Kings of Hearts (An M/M/M Romance Novel)

by Candice Blake

  “Are…you asking me to do it?” I said, trying to clarify. “I’m a first-year dropout, how are you going to justify getting me to be a teaching assistant for a third-year class?”

  “I’m more than sure you’re capable of being an assistant for that class. It’s a fairly basic course if you can understand the complicated equations on the piece of paper you’re holding. It’s a pretty nice gig and it will only take up a few hours a week for you. If you want, you can pick up more hours to help me with research.”

  I looked at his equations again. It had been a year since I was in academia, and I had started playing poker instead of going to school.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “What are you hesitating about?” He asked.

  “I’m not hesitating, I’m just thinking about how much I love playing poker.”

  The professor shook his head.

  “It’s a dangerous road,” he warned.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Because it takes a lot out of you. It takes a lot of dedication, and the risks are too high to make a living out of it.”

  “That’s what I love about it, the unpredictability, the rush. No offense or anything, but I enjoy it so much more than school.”

  “I understand that,” he answered, putting his glasses back on and taking a sip of tea from his mug. “But I lost a lot during my poker days. It took me a long time to realize how toxic of an environment it is.”

  I tried my hardest not to roll my eyes.

  I knew his intentions were good. But he reminded me of my parents, who would’ve given me the same speech. It was the reason why I hadn’t told them that I’d dropped out to play poker.

  There was an intensity in the professor’s blue eyes that made me curious about his life.

  Even his home seemed like a bit of a mystery. It seemed like a place that would be hidden with trap doors to secret laboratories. But maybe my imagination was getting the best of me.

  “So you’ll let me stay here if I work for you?” I asked, frankly.

  I was used to being very matter of fact at Dominic’s, who didn’t tolerate any bullshit. Everything had to be written in a contract.

  He smiled. “Yes, and you’ll get paid. You’re also welcome to stay here for however long you like until you get back on your feet.”

  I thought about my options. I was grateful for Sawyer’s generous offer.

  The first option was to stay here for a bit and try something new out. Maybe I’d see if I had any regrets about leaving school. My other option was to see how far the two hundred dollars in my pocket would take me.

  The latter option made the hairs on my arm stand up, and my heart pound.

  I loved that kind of rush, but even the worst poker player would know that it was a stupid risk.

  “I’ll try it out for a bit. But what happens if I want to leave and do something else?”

  “I’d want you to stay for the semester at least. The teaching assistant position will last four months. Then, you can decide what you want to do after.”

  Four months.

  It was a lot of time to potentially learn more about poker.

  It was also four months of winning a lot of money. But maybe the game had made me so cocky that I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  I wondered if what the professor said was right, that poker ruins people. I’ve won against enough people to know that some people who lost, lost a lot.

  Four months.

  Maybe there was something I could learn from working with the professor. What if I’d learn how to become a better poker player by getting better at math? Or maybe I’d learn something that was outside the realm of poker altogether.

  The professor caught me in my daze and he had a smirk on his face.

  “You’re a thinker,” he said.

  I felt blood rush to my cheeks.

  I hated when people caught me in a daze where my brain was working to solve a problem. I’d zone out for a long time and I’d turn the world off.

  It was the kind of focus that had made me good at math and at poker. It was an intense focus that I knew not many people had.

  “Please, work for me, Adrian,” the Professor said. “It will be worth your time.”

  I saw the drive in his eyes, a different kind of drive than Dominic’s, but equally as powerful.

  He was steady and confident, and there was an aura around him that made me want to say yes, despite my love for poker. I knew it’d be a sacrifice that I’d have to make in order to try something new. I was also afraid I’d revert back to the boring academic life that I had tried so hard to get out of.

  “Alright, I’ll try it out, prof. I want to see if I can help you with your research. I think it’ll be fun.”

  He beamed a smile and reached out to shake my hand. I did the same. His large hand enveloped mine and shook it firmly, with sincerity. I could feel the passion in his handshake.

  “I have to confess something about your class,” I said.

  “Sure, what is it?” He asked.

  “I skipped the midterms, not because I was sick, but because I just didn’t bother going. I forged the doctor’s note to get out of it.”

  I thought he’d react strongly, but he was just as calm as ever.

  “I figured that was the case. But you know, I’d like to think that my class is a bit like real life. It’s only a problem if you get caught,” he smiled. “If I recall correctly, you ended up getting a perfect score on your final, and you passed. So who cares really?”

  I was a bit stunned at the professor’s reaction. I guess I expected him to…get angry. Maybe I was just so used to being around Dominic who always so grumpy all the time.

  “You sound like a poker player when you put it like that,” I said.

  “I used to be. You know what they say about poker players--,”

  “—Once a poker player, always a poker player,” I said finishing his sentence.

  He smirked. “You know it, young man.”

