Page 76 of Play Fake
“Madden actually kept his mouth shut?”
He knew about the underground casinos, and he didn’t tell me. I don’t know if he told anybody, but he took it upon himself to keep the secret from me.
It gives me little motivation to share my secrets with him. If he can’t trust me, maybe the feeling is mutual.
With everything going on, from discovering my child to running into Ainsley to falling for her and my kid, it’s been a whirlwind of a month. I haven’t had time to think through the fact that my brother never said a word to me about a deep, dark family secret.
It’s only now I’m putting that together.
Maybe we were never as close as I always thought we were. He’s got a girl now, and his focus is there. I guess I’m starting to get that.
I don’t bother calling him. Instead, I book a hotel near the airport, and I find myself boarding a plane from California to Chicago on Thursday evening. It’s been nearly two weeks of hard work, and the chance to just sit and do nothing for a few hours isn’t the worst thing I can think of.
When I land, I find Ainsley waiting at my gate for me with my son. The baby is in his carrier snapped into his stroller, and Ainsley is standing as she watches eagerly for passengers to deplane. I’m one of the first, and she stands by the stroller as she waits for me to stride over to her.
I take her into my arms, and I lower my lips to hers for a brief, airport-friendly kiss.
I lean my forehead to hers. “God, I missed you.” I don’t think I realized exactly how much or how strongly until I got to pull her back into my arms again.
“I missed you, too.”
We take off for the hotel, and it turns out that Ford is staying at the same hotel—something we didn’t actually talk about, but it tracks since it’s close to the airport and not far from where the funeral will be held in the morning.
He’s checking in just ahead of us, and it’s then that I realize I haven’t told him about the baby…or my wife.
I slap him on the shoulder the way brothers do, and he turns with a grimace.
He grabs me into a bro-style hug, and we slap each other on the back as he says, “Bro, watch the shoulder, man. I took a hellish hit yesterday at camp.” He pulls his sleeve up to reveal a dark black and blue mark, and I laugh.
“Shouldn’t have shown me that,” I tease, and I lightly tap him there again. When we were kids, we were fucking ruthless. If one of us had a bruise, it became the mission of the other one to continue punching it as many times as we could.
Maybe we haven’t really grown out of that.
He chuckles, and I glance back at Ainsley.
“You remember Ainsley Riggs, right?” I ask Ford. He’s a little closer to her age at just seven years her senior, so he might’ve been around the house with Ivy a little more than I was.
“Hey, good to see you,” he says. He moves to give her a hug, and I bury the pang of jealousy I feel. It’s just two acquaintances reconnecting.
That’s what we were, too, though.
I brush it off.
“Oh, is this your baby?” Ford asks Ainsley.
She looks at me.
“He’s mine, actually,” I say, and Ford whips around to face me.
“What?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Didn’t the family gossip make its way through the mill yet? I have a kid.”
“You’re a dad?” Ford asks.
“That I am.”
“Daddy Dex,” Ainsley says brightly.
