by Alexa Davis
I blushed furiously, partly at being caught wailing with my terrible, out-of-tune voice, but mostly because the memory of Milo was still imprinted into my body. I could still feel his hands everywhere, even more powerfully than before, and it made me feel sexy all over. No one had ever had such a lasting impact on me, and it was incredible.
“Well, yeah, maybe you were right about the whole Valentine’s Day thing,” I felt compelled to admit.
“All of it?” she gasped happily. “The dinner, the underwear?”
“Yes, yes, everything. It was amazing.” I drifted off into dream world, remembering his words to me as well as the feel of him all over me. “Better than I expected.”
“So, what happened?” She nudged me playfully, a massive smile spread across her lips. “Did you sleep together again? Was it amazing?”
“Even better than last time.” I sat down in one of the chairs where I could see myself in the mirror, and Laynee imitated me. “But it wasn’t just that. He actually opened up to me. He told me about himself.”
“He did? That’s something else. What did he tell you?” She leaned on her hands and stared intently at me. I didn’t want to share Milo’s secrets, but I knew I could trust Laynee. Plus, she’d been on this whole journey with me – she deserved to know it all.
“He told me that he’d had this whole thing with this woman that went horribly wrong. She was married, and I think that broke his heart. And then after all that, he found out that he had a life-threatening illness, too. He’s been through all kinds of horrible treatment.”
“Whoa, I just thought that he was gruff. I didn’t realize that he’d been through so much.”
I smiled secretly to myself, thinking about him. Milo had been through a lot, but he wasn’t fragile or damaged about it. He just seemed to get through things in his own steely way. It was impressive really, something to be admired. Especially for someone like me who just blustered through everything in the only way I knew how.
“Yeah, he’s great.” I turned to see Laynee looking at me weirdly. “What? What’s going on?”
“Well, I don’t like to ask you this,” she started cautiously. “But I feel like I need to know. Are you…?” My heart pounded as I waited to see where she was going with this. “Are you falling in love with him? I know it’s complicated and everything, but are you? I’ve just never seen you like this about anyone.”
“I…” I had no way of answering that. Deep down, I knew exactly what I was feeling, however dangerous that was. But it couldn’t be made real. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think too much about it because he’s leaving.”
“I am sorry for interrupting…” A voice behind us both made us jump out of our skins. “I don’t think the bell is working on your door anymore, and I’m here for my appointment.”
We both jumped up, remembering exactly where we were. “Oh, I am sorry, Mrs. Edwards! Please take a seat.” I glanced at Laynee, and it was obvious from her stunned expression that she’d forgotten Mrs. Edwards was coming in, too.
“I will just…” I raced behind the counter and grabbed the appointment book to see that she was booked in for a trim and a blow dry. Okay, that was easy enough. I could do that with my eyes closed.
“You know, I couldn’t help overhearing you before…” Mrs. Edwards started as I grabbed hold of the scissors. A cold shame stripped through my body as I realized now there was another person who knew all my business. I just hoped that she hadn’t been around for long enough to hear about Milo’s secrets. “And I have to say that you shouldn’t let distance get in the way of real love.”
“Well, I’m not quite… I don’t think it can be counted as, you know, true love,” I stammered, embarrassment working my mouth before my brain could get involved. “I haven’t known him long,”
“Oh, of course, but it doesn’t take long to know when it’s true love, does it? I knew with Richard within a couple of hours.” Her eyes began to shine with happiness at just the mere mention of her husband.
It made me take a step back mentally. That was what I wanted in my life – that was what I needed. Is Milo the one? If I took away all the obstacles standing in our path, would I have considered him as someone I loved? “I met him when I was here on holiday and it only took me a moment to know,” she continued. “It was his deep, dark, crinkly eyes.”
“Wow, that sounds like an incredible story,” Laynee interjected, looking a little misty eyed herself. “Please, tell us all about it.”
“Well, I was young at the time, and I was here with my parents, but it was an instantaneous thing.” From the way that she started talking, it seemed like it had been a long time since she got to share her story of love, which made me sad. This made her happy; she should have been able to discuss it whenever she wanted!
“He was a little older than me, so we got disapproval from everyone, but we didn’t care. We were in love – that was all we cared about. So when I went home to New York, we wrote all the time, never giving up on one another, and as soon as I could afford to, I moved here to be with him.”
“Weren’t you scared?” I gasped in shock. “Didn’t you fear that it wouldn’t work out? Weren’t you afraid of giving up everything for a man you didn’t totally know?”
“Not at all.” She waved her hand dismissively at me. “I just knew. Yes, I gave up the chance to be an actress, and I left my family and friends behind, but I never regretted it for a second. Not even when times were hard and we’d spend more time screaming at one another than anything else.
“My life could have been totally different, I could have lived a whole other lifestyle, but what would the point have been without him? He was the only one who made me feel special, loved, home, actually.”
I resonated with that sentiment, far more than I wanted to admit aloud.
