The Arrangement

“Well shit,” he swore under his breath. “I guess she really is Connor’s sister…”

Three

DALLAS

The big truck plunged deeper into the desert, where the light pollution gave way to a billion stars. I liked to drive out here sometimes, when I had nothing to do. To get away from the Vegas suburbs, or just drive in the opposite direction of the strip.

“Water?”

I shook my head as the guy in front — Maddox, he said his name was — flipped the cap down on some big stainless flask. He tucked it away, and I went back to staring out the window.

Connor.

It was over a year now. More than fourteen months since my only brother had been killed in action. That was the Navy’s official report, anyway. Any other answers I’d tried to get from them had been vague and frustrating.

Oh, Connor…

Hands screwing into fists, I waited until my fingernails dug deep into my palms. It allowed me to concentrate on the pain. Distracted me from what I really wanted to do, which was break down and cry.

But I wasn’t crying in front of these guys. No fucking way.

What the hell happened to you?

Forget about life giving you lemons. Mine was filled with three giant curveballs. Three tremendous “fuck you’s” spaced fairly evenly throughout my existence, starting at age ten when my mother contracted cancer. She was dead by my twelfth birthday, and dad died three years after that… presumably of a broken heart.

Our little family of four had been halved just in time for my sweet sixteen, which was about as sweet as biting into a lemon. But through it all, and even afterward, at least I had Connor.

OUCH!

I glanced down, into my palms. I’d drawn blood again. This time on both of them.

Smearing my hands on my sweatpants, I gazed back outside. The moon was just three-quarters full, but it was enough to cast the entire desert horizon in a hazy blue light.

Connor had been the ultimate brother, before and after our parent’s death. He’d been a father figure as well. He was old enough to assume guardianship of me, and we were able to stay in the house we were raised in. The house held memories for us. Memories of fun and family. Memories of holidays, and mom, and dad…

My brother didn’t really raise me, we raised each other. We were a team — totally inseparable. Bound by blood, but also through our baptism by fire. Everything I’d been through, he’d been through… and vice versa.

Graciously, unselfishly, Connor put aside his dreams of enlistment until after my eighteenth birthday. He was twenty-one when he made it to boot camp, and aced the physical screening tests so easily that he was fast-tracked through the Naval Special Warfare pipeline.

Connor became a SEAL, and I became solely independent. Not that I wasn?

?t independent before, but now I was completely, entirely on my own.

I still had my brother though. We still talked and texted and Skyped each other every chance we got. Sometimes he’d even come home, between deployments or stints away. Between the incredibly dangerous things he did that he never really wanted to talk about, and the places where I wasn’t able to reach him.

Those were my favorite memories of all — the times where we’d sit home watching old movies. Talking about mom and dad, while burning different meals together. The two of us were both terrible at cooking. Luckily, we were both great at ordering out.

When you’re a blackjack dealer, nothing really appeals to you about the strip anymore. It becomes work. It becomes standard. The only times I ever really enjoyed going out in Las Vegas was when Connor was home. Because when we got bored of reminiscing — or chasing the ghosts of our past around the house — the two of us would go out and paint the town red together. Or however the hell that expression goes.

But now…

Now Connor was dead. Gone forever, like everyone else in my life. It was something I would never recover from, nor did I want to, nor was I even trying. But somehow, I still woke up every day. I still dragged myself to work, dealt cards for nine hours, and put up with varying degrees of pit-boss bullshit only to come home and crash out in my bed.

And now my bed was gone too…

I forgot all about my hands. The tears started streaming, regardless of whether I wanted them to, and the next thing I knew I was sobbing into my blood-covered palms.

“Hey…”