Page 91 of Off-Limits as Puck

“Thompson what?”

“Nothing. Just... we need you back.”

But I’m not really listening anymore. The words “empty” and “hollowed out” keep echoing, and suddenly I know what I need to do. Where I need to go to find whatever’s left of who I used to be.

“I gotta go,” I tell him.

“Where?”

“Vegas.”

“What? Why?”

“Because that’s where it started. Maybe that’s where it needs to end too.”

I hang up before he can talk me out of it, already moving toward my bedroom to pack. Three days in Sin City won’t fix anything, but maybe they’ll give me perspective. Maybe standing in the place where Chelsea and I first collided will help me understand how we ended up here.

The flight to Vegas is half-empty, filled with business travelers and tourists hoping to forget their problems in neon and noise. I choose a window seat, watching Chicago disappear beneathclouds, taking with it the only life I’ve ever known.

Jerry:Where the hell are you? Moscow wants an answer by Friday.

Jerry:Don’t do anything stupid. You’re already on thin ice.

Jerry:ANSWER YOUR PHONE

I turn off my phone somewhere over Colorado, cutting the last cord tying me to reality. Whatever happens in Vegas—whatever I find or lose there—can happen without Jerry’s running commentary.

The city looks the same. Same gaudy excess, same desperate energy, same promise that anything could happen if you’re willing to pay for it. But I’m not here for the casinos or shows or whatever entertainment Vegas sells to broken people.

I’m here for the hotel room where everything began.

The Bellagio costs more than I should spend, but Jerry’s been negotiating decent severance packages, and money feels abstract when your life is ending anyway. The suite I book isn’t the same one from two years ago that would be too much cosmic coincidence even for Vegas, but it’s close enough. Same floor, same view of the strip, same floor-to-ceiling windows that made Chelsea look like art.

I sit on the edge of the king-sized bed and try to remember what optimism felt like, believing I had decades of career ahead of me. Chelsea was just a woman in a black dress who danced like freedom and kissed like coming home.

Now she’s gone, and I’m exactly where I started. Alone in a Vegas hotel room, but this time without hope.

My phone buzzes despite being off. Some message that managed to slip through before I cut contact with the world. I check it out of habit, expecting Jerry or Weston or another unknown numberwith another threat.

Instead, it’s a news alert.

BREAKING: Dr. Chelsea Clark and Reed Hendrix Intimate Photos Released

Fucking hell.

I stay in Vegas, in a hotel room that smells like expensive disappointment, and wait for this storm to pass.

Outside my window, the strip pulses with neon and possibility. People down there are falling in love, making terrible decisions, believing in luck and chance and the possibility that tonight might change everything.

I used to be one of those people. Now I’m just someone watching from above, too broken to believe in anything except the certainty that good things end, and people leave and sometimes love isn’t enough to hold the pieces together.

The sun sets over the desert, painting the sky in shades of endings. I don’t know what life felt like before everything turned to ash.

My reflection in the window shows a stranger—hollow-eyed, unshaven, looking like exactly the kind of man who’d destroy his career for someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Looking like someone who’s given up on everything except the hope that she’ll remember Vegas the way I do.

Not as the beginning of our destruction, but as proof that something real can exist, even if only for one night.

Even if that’s all we ever get to keep.

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