Page 44 of One Night Gamble
Walking back through the Glen View Senior Community, Casey tried to tell himself that everything between him and Talia was settled, but he knew it wasn’t. And he wasn’t sure what he could do about it.
Darien had been in a bad way ever since Poppy Holland had walked out on him. Nicholas and Casey had been by their friend’s side and did their best to help him move on. There had been a lot of drinking, a lot of fighting—Darien got mean when he drank too much—and a fair amount of booty calls. Then, six months later, Casey won his first big poker match, Nicholas had broken away from the guy who’d been his mentor, and Darien’s mom had handed over control of the stunt show to him.
They were three twenty-five-year-olds with a chance to do something and they’d thrown in their lot together, forming the Jokers Wild LLC and starting to build their legacies. Casey had never thought about a legacy until Darien had brought it up. He’d wanted to become so successful that Poppy would come crawling back…something that wasn’t going to happen since she’d gone on to become famous in her own right, with her all-woman stunt spectacular.
Hell.
He stopped walking and tossed his head back, looking up at the sky. His friends were his family. He didn’t want to lose Darien over Talia. But when he was with Talia, he could finally feel some untamed part of himself calm down. He felt secure with her, and wanted to believe that she could be his future.
But what if Darien saw something that Casey was missing? Did Talia remind him of Poppy?
He couldn’t see any similarities. Talia wasn’t going to move on and start her own casino. She’d been very open about her career—she wanted the experience this job could give her, nothing more. And he knew what she thought about casinos.
So what was he going to do?
He felt like he had to choose between one of his best friends and his woman.
Really, was there a choice?
Darien was great, but he wasn’t Talia.
He got back to her Gran’s place and saw the two of them sitting together on the couch in the living room. He stayed outside, on the sidewalk, looking in.
Ah hell.
This is what it felt like when he’d been a kid—on the outside, looking in. Regardless of her past, at least Talia had a family—the kind he’d never had. She had Mona, Lee, and Tonya. She had her Gran and her best friend Sami.
And he had…the guys. Those jokers, who were the closest thing he had to brothers. And one of them wasn’t sure about her.
For the first time in his life, he was caught in a family drama. A part of him was amazed that he had two people he cared for that deeply, but another part had longed for this for so long.
He wanted what he saw looking through that window. He wanted to be like Tonya, showing people a video of something that Talia did fifteen or twenty years from now.
But what did he know about building a future?
He knew how to pick and choose the right pieces to make a winning hand, but how long would his luck hold? He’d decided to back out of the tournament. Although he’d originally wanted payback from some of the people who’d ruined his mother’s life, he realized it was time to look to the future, not the past. He had to prove to both him and Talia that he could have a normal life. But he had no idea how to create one.
Talia turned around and noticed him standing out on the sidewalk. She gave him a funny look and stood up.
He continued up the walk to the front door, and was on the porch when she opened the door.
“What were you doing?”
He didn’t want to tell her. Didn’t want her to see the chinks in his already tattered armor. She knew some of his secrets but there were some that went too deep, too personal.
“Just making sure you had some quality time with your Gran. I know that you two are really close,” he said.
She reached out and took his hand. “Thank you. It has been different, not seeing her every day. But I think she likes it. She’s pretty feisty. Besides, she never asked to have to raise me.”
“Something tells me she didn’t mind,” Casey said.
“I think you’re right,” Talia said. “I know I said I wanted to stay here, but if I changed my mind…”
“I’d be very happy to have you come back to our place tonight.”
“Our place?”
“I think of it that way now,” he said, but it felt forced. Nothing was resolved between her and Darien. And he knew that there was more to Talia’s retreat than a simple comment from his friend.
