The Hothead

by Myra Scott

  The next moment, it went red, and he stood up to take a few steps toward me.

  “I’m sorry, ‘talkers’? You mean like I talked my way through that entire interview just now without you doing more than rattle off some broken French to pretend like you were taking anything seriously? Or do you mean how I carried all the weight in convincing Zane to back down from all this insane promotion with La Torre so we’d have the time to even get to interviews like this?”

  Mick’s tone was louder and sharper than I was used to hearing it. This wasn’t the uncontrolled outrage he had been spouting a few months ago when he blew up at all of us. This was purposeful, and he knew exactly how to dig into me.

  “Look, Gage, I’ve been really, really patient with your obsession over Zane, a lot more than I should have been so far,” he said, and my jaw dropped. Mick hadn’t just crossed a line, he’d flown over it, and he was the last person I’d ever expect to do something like this. “But if you want to talk about something affecting all of us, then you need to be talking about yourself, not Zane and Diego.”

  “Mick—” I started, but once he was off the rails, it was hard to stop Mick.

  “Do you have any idea how badly I wanted to disagree with you in that meeting?” he snapped, pointing sharply to the door. “I looked for dozens of ways to make the new numbers work as they are, just so that I didn’t have to agree with your half-assed plans that have been spurred on by nothing but jealousy. You lucked out big time, Gage. You just happened to guess correctly that we need help, but you never had me in mind when you pitched the idea to us. All you cared about, all you ever care about, is Zane.”

  “Fuck you!” I shouted at Mick. “You don’t know anything about me, Mick, don’t pretend like you do.”

  “I know you’re a damn fine manager,” Mick said fiercely, “you’re usually a kind, caring man, you’re good at your job, you work well with all of us, and if this were any other situation, I’d swear up and down that I couldn’t ask for a better friend!”

  The tone of his voice contrasted sharply with his words, and I was genuinely stunned to silence, both touched and angry at the same time.

  “But this?” Mick said incredulously, gesturing up and down at me, shaking his head. “You think you’re in love with Zane, Gage, and everyone knows it. Bart does, I do, and I sure as hell hope Zane does and just isn’t saying anything because he knows you’ll react like this. This is not you, Gage. You’re not even in love with Zane! You’re obsessed with this idea of him in your head that’s never going to become a reality.”

  My hands were balled up into fists, and I wanted so badly to take a swing at Mick for what he was saying. Something deep inside me told me to listen to him, and that it was all true, but there was too much anger boiling in me for me to care.

  “You think I’m obsessed with a fantasy?” I snapped. “Look at you! You’re in love with a Dom, for god’s sakes!”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Mick said in a cooler tone, but he still stepped toward me. I held my ground. “Do you know why Eric and I work? Because we can separate fantasy from reality. I helped him out in his personal life when his work life became too much. The two of us respected each other for who we really are before and after we got seriously involved with each other.”

  “This is different,” I insisted. “Zane is different.”

  “Tell yourself that all you want, Gage,” Mick said. “Just remember that when this fantasy bursts, you might not have the real Zane around to come back to and be friends with. Hell, the way Zane was fuming after you blew up at him, I am frankly surprised that you’re still standing here doing this job, because if a partner talked to me like that?” Mick shook his head. “I might have taken it lying down a few months ago, but not anymore.”

  “I’m happy for you, Mick, I really am,” I said in a tone dripping with venom. “But it doesn’t work that way for all of us.”

  “You sound like a teenager, Gage, listen to yourself,” Mick said. “You need to grow up and get over this damn crush.”

  I’d had enough. If I stayed in that room any longer, one of us was going to be walking out with a bloody lip, and I’d probably be without a job.

  I turned and made my way out of the room, throwing the door shut behind me.

  As I strode down the hallway, the interviewee was still by the elevators, talking to somebody on the phone. Her eyes went wide for a moment when she saw the look on my face, but she still managed to give a weak smile and a wave.

  I didn’t acknowledge her. I stormed past to the elevators and hit the ground floor. I needed to get out of here for an hour. Preferably a few.

  And for once, as the beautiful glass view brought me down, it didn’t give me comfort.

  My mind just flitted to Devin standing by me the night we went to the club, and my heart felt like lead.

  CHAPTER TEN - DEVIN

  It had been a few days since my ill-fated night with Gage, and he was still all I could think about. My thoughts were running in circles, my heart struggling to keep up. It just didn’t make any sense to me. The night had followed such a bizarre trajectory, and I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong to make Gage forget about me and think of Zane while I was blowing him. Sure, as we were sitting in El Puente he had spent a lot of time talking about Zane to me, but he had also asked me questions about myself. And yes, he’d brought up potentially letting go of his feelings for Zane but had also admitted that he might never work up the courage to make a decision either way. But then he’d come on to me. He’d been the instigator, not me. Gage was the one who suggested that we go back to his place. He was the one who had insisted on kissing me in the elevator, then in the back of the cab, and then just inside his front door. He was the one tearing my clothes off, kissing me with such a crazed hunger that I couldn’t have possibly resisted him even if I wanted to. He he’d been the one pushing our union along, giving me every possible sign that he was into me, that he wanted me—and just me.

