Page 26 of Don't Bet On It
I pressed my lips together, panic threatening to get a foothold. Then I forced my brain to clear. “Of course. Whatever you want.”
Her smile never faltered. “Great. I’ll see you in an hour.”
By the time I made it to her office, my anxiety had spiked three times. Each incident had me running through calming techniques that my childhood therapist had taught me. My father thought therapy was a sign of weakness. My mother, who had bulldozed her way through at least twenty therapists in my teen years alone, felt otherwise. She was a big proponent of therapy.
My father said I was high-strung and just needed to modulate my attitude. My mother said I had a lot of feelings that needed to be expressed so I wouldn’t explode. In turn, my father said boys shouldn’t be feeling feelings. My mother, ever the hippie, said he was full of it and to get over himself. She didn’t want me suffering from toxic masculinity.
Back and forth, they went. For years. I assumed—wrongly—that they would divorce when I graduated from high school. Then it seemed natural that they would wait until I was finishedwith college. Even though I had no desire to take over the casino, I’d been forced onto the business track, although I was allowed to take some art classes here and there. My father thought they were good for stress relief. They just couldn’t lead to a career.
My parents never divorced. They were married to this day. Weirdly, as I grew older, I began to understand their dynamic. They were polar opposites and yet fiery when it came to certain things. I didn’t want to think on those things for too long—no child does—but they were apparently compatible in one very important aspect. That allowed them to ignore the fights about everything else.
I hated to admit it—I could always hear my father kibitzing in my ear about how therapy was for the weak—but the coping technique I’d been provided with in my youth helped me well into adulthood. It wasn’t anything fancy. I simply needed to catalog things before intrusive thoughts took over and I started to sweat, literally, through my shirt.
The carpet was purple.
Fifteen cameras were in this section of the hallway.
Three blondes and two brunettes were having coffee in the cafeteria.
Five security guards were talking about the conference hitting tomorrow.
I cataloged it all, and I was calm by the time I reached Marjory’s office. I knocked on her door, which was open, and waited to be invited inside.
She looked up from whatever she was doing on her computer and smiled. “Ronan, please sit.” She gestured toward one of the chairs across from her desk.
I did as I was instructed. “So, I wanted to talk to you about your section,” she started.
“My section?” I had no idea where this was going.
“Yes, your section,” Marjory said. “It seems you’re being upgraded.”
I had no idea what that meant. “Um, how?”
“You’re being put in the high rollers section.”
That was not what I was expecting. I hadn’t been at the casino long enough to earn that distinction. Dealers in the high rollers section got bigger tips. The games were much more cutthroat, usually with no limit on the table. The scrutiny was also more intense. “Why?” I blurted the question before I could think better of it.
“Why?” Marjory arched an amused eyebrow. “You don’t want to throw a party? You immediately jump to why?”
I calmed myself through sheer force of will. “Sorry.” I held my hands out in contrition. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just… I thought it took years to work your way up to that section.”
“It normally does,” Marjory said. “A special request came for you, though.”
“From who?”
“Kyla Conners.”
I had to search my memory for a face to go with that name. “Isn’t she the manager of the servers in that area?” My mind immediately flashed to Tallulah. She was Tallulah’s manager, if I wasn’t mistaken. Why would she want me to join the team?
“She’s the manager of the entire area,” Marjory clarified. “She handles the servers and the dealers.”
“Will I still be doing blackjack?”
“You’ll be doing whatever the high rollers want for the night. It might be blackjack. It might be craps. It might be Texas Hold’em.”
Ugh. That sounded like a lot of pressure. The money would be nice—it might help me reach my goal a lot faster—but theincreased pressure would be an obnoxious trade-off. “Do you know why I was requested?”
Marjory’s eyes lit with amusement. “Does it matter?”