“My life wouldn’t have been so colorful and filled with laughter without him. Now he’s been gone for a few years, and I miss him every single day, but I’m still glad that he was in my life. I couldn’t have done any of this without him.”
I turned back to see Laynee giving me a look, one loaded with meaning. I ignored it with my nose in the air and got back to work without giving anyone the satisfaction of knowing they’d gotten to me. I didn’t want anyone to know I was mulling this over and over, churning it all up in my mind. Would I be as willing to throw everything away for a man? Would I regret it forever, or would I regret it if I didn’t?
I wasn’t sure, but I knew for a fact that I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else for the rest of the day…
***
I whizzed my car along the road, back to the cabin, filled with excitement to see Milo once more. I hadn’t made any real progress with my thoughts about the future, but I hoped getting to spend more time with him would make me see more. Sure, he had his reservations, as did I, but maybe we could end up like Mrs. Edwards and her husband.
It was nice to think about, anyway.
But as I pushed through the front door, the image before me wasn’t Milo cooking me a meal as promised. Instead, he was yelling frantically into his phone and throwing things into his suitcase. My heart stopped dead in my chest. What the hell is happening? Is he… leaving?
Veil raced over to my side, and I patted him like I always did, but with much less enthusiasm. I was far too distracted, trying to work out why my dream was falling apart in front of my eyes. It didn’t make any sense.
“Fuck!” Milo eventually yelled, throwing his phone onto the couch. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He was pulling at his hair, stamping his feet as he paced, his whole body trembling with anger. I didn’t even want to speak to him; I felt too weirded out by his temper. I’d never seen this side of him before. It didn’t make any sense.
I glanced behind me, wondering if I could just slip back out without him knowing, but then he turned to face me, and his eyes widened in shock.
“Wha… What’s going on?” I stammered, folding my arms across my chest. “Is everything
all right?”
“I have to go,” he snapped evasively, grabbing his bag. “Now.”
“But why?” I persisted. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He obviously had something going on, but it felt rude that he was about to just vanish without even letting me know. It sullied everything we’d been through.
“Because.” He tossed his arms up in the air, exasperated. “Because my life isn’t here. Because I’ve been wasting time hiding away in the middle of nowhere while everything else falls apart.”
Is that how he sees our time together? As a waste of time? I’d been idiotically pining after him and the whole time he was already moving back to Nevada. Nausea swirled around in my stomach, causing me to actually clutch at my tummy in disgust.
“I… Well, I…” I didn’t know what to say to that. How do I defend what we have without making myself sound like a total crazy person? I’d been doing my best not to come across as insane, and it had happened anyway. “What happened?” I ended up finishing with lamely.
“You wouldn’t understand.” He shook his head, dismissing me completely. “I have to go.”
With that, he stormed past me, and I felt myself fall backward. He didn’t even touch me, it was just shock that caused me to tumble, but as my back hit the wall, I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. This wasn’t how this night was supposed to go. It was supposed to be romantic. I was supposed to be working out whether we could have a future together.
Well, I supposed that question had been answered with a big fat no.
It was the opposite of what I wanted, and it made my heart shatter painfully in my chest, but then again, maybe it was the best thing. It was better for me to find out now, before I got in too deep, before I fell apart. It hurt like hell and made me feel sick, but it could have been a whole lot worse. He was gone now, taking any chance with him. Now it was time for me to start moving on.
I pulled the door open to see his car actually pulling away, confirming what I already knew.
I glanced back into the cabin, wondering if I should start cleaning it to get rid of any evidence of him ever being there, but my eyes were already wet. If I stayed another second longer, the tears would start to fall. For now, I just needed to go home, fix myself a big drink, and try and get rid of this empty sensation in my chest.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Milo – Saturday
Millions… fucking millions.
When I spoke to Bill on the phone, before I’d made the long, very frustrating journey back to Vegas, he’d checked everywhere but the safe for missing money. That place was like Fort Fucking Knox, so no one had even thought to check it, especially as there was no evidence that it’d been broken into. But at some point, Bill had gone in there and noticed five fucking million dollars gone.
This was serious now – this was much more than things that could be replaced. All of a sudden, this felt much more personal.
“How did it all go so wrong?” Bill whined, looking like he was falling apart himself. I wasn’t going to fire him, this was far more my fault than his, but I couldn’t seem to convince him however hard I tried. He looked terrible, like the stress was etched into his features, and if I wasn’t so damn pissed off, I might have wanted to help him recover from that. “Shit, I feel so awful.”
It didn’t help that my temper was running high and that I couldn’t control it, but it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t fired anyone; he hadn’t exacted a revenge plot against my casino. This was all on me. I couldn’t have yelled at him even if I did feel like it. The only person to be mad at was me, and I was fucking furious at myself.
“And the cameras being shut down, too. I don’t know what to think.” He was making me dizzy, pacing up and down the room, so I grabbed onto his arm and forced him to stop.
“Just calm down, Bill.” I patted him on the back. “I’ll get this figured out.”
“Are you going to the police? They have the full report?”
