Play Me Real (Play Me 4)
Doing anything else just seems too fucking hard.
“So,” Ethan says as I pour us both a couple fingers of scotch. “How’s the new job been treating you?”
I flip him off. “So, what you’re saying is that I should be drinking both of these, then?” I hold up the glasses.
“Shit. If I were you, I’d just be swigging straight out of the bottle. More efficient that way.”
We both laugh, but by the time I hand him his drink, I’m shaking my head. “Christ. How the hell did I end up here?”
“Considering you’ve spent the last decade in and out of some of the worst hotspots in the world and yet you still say that like this casino is Dante’s seventh circle of hell, I’m thinking maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
“Believe me, I tell myself that every damn day. There’s nothing about this city I like, nothing about this hotel I want to be a part of. But I can’t just walk away.”
“Really? Nothing about this city you like?” Ethan raises a brow. “I was pretty sure you liked that gorgeous brunette who busted into your office this afternoon. What’s her name, anyway?”
“Aria.” He’s right. Aria’s the best part of Las Vegas by far, and if I hadn’t come back here I never would have met her. The realization puts everything in perspective. At least until I think about what happened at her apartment tonight—and about how, after an hour with Janet, she probably never wants to see me again.
“You should introduce her to Chloe,” he continues. “I’m pretty sure they’d get along.”
“You got that from a thirty-second meeting with her?”
“You have to admit, it was a pretty unusual meeting.” He grins. “I bet she keeps you on your toes.”
“You have no idea. We met because she works as a cocktail waitress here and she got annoyed enough with Rubinov—the asshole I was just talking to downstairs—that she racked him with her drink tray.”
Ethan bursts out laughing. “Oh, yeah. She and Chloe will totally get along.”
“Chloe goes around racking obnoxious billionaires?”
“Pretty much every chance she gets. God knows, she’s taken me down a peg or five since we met.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t need it,” I tell him with a snort. “You’ve been hailed as the greatest thing for the tech industry since the personal computer. Your ego probably needed to be a little deflated.”
He just smiles at me, looking for all the world like the cat that ate the canary. “I’m not saying anything.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t need to. That shit-eating grin says it all.”
I’m giving him a hard time, but the truth is, I’m happy for Ethan. He’s got his own demons, and just because he doesn’t talk about them any more than I talk about mine, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met and if anyone deserves to be happy, it’s him.
Plus, looking at what he and Chloe are going through with Brandon gives me faith. Aria is another one of the best people I know and if Chloe can live through what she did and love Ethan anyway, maybe, just maybe, Aria can learn to accept my past. My mistakes. It’s a long shot, but this is Vegas. If there’s anywhere on earth to believe in bad odds paying off, it’s right here in this city.
We drink in silence for a couple of minutes, both of us lost in thought. But when I get up to refill our drinks, Ethan breaks out of his reverie enough to ask, “You want to tell me what that was about down there?”
“You mean with Rubinov?”
“Did you nearly choke the shit out of someone else I should know about? If not, then yeah, I want to hear about Rubinov,” he tells me with a smirk.
He’s trying to wind me up, but I decide not to let him. Instead, I just say, “He’s a bastard. A total prick who made his money doing every despicable thing a human being can do. Because of it, he thinks he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants whenever he wants. I beg to differ.”
“I bet you do.” He’s looking at me now, his eyes shrewd and more than a little knowing. It makes me wonder just how much about my past Ethan has figured out through the years. Probably as much as I have about his. Still, the idea that he knows about Dylan, about the shit that happened to him, how he ended up—and my culpability in the whole thing—makes me a little sick. No one needs to know that stuff. Hell, I wish I didn’t know it.
“Still,” he continues after accepting his new drink. “You’re always so in control that it was weird to see you snap like that. I’ve known you for most of a decade a
nd I didn’t know you had that in you.”
Yeah, neither did I. I’ve worked so hard to bury the violent legacy my father left me with, worked so hard to always remain in control, that I forget sometimes how bad my temper can be when I let it loose. Or, at least, I try to forget. “He was talking shit about Aria,” I tell Ethan after a minute, hoping it’s enough of an explanation.
Considering why he’s here and what he wants to do to avenge Chloe, I figure it should be.