  “I never expected you to be…like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “I guess, I always had an idea of what a professor was like, and I expected you to be more uptight.”

  “Yeah, professors have a bad rep for that. I don’t think I’m any different from anyone else. I’ve probably made just as many mistakes as you, if not more. We all figure out life through them.”

  I sank deeper on the couch, and I felt more comfortable than when I first arrived last night.

  It was a different kind of comfortable than in the club. And I was excited to start something new.

  I thought about Dominic.

  He probably thought I’d fail and come crawling back to him, begging to get back into the club. But maybe this was my chance to prove him wrong.

  Chapter Six

  Sawyer

  Adrian reminded me of my younger self.

  He was bright-eyed, with the kind of energy that only young men possess. It was nice having him around to distract me from the usual quiet house.

  My life had been the same for the past ten years. It was the same grind, teaching the same classes at the same school.

  When my wife, Sarah, passed, it made me wonder what the point was. Yet, I was so deep in my career that there was no way I could do anything else now.

  I couldn’t help but notice how different he looked now from when I taught him.

  Though it had only been a year, I could tell that he had been working out. His shoulders and arms filled his shirt, his blonde hair had a shine to it.

  I wondered if he had been riding high on some poker wins. But, then I wondered why he was lying on a park bench if he was doing well. That was the thing about poker, one minute, someone could be swimming in millions, and then it could all be gone in the next.

  I gave Adrian a tour of my home. He followed me around as I showed him the different rooms.

  My house was on the Heights, which overlooked the downtown core. We had torn down
the existing property to build my own home with my wife.

  I showed Adrian the game room with my collection of pinball machines. Then, we stepped into the theater in the lower level with ten reclining seats. That was next to the home gym and indoor pool.

  “I can’t believe you have this whole house to yourself,” Adrian said, dipping his toes into the pool.

  “Yeah, it’s definitely too big for one person,” I said.

  “Then why do you live here?”

  “Well, it was supposed to be a nice place to start a family.”

  “Oh, I see. Did you get…divorced?” Adrian asked.

  “No, I’m widowed now,” I said.

  That word had always been weird to say, but over the past year, it had sadly gotten easier.

  I hated how it made other people feel sorry for me. The look on a person’s face when I told them that I was widowed was almost as bad as finding out about it happening.

  I never liked people feeling sorry for me, it took away my power. I had always been in control of everything around me.

  I studied Adrian’s reaction, but he didn’t say the dreaded five words, I’m sorry for your loss, that people usually said. Instead, he asked me, “Is there a reason why you still wear that ring?”

  I looked at my silver wedding band that hugged tightly around my finger. I had a habit of spinning it with my thumb. “It feels weird to take it off because we never got divorced, so in a way, we’re still technically together.”

  “Do you want to get married again?” Adrian asked.

  “I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet. I haven’t been looking. It’s all still a blur.”

  “I bet, I’ve never lost anyone in my life. But I could imagine how difficult it’d be to adjust to a new life.”

  He was thoughtful for someone so young, and he surprised me the more I got to know him.

  “I’d never considered it to be a new life,” I said. “Just a bad chapter in a good book.”

  “Why not just start a new book?” He asked.

  It was a good question that I didn’t have an answer to. At thirty-nine, I wasn’t ready to start a new life.

  I lead Adrian upstairs to the second floor, past the bedrooms, to my study.

  “It’s a bit messy,” I warned.

  We walked into the room that was as cluttered as the thoughts in my own brain.

  “You weren’t kidding,” Adrian smirked.

  I watched him walk around the room.

  His green eyes began to study the pieces of paper that were taped haphazardly everywhere. Then, he stopped at the whiteboard that spanned the width of a wall.

  “This is the most recent equation that I’m trying to solve,” I said.

  He studied it while crossing his arms. His eyes scanned the markings and numbers on the whiteboard.

  “How long have you been working on this research?” He asked.

  “Five years in the making,” I said.

  “Wow. Are you close to the end?”

  “I am, I’d guess about ninety-percent of the way there. I started it with my wife who shared the work with me.”

  “I bet she was the more organized one,” Adrian laughed.

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “Actually, you’d be surprised how much messier she was than me.”

  “What’d she do?”

  “She was a professor at the university as well. We started this project when we realized that solar energy could be so much more efficient. So we began our journey to research it. She was someone with really good memory--it was the reason why I fell in love with her. But, Sarah never wrote anything down. When she passed, there were key elements to the research that were lost forever and I still can’t figure it out.”

  “Do you think it’d be done by now…if she was still around?”

  “Yeah. Our goal had always been to finish before we turned forty. I’m thirty-nine now. There’s a Nobel Prize called the Field’s Award that is given out to four mathematicians every year. But it’s only given to people who are under the age of forty.”