I shrugged, unsure what to do next. I just wasn’t sure that the police could help me. The cameras had been switched off during the crime, no faces had been recorded, and they’d found no fingerprints, either. Plus, the vault had been seemingly opened with a fucking key – what evidence did they have?
They couldn’t prove who it was, but I already knew. They couldn’t act without evidence, but that didn’t apply to me…
Maybe this was something that I needed to do myself.
“I’ll be back soon, okay? You just keep things running here, and I’ll be back before long.”
I couldn’t deal with Bill right now. I couldn’t make him anything more than a gibbering wreck; he needed to sort that shit out on his own. I needed my fucking millions back. I couldn’t do anything about the smashed-up machine, and the other money, the decoy money – they could fucking keep it if they were that hard up – but there wasn’t a chance in hell I was letting anything else go.
I could have driven to the Wealdon Security office, but I decided to walk instead, to allow myself to stew further. Yes, things had ended on a shitty note, but I still couldn’t believe these assholes had gone that far with things.
Hadn’t I been good to them over the years they were working for me? Didn’t they have a professional reputation to uphold? This was the sort of shit that happened in movies, not in real life, and certainly not to me!
I pushed past people on the sidewalk without even looking. I didn’t care about any of them or their lovely time in Vegas; I was fucking mad, and that was all there was to it. No one else mattered.
I felt myself reverting back to the older version of myself, the man who got far by stomping over people without even thinking. Some people called out behind me, pissed off by my bulldozing attitude, but I didn’t even give enough of a shit to turn back to look at them.
They hadn’t just lost millions. They didn’t even know what problems were.
By the time I arrived outside the security firm’s office, my anger was in full force. I had to grip onto my fists tightly just to stop myself from punching my way through the fake glass doors. This was all set up to look good: clean, white, and professional, and it was all utter bullshit.
I’d been sucked in by it, but now I knew the cold, hard truth. These guys were the lowest of the low. Scum of the fucking Earth. I had to make them pay.
I certainly hadn’t gotten this far by being walked all over, and just because I’d been sick didn’t mean I was about to back down now. I might have taken a break, had a timeout, but now I was back with a damn vengeance.
I sucked in a few breaths of air, none of which calmed me down, and I pushed my way inside.
“Hello, welcome to Wealdon…” the pretty-faced receptionist called out to me, but there was no chance of me stopping to talk to her. I wasn’t in the mood for niceties, and I didn’t want to take my temper out on her. Just because she worked for these fuckers didn’t mean she knew anything, and it definitely didn’t mean that she’d had any part of it.
I wanted to see Leon, the guy who had betrayed me. It was his face that my hands were itching to hit. I wasn’t sure I was even capable of having any kind of conversation right now, not even an argument – my anger was too much.
I stomped through the hallways until I found the one office that I was looking for, and as I spotted his smug face sitting behind the desk, everything bubbled over. I couldn’t even control myself any longer; the red mist had descended, and I was no longer in control of my body. All the anger about everything came spilling out.
It wasn’t fair that Veronica had torn me to shreds, wrecking my trust in anyone. It was more than unlucky that I’d gotten so sick. And it totally sucked that I’d had to leave the one woman who made me feel good about myself and my life.
Then, to top it off, I was embroiled in a war over money I didn’t even know about. These assholes hadn’t fought fair, and that seriously sucked. Well, I wasn’t going to take it lying down anymore. I was coming back swinging.
“Oh.” Leon glanced up t
o see me as I slammed the door loudly open. “I wasn’t expecting you.” He didn’t look quite as shocked as he was making out, though, totally confirming my theory. I’d known it was him – but now he’d just proven that.
“The hell you weren’t,” I growled. “You think you’re fooling me? I know you broke into my casino. I know you stole money, broke my machines, and got into my vault. You might think that you’re able to fool the cops, but I’m a different story.”
I was squaring up without even thinking about it, and that seemed to affect him quickly as he stood up to meet me with his hands held out in front of him in a surrendering gesture. “It isn’t what you think,” he pleaded quickly. “I didn’t do it to piss you off.”
“Well, that fucking backfired.” There were no words that would cool me down right now. “I’m about ready to smash your fucking face in.”
“I just did it to show you how much you need us. Look, the cash is right there.” He pointed to a bag on the floor, as if that made everything all right. “I didn’t steal it to spend it; this was nothing to do with that. I knew you would instantly know that I was to blame.
“I just wanted you to understand that another security company isn’t the answer. We can help you; we know your casino. We’re the only ones who have the right tools to keep your assets safe. Just look at how easily we took this from you.”
I stepped closer, rubbing my chin as if I was thinking it through. “Oh, I see. So this was all a test? This was all for me to understand how much you guys are worth? You wanted me to hire you back, with the extra money you were demanding?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He didn’t sound totally sure about the whole thing. He knew that I was far too pissed off to see things from his point of view.
“So, what about your other job? I thought another casino was paying you what you wanted? Why the fuck do you care so much about me when you have what you want?”