when I spy a roulette table. Kari and I watched a few games of it earlier and it looked like fun. I think most games
are rigged to beat you, but roulette seems fairly objective.
“I wanna try roulette,” I say, tugging on Cane’s hand. “I like this game.”
We all stop and watch the table in front of us. The bets are made and then the ball bursts outs and spins around the wheel.
“You played before?” Max asks.
“No. But I think I’d be good at it.”
“It’s just luck, Jada,” Max says. “You can’t be good at gambling unless you know how to count cards.”
“Well, she is lucky. She’s got me.” Cane wraps his arm around my waist. I giggle and lean against him.
“Yeah. She got you. Good point,” Kari says, taking Max’s hand and leading him towards the table. “Let’s see if we can change her luck and save her before it’s too late.”
“Better watch your girl, Quinn,” Cane mumbles.
Max snorts. “She’s your sister-in-law. You deal with her.”
Kari shoves Max’s arm. “You’re not going to defend me?”
“Nah, it might be good for you two to just have at it. One of you is going to have to establish dominance eventually.”
“Dominance? Really? If he even thinks he’ll dominate me, he’s crazy!” She turns to look at Cane. “You’re stuck with me and my mouth.”
“Yeah, but I,” Cane grins over her head at Max, “don’t have to live with ya.”
“I don’t either,” Max mutters and places his chip on the eight. “But on the bright side, I can think of numerous ways to occupy her mouth.”
“I’m not even going to honor that with a response,” Kari says, taking a chip out of Max’s hand.
Cane hands me a few tokens, studying the table. I place mine on the red seven next to Max’s eight. Kari studies the table before placing hers on the black thirty-three. Just as the dealer calls for all bets to be placed, Cane places his on the black twenty.
Cane kisses my neck as we watch the ball roll around. It bounces and rolls before landing on the twenty.
“We have a winner!” The dealer says, nodding at Cane.
The crowd cheers. Cane grins and takes his winnings and follows Max and Kari back to the aisle. He takes my hand and kisses my knuckles.
The Connection Page 3