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He grinned, tapping his knuckles on the table. “Guess I did.”
I rolled a cuff link between my fingers. “Tell you what, Sawyer—why don’t you make it interesting?”
His eyes sparked with greed. “What are you thinkin’?”
I glanced at Hunt, who said nothing and watched me over the rim of his glass. He knew where I was going with this.
I set my cards down slowly, deliberately. “You win, you keep the cufflinks. Hell, I’ll even throw in my watch.” Everyone looked at my Rolex as I took it off and set it on the table next to thebling-bling-bling. Sawyer’s eyes got bigger. “But if I win?” I paused and then smiled pleasantly at Sawyer. “You pack your shit and get off Wilder land by sunrise.”
The man blinked. “What?”
“You have trouble hearin’ me?” I asked pleasantly.
Roy snickered. Cal chuckled. Hunt drank some more, but he was smiling.
He laughed, the sound a little too forced. “You serious?”
“As a rattlesnake in your boot.”
Roy patted Sawyer’s shoulder. “Might be time to fold, boy.”
Sawyer scoffed, but I caught the flicker of nerves in his face. He glanced around the table, searching for someone to back him up, but no one said a damn thing.
They’d all seen me play. I was good when I was twenty, and they figured I’d only gotten better.
I tapped my fingers against the cards in front of me. “You in or out?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. He shoved his last few chips into the pot with some force. “In.”
The room went still.
Roy chuckled, “Boy, you got more guts than brains.”
“No guts, no glory,” Sawyer threw at him.
“Let’s find out,” I said.
The game played out with each player folding. Roy was the first to fold, followed by Hunt and Ben until it was just Sawyer and me as I knew it would be. The boy didn