Page 104 of All In
“Jesus.” He turned away from me to wipe his eyes on his sleeve. He heaved several deep, shaking breaths, then turned his gaze back to the empty gallery.
“It’ll be at Carnegie,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It’ll be there forever.”
“It will,” I whispered, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “And we can go see it any time.”
Theo nodded. He took one more deep breath in and exhaled. “I love you.”
It was so simple it almost went straight past me.
I love you.
I looked at him, leaning back a little, stunned. He turned his head to me, his eyes still wet and red-rimmed. “I love you. I’m done keeping it inside. I’m done being afraid to speak what I feel because what I feel for you…” His hands came up to my head, around my cheek and under my hair. His handsome face was no longer chiseled in stone, but open and naked and raw. “I love you. I’m in love with you and I will be for the rest of my life.”
Deep in my heart, the answering echo, rising to the surface after being denied so long. Pushed down and ignored out of my own guilt. Dismissedout of worry what others would think. Buried because of my own fear of putting my heart in another’s hands, stepping back up to the table and going all in one more time, risking everything.
What if I lose?
I looked at the man next to me and knew that no matter what happened, I’d already won.
“I love you too,” I whispered. “I love you, Teddy. I do. I’m in love with you.”
His face crumbled even more, and he struggled to take in a breath. “God, I wanted to hear that for so long,” he said, pulling my forehead to his. “I’ve loved you for so long.”
“I’ll tell you every day of our lives,” I said against his mouth. “I’ll say it a million times. I love you. I’m so in love…”
My tears were streaming over his fingers now, gathering in the upturned corners of my mouth. We kissed then. Kneeling in the wreck of the stripped gallery amidst shattered glass, we kissed to seal our words, and then rose from the floor to go.
“Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure,” Theo said, staring with wet eyes at the empty space a final time. He looked down at me. “Something Dena told me.”
He engulfed my hand in his, his lips brushed mine. “Kace,” he whispered. “My treasure.”
PART III
All in (n) (poker):1. when a player has moved all of their chips into the pot; an all-or-nothing bet.
CHAPTER
FORTY
Gloria Ng’s nail salon was empty. AFOR LEASEsign hung askew in the window, the name and number of a realtor’s office beneath it.
I cupped my hands to the glass, peering inside. Nothing but vinyl flooring and drywall. Exposed pipes where the pedicure tubs had been. Six hundred square feet sharing an interior wall with Vegas Ink.
I could knock that wall down myself.
A slow grin spread over my face, tempered by a pang of ball-clenching fear. This was it. The solution to my problem of Vegas’s market being too shitty and VI being too small.
But if I bought both… If I renovated and redecorated…
“Fuck me,” I muttered.
Nah, I’m good, thanks,Jonah answered.
A small laugh erupted out of me. It morphed into an all-out gut-buster, and I leaned against the window, laughing like an idiot. Mostly because I could.
In the two weeks since the installation was moved out of Vegas, I could finally think of my brother without a sledgehammer of pain whacking me in the chest. It still hurt. It would always hurt. But I’d purged the poisonous grief and what remained was cleaner. The pain had a peace in it. I couldthinkabout Jonah now. I had all of him back—his voice, his laugh, his stupid jokes, and the way he’d turned globs of colorless glass into fucking masterpieces.
Jonah gave me the money to build a future. He gave me his blessing to build it with Kacey. He took the shapeless glass of my life and blew potential into it. Hope. Now it was my turn to finish the job.
