Page 60 of All Bets Are Off
“Anyway, don’t feel too bad,” Calder says before exiting the elevator. “I’m sure you’ll more than earn it on your knees and back.”
With that accusation ringing in my ears, I sprint off the elevator, down the hallway, through the staff locker room and out the back door.
Fifteen minutes have passed.
It’s too long.
I stand in front of the door of my room, clawing at my throat, sure I’m suffocating.
It shouldn’t take longer than five minutes to give notice. Three minutes to ride the elevator up to the top floor. Vida should be here by now.
Not for the first time, I call her phone, but it goes to voicemail.
She still hasn’t responded to my thirteen text messages.
What the fuck is going on?
Raking a frantic hand through my hair, I pace to the balcony and step out, hoping a deep breath of coastal air will stop me from ripping this resort down to the studs. I need to figure out how to live with this obsession with Vida without becoming destructive. Or is that impossible?
I’m pondering the answer to that when I see her running on the beach.
Runningaway. In the direction of her house.
She turns her head briefly to look back at the resort, and her expression is nothing short of stricken. Devastated. And just like that, my rapidly firing heart is in my mouth, my intestines feeling as though they’re being pulverized between grinding gears.
“VIDA!”
She continues to run, and I bellow in denial.
That’s when I see Calder swagger out the back door of the resort. The employee door where I asked Vida to go out with me. What the hell is he doing there?
Did…Did something happen between him and Vida?
Did he…
The bet.
The bet.
She knows about it.
That certainty floods me with a sour sickness that almost drops me to the floor. Somehow, I find the willpower to stay on my feet and run, no other option but to reach her. To make her understand my intentions when I made that stupid fucking bet. And once I do that, once I’ve made her understand and she’s back in my arms, I’m going to murder Calder.
I mean that literally.
His days on this earth are numbered.
I will kill him for hurting my angel like this. For trying to come between Vida and me.
I don’t bother with the elevator. I take the stairs in giant lunges and sprint into the lobby, barreling out the back door onto the beach. She’s only a small speck in the distance, but I’m fast, and I’ve never run harder in my life. My lungs are on fire by the time I catch up to her, though I still manage to roar her name. When she still doesn’t stop running, I sweep her up off the sand into my arms, my heart breaking when she fights to get free.
“Angel. Angel. You will stop this andlistento me.”
“Did you really make a bet about me?” She heaves a sob, and my mental well-being begins to crumble like a cookie.I made her cry. I waited too long to come clean about my idiocy, and now her feelings have been damaged. I did this.“Did you ask m-me out because of some wager about me being a gold digger?”
My head spins in disbelief that she could consider such a thing to be true.
“No. No, Vida. I was going to ask you out regardless,” I grit out into her hair. “On day one, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