  “Damn, well professor, you have some work to do,” Adrian said.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late, Adrian. I have absolutely no chance of achieving it now without her help. Even with you around, I don’t think it’d be enough to make up for everything that she knew.”

  Adrian looked at the whiteboard then back at me.

  “So bluff,” he smirked.

  “Bluff? This isn’t poker,” I said.

  “Well, even in poker, you can still win a round if you were dealt a shitty hand. I was taught that if you don’t know something, then you fake it until you make it.”

  “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I turn forty in three months. Even I know it’d be too ambitious to get it done in that time.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to try,” Adrian said. “I want to help you solve this, though. I think it’ll be a good challenge.”

  Every time Adrian was deep in thought, his pupils dilated and he’d zone into whatever he was looking at.

  I wondered if it was actually possible to finish what I had started with his help. After my wife died, I had given up hope that I’d be able to make it before I turned forty.

  I had lost motivation to do much of anything, which was something I’d never experienced in my life. Suddenly, numbers and equations that used to excite me weren’t as interesting.

  The magic was gone, and I was left with a big mess of numbers and equations.

  Adrian picked up a dry-erase marker and started writing something on the whiteboard.

  I crossed my arms and furrowed my brows to study what he was doing. He wrote a few lines of equations, then stopped and erased it.

  He then rewrote the equations again in a different order and started to solve it. When he arrived at a final number, he circled it and looked at me while I checked over what he did.

  “Holy…that’s impossible,” I said.

  “What? Did I do something wrong?” He asked.

  “No…it’s just that I’ve been going over the equation for the past week, and you were able to figure it out in fifteen minutes.”

  He had a proud smirk on his face as if it was easy for him. I wanted to hug him in my excitement. But I figured that it might be weird, so I held back.

  I took a few breaths to contain myself. “I can’t believe it, I honestly can’t.”

  “See, fake it until you make it,” he said.

  I dug through sheets that were scattered on my desk and on the floor. I was looking for equations that I’d been stuck on for so long that I had given up on them.

  I wrote a problem on the board, and Adrian, zoned into it for a bit, then start scribbling numbers with the marker.

  I loved watching him work. It was incredible to see how he got from Point A to Point B.

  He was quiet when he was solving something, and I didn’t want to interrupt his process.

  There were ones that took him a long time, and ones that he breezed right through. The ones that took him no time made me feel a bit embarrassed that I couldn’t do it myself.

  I had no idea how a young man his age could be that smart. I had achieved everything through persistence and hard work.

  The way Adrian was easily solving these problems made me realize that he was smarter than anyone I knew. Possibly even smarter than my wife.

  I had never seen another student solve anything so quickly. Even professors weren’t as quick-minded as he was.

  We only noticed how late it was when the sky was getting dark, and we had to turn on the light in my study.

  “How are you so quick to solve everything?” I asked him.

  He broke his focus from the whiteboard and looked at me. “I think it’s from playing poker. When I play online, I usually have many games open at once. There’s not much time to deliberate over a move. So I learned to think of the different outcomes and make quick decisions.”

  “I see. Poker’s really different from when I used to play,” I sa
id, thinking back to the time when I was a young buck like Adrian. “Online poker wasn’t a thing, so we’d play face-to-face with high buy-ins so every game mattered a lot.”

  “I’ve tried playing tournaments at casinos. I’m not too good at it yet. It feels like a totally different game. I think it’s a lot more about emotional control.”

  “It is for sure, but the real thing is just as intense as it is online.”

  “We should face off in a game,” he smirked.

  I was curious to see how good his poker game was.

  “I haven’t played in almost twenty years,” I said. “You’d probably school me.”

  “We won’t know until we play a game,” he said.

  I thought about it, it’d just be one game--nothing too serious.

  But there was a reason why I left. It was because poker had consumed my life, and I was afraid that it’d do the same if I fell back into again. If I wanted to get the Nobel Prize before forty, I’d definitely have to focus all my energy on the research

  One game though. Could it be that bad?

  “Let’s play,” I said.

  Adrian’s face lit up, and he put the dry-erase marker down.

  I felt my palms sweat at the thought of touching a deck of cards again. The last time I played a game was almost twenty years ago.

  I was afraid that even playing a game of blackjack or crazy-eights would suck me back into the poker world.

  But here I was, getting convinced by a nineteen-year-old boy to play him in a game. I guess he wasn’t just any boy though. He was a math prodigy and I knew that playing a game with him would help me understand him better.

  I could figure out a person by playing just a single game of poker with him. It was telling of how much self-control he had, how much he risked in life, how dominant or submissive he was.

  Poker was a lot about power, and the high and the rush of winning felt so good that nothing else in life mattered. It was the reason why I stopped playing.

  We left the study and headed downstairs.

  I heard a deep grumble coming from Adrian’s stomach.

  “You haven’t eaten today,” I said.