  God, just remembering the way his body felt pressed against mine, the way my fingers closed around his smooth, hard cock, the way I got to taste a tiny fleck of pre-cum before he rolled on the condom. I was a little annoyed at myself for that, actually, for forgetting the condom at first. In all my years, I had always been doggedly cautious and obsessive about having safe sex or no sex. What was it about Gage that made me throw all caution to the wind? How did he make me feel so free, so wrapped up in a cyclone of emotions? How did he manage to build me up and make me feel like the king of the world, only to knock me back down and make me feel like I was nothing at all?

  I could still hear him murmuring Zane’s name, soft and pleading, like he was begging for me to somehow transform into the man he really, truly wanted. Like he could summon Zane to appear just by whispering his name so sweetly.

  It broke my heart.

  I wanted my name to be the one lingering on Gage’s lips. I wanted to be the man he fantasized about, the one he pictured when he was alone and feeling aroused. I wanted to be the star of his daydreams, the only one he longed for, the way he was the only one I longed for. Gage was my dream guy, the shining bright star in the middle of the dark night sky. He was the moon and the sun, and I was helpless to resist him, no matter how badly it hurt to chase after a man who thought of me as only a fuck buddy, just a sounding board for his problems, a false surrogate for the guy he really wanted.

  Didn’t I deserve better than that?

  Didn’t I deserve to be loved and desired by someone who only loved and desired me for who I was, not for how well I could pretend to be someone else?

  I knew that I deserved more than what Gage had given me the other night. I was still obsessing over it, hardly able to function properly. It felt like someone had short-circuited the finely tuned gears in my brain, and now instead of focusing on work, there were just the same memories playing on a loop. The
look on his face as he was blissed out and giving in to pleasure. The sensation of his fingers knotting in my hair as he held me in place, not letting me stop sucking him off for even a second. The feeling of his long, hard cock sliding in and out of my mouth while he bucked his hips and lost control. The sharp agony of realizing that the name he was muttering was not my name, but someone else’s. The glazed look on his face as I walked out the door. Gage had looked so completely lost and confused, like he had no idea what he had done, like he had no clue how desperately I wanted to be the only one and how deeply he had cut me. I wanted him to hurt like I hurt, just for one second, so that he would know how it felt.

  But then I reminded myself that he did know how I felt. He, too, was in love with someone who was already taken. Only, Zane was really taken. He was in a full-blown, serious relationship with Diego, and I knew that had to wound Gage’s soul pretty severely. But still, that didn’t make it fair or right what he had done to me. I knew I had the right to be angry with him, and I wished that I could feel anger toward him. Surely anger would feel much better than this sadness and regret. But I just couldn’t do it. No matter how badly I wanted to be pissed off, to hold this against him, to blame him for the way I was feeling—I just could not manage it. I blamed myself as usual. I told myself that if I had been better, sexier, stronger, more interesting, more flirtatious, maybe that would have been enough to truly distract Gage away from his obsession with Zane. If I was a better man, then surely he would love me instead. I knew, deep down, that was an unhealthy way of thinking about it.

  When I was growing up, my mother used to have a saying: “You can’t control what other people think or say or do. The only thing you can control is how you respond to it.” She explained to me over and over again that the best thing I could do when someone hurt me was to change how I reacted. If someone hurt me, it didn’t do any good to dwell on it and try to figure out why. My energy was better spent taking care of myself and moving on. At least, that was what she tried to teach me. But though I knew she was right, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I could change him. I could change Gage and get him to feel the same way about me that I felt about him. All it would take is… well, to become a more irresistible man than Zane Anderson.

  But, I thought to myself as I dealt a new hand to my customers at the blackjack table, I didn’t know how to change myself that easily. And besides, wasn’t the point of love to find someone who could love and admire me for who I truly was?

  “You look a little young to be a dealer,” remarked one of the guys at my table.

  I shook myself out of my dark thoughts and gave him a smile. “I’m not as young as I look,” I told him casually.

  “How old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

  “That’s flattering,” I replied. “But no.”

  The man had already built up quite a hefty stack of chips in front of himself. He was a middle-aged guy, with bushy eyebrows and a shiny, shaved head. He had the kind of meaty, burly frame that made me instantly suspect he was either a professional fighter or a bouncer somewhere. His type was pretty common here at the casino. There were so many exclusive clubs in Las Vegas that bouncer types were a dime a dozen. And I couldn’t put my finger on why, but guys like him always seemed oddly interested in me. I didn’t know if maybe I seemed like an easy target or what, but whenever I was getting hit on at a bar, it usually turned out to be some big, muscle-bound guy with a bald head. I was just their type, it seemed.

  But this man wasn’t hitting on me. There was a more probing, sizing-up kind of tone to his questions. Less like he was trying to figure out if I was single and more like he was trying to determine how tough or strong I was. Or how clever.

  That made me nervous. I was a pretty solid judge of character, and something about this guy and his quiet, equally masculine associates made me feel uneasy.

  “You been workin’ here long?” asked the man. He was watching me intently as I shuffled the deck, trying to avoid eye contact.

  “Long enough,” I answered. I was wary of giving too much away.

  He chuckled, though the humor didn’t quite reach his eyes, which were cold and emotionless. “Am I makin’ you nervous, boy?” he growled.

  “No. This is my job. It takes a lot more than a chatty customer to make me nervous,” I lied deftly. I glanced up at him just long enough to gauge his response.

  He seemed almost offended at how easily I deflected his accusation. He leaned back, eyeing me like a hawk surveying his prey. His comrades stared at me, too, their faces hard and solemn. They reminded me of two Rottweilers, well-trained and waiting on their master’s command. I wondered if they were just as vicious.

  “You got a bit of a mouth on you, don’t you?” he grunted, his jaw tightening with anger.

  I decided it was time to defuse the tension a little, so I smiled politely. “I don’t mean any offense, of course,” I told him lightly. I heard the two other men crack their knuckles. It was a menacing sound. My stomach turned and twisted with anxiety, even though I knew that if they caused me any trouble, all I’d have to do was call over the pit boss or security. Still, they were not an enjoyable bunch to deal with.

  “I think someone ought to wipe that smile off your pretty little face,” threatened the bald man, sitting up straight in his chair to look bigger. And he was, in fact, massive. Even sitting down, he almost dwarfed me with his size.

  “Sir, I would rather you not make thinly veiled threats against me at my own blackjack table,” I remarked, still wearing that forced smile. His cheeks went a deep red, and his hands curled into fists on the table. “Remember that I can call security and have them get here in just a minute or so if I need to,” I reminded him quietly, not wanting to cause a scene.

  “A minute?” he scoffed, narrowing his eyes at me. “It would only take me a few seconds to crush your skull.”

  I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly going dry. The other two men were poised and ready to jump up and attack at any moment. The tension was palpable.

  “Sir, would you like to finish off the game or not?” I asked softly.

  “Oh, I think we’re more than finished here already,” he retorted with a terrifying smile. He jumped to his feet, the other two followed suit. I leaped back instinctively as one of them took a swing at me.

  The pit boss noticed and came rushing over as I yelled out, “Security!”

  The two backup guys took off running, and the pit boss chased after him, muttering into his walkie-talkie. The security guards came rushing into the room, and I turned around to gesture for them to come over to my table, but when I turned back, the bald man was already out of sight. The security guards went off to hunt him down. I looked down at the stack of chips in front of me and realized the pile was much, much smaller than before. Someone had swiped my chips during the commotion.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - GAGE

  The knock on my door made my heart plummet.

  In about a week, it felt like I had made enemies of everyone I once considered my closest friends in the Sentry. And realizing that was the loneliest thing I could have imagined.

  I was in the middle of reviewing some of the workplace disputes that had made it through the pipeline up to me. It was grueling, tedious work that rarely had a good, clear answer, but it was the kind of thing that needed to be done, and it was best handled by as few people as possible to be expedient.

  And in my case, that was exactly what I had to work with.

  Mick hadn’t spoken a word to me since our fight. I had only heard from Zane through mass work emails and quick, professional exchanges. Even then, it was only when necessary. Bart was the only one who was still on speaking terms with me, and I hardly ever saw him, thanks to his busy schedule.

  So, when I shouted, “come in,” I had no idea who would be walking through my door, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. And when
I saw Zane step in with an ashen face, that fear was confirmed.

  “Hey,” Zane said flatly as he stepped into the office.

  A hundred options ran through my head in a split second. My impulsive side told me to keep my ego intact and tell him to get out, or at the least to be spiteful to him.

  But I wasn’t about to go there again, not right now. Zane looked like he was pained, and seeing him that way stirred up some deeply sympathetic emotions in me. I wasn’t expecting to feel them after all we’ve fought about in the past few days, but they were there.

  Besides, I was acutely aware of how much of a monster I was being, after my fight with Mick. I didn’t know why, but his words really stuck with me. I was so exhausted that I finally got a good night’s sleep last night, but when I woke up, I felt the weight of everything I’d said and done hit me like a ton of bricks on my chest.

  “Hey, Zane,” was all I could muster to answer. My face looked pained, but I didn’t show anger. I just folded my hands on my desk and turned to face him. “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about the partnership,” he said, each syllable heavy and full of meaning. I felt my muscles tighten, dreading whatever he was about to say. I knew that if I was asked to leave our partnership at the Sentry, I would be in absolutely no position to say no. And it was all my fault.

  “Alright, hit me,” I said.

  “It’s done,” Zane said simply, taking a seat across from me. The words stunned me more than anything else he could have said, and I just stared at him for a few moments, no words in my mouth.

  “Done?” I repeated in disbelief. Zane nodded, breaking eye contact with me.

  “I talked with Diego. It was difficult, but after a long talk, the partnership between the Sentry and La Torre has been suspended. There’s still some cross-promotion happening today that we couldn’t back out of, but he agreed that the strain on both of our casinos is too much for us to handle as we are. His own employees have been complaining about similar things, apparently.”