They’d gone quiet, and Casey’s heart felt all warm and mixed-up. The kiss needed acknowledging, that much was clear. Hot as it had been, right as it had felt, they needed to agree it could never be repeated. Last thing this girl needed in her life was another complication.
“What just happened,” he said, trailing off. “That kiss, I mean. That was unexpected. Real nice, but . . .” Tell her it can’t ever happen again, dumb-ass. “Unexpected,” he repeated.
“I know. I wasn’t thinking straight, exactly.”
“Me neither.” He rarely was, not when this woman’s body was within ten feet of his.
“I don’t regret it,” she added.
“No, I don’t either. But given everything you’re dealing with right now, I think we ought to agree not to do that again.” He laid his arm along the back of the couch. “Not to pretend it never happened, but just . . .”
“Yeah . . . But it was real nice, just like you said. Nicest thing I’ve felt in ages.”
He smiled, and in a breath he felt sad. He wished this was last summer. Wished this was the ignorant and blissful world he’d lived in when he first met her, back when he’d had no clue she was pregnant, no clue about her ex, no ties to her aside from his attraction. No ties to Fortuity, so when he inevitably fucked it all up, he could just roll back out of town with his sights glued firmly on whatever came next.
Oops. Should’ve thought of that before you bought a bar and started bonding with her goddamn baby. Shit. He’d gone from a completely free agent to a business owner, boss, babysitter, and bodyguard in what felt like a breath.
Guess when I step up, I step all the fucking way up.
“Tell me about the house,” he said, wanting a distraction, and something familiar and innocent, to settle his racing mind. “Where’d we leave off? Two bedrooms now. Washer and dryer.”
“Tell me about your tattoo,” Abilene countered, her voice spacey and quiet, barely louder than the crackle of the fire.
He glanced at his outstretched arm, his sleeve pushed up to expose the ink on his shoulder. “What about it?”
“Why a horseshoe, but then a thirteen in the middle of it? Doesn’t that kind of cancel out any good luck you’re gunning for?” She traced the simple black design—dark gray, really. He’d gotten it in Vegas during his gambling days, probably seven years ago, now. He shivered at the touch, chest and neck warming in its wake.
“Horseshoe’s only lucky if its ends are pointing up,” he told her. “Like above the entrance to the stables, out back. Like a cup, to catch the luck or something like that.” His was the inverse.
“Oh. Then why on earth would you get an unlucky horseshoe?”
“Because fuck luck.” He smiled at her. “Luck is for idiots. If you’re smart enough, you operate above that bull.”
She looked thoughtful a moment. “You used to count cards, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “It’s legal, even if it doesn’t make you too popular with the pit bosses.”
“Was it just you, on your own?”
“No. I worked with a team of about twelve to fifteen, and we moved around constantly, trying to stay forgettable. You never do, though. But anyhow, fuck luck. Only suckers gamble for real.”
“Huh.”
“What?” he asked. He eyed her hair, curling his fingers into a fist behind her to keep from touching it.
“I dunno. I believe in luck. I mean, it feels like the only thing propelling people through life, some days. I wouldn’t be sitting in this beautiful old house now if it wasn’t for having the good luck of meeting all of you. I wouldn’t have a job, either. Though I wouldn’t have wound up here to begin with if it hadn’t been for a bunch of bad luck. And some good stuff mixed in too, I guess.”
“That’s bullshit,” Casey said. “Bad luck is just what people who make shitty choices blame their problems on.”
She sat up, frowning, looking hurt by that.
“I don’t mean you, honey. Abilene,” he corrected quickly. Can’t go calling the girl “honey,” now, can I? Fucking dangerous territory to go wandering into. Though which of them he was worried about getting attached, he couldn’t say.
“Sometimes our circumstances are out of our control,” he said. “And that’s not bad luck, either—there’s no such thing. That’s just life.”
“I guess,” she said slowly, still frowning, but looking more curious than offended now. “I never thought about it like that. About choices. I always thought I was just getting shuttled around by these things that would happen to me, like a leaf in the wind. I’d end up someplace bad, or maybe someplace good, and I was either scared or thankful about it. I guess I never gave much thought to it being all my doing.”
“Well, not everything is within a person’s control. But it’s not luck—that’s for fucking sure. At the end of the day, there’s always someone to blame. And in my experience, it’s almost always your own self.”
“Huh.”
“Luck’s just an excuse that dumb-asses use so they never have to smarten up.”
She cracked a smile at that. “I’m probably at a point in my life where I’d better learn to quit being such a dumb-ass.”
He shrugged. “I don’t think you are one, but yeah, now’s probably the time to steal a little control back from the world. Luck’s for people who don’t want to make choices. But there’s always a choice, no matter how trapped you feel.”
“Do you ever feel trapped?”
He had to think about that. What he felt now—tied to this town by the business and his commitment to Duncan, tied to his uncomfortable home life by his promise to Vince . . . Trapped wasn’t quite it. Tethered, maybe, but he’d secured every single one of those knots himself.
“I don’t think I’ve felt trapped since I was about twenty,” he decided aloud. “Since I started looking around Fortuity and realized I was on a track to wind up a nobody, in a no-place town, for the rest of my life. ’Til someday I woke up with a bad back from four decades working in the quarry, forced to retire and spend my days bitching with the other old-timers by the Benji’s jukebox. Sounds fucking cocky, but ever since I was a kid I thought I was too big for this place. Had more exciting shit due to me. I feel like an asshole saying it now.”
“You’re not a nobody here, anyhow. You’re a business owner. You’re going to preserve an important part of Fortuity’s past for when the casino changes everything.”
“Yeah, I hope so. But I also know my fifteen-year-old self would’ve been fucking horrified to hear I never made it out of here.”
“But you did. And like you said, it was your choices that brought you back.”
“Yeah.” And now, at thirty-three, a little older and more sentimental, a little more vulnerable to guilt and regrets, Casey could admit that if he was doomed to lose his marbles in the next ten years, that time was better spent doing right by his mom and building some kind of professional legacy that didn’t have him flirting with a place on the ATF’s dance card.
The fire was mellowing; crackling yellow flames turned quiet and orange, lapping lazily at the pink logs. Beside him, Abilene yawned, and in its wake her gaze went to his tattoo again.
“For what it’s worth, I feel real lucky to have met your brother, and you and Raina and Duncan.”
Again, that was choice, not chance—she’d gone to Vince for help. But it was a nice sentiment, so he didn’t contradict her. “And I feel lucky that I’m in a position to be of use to you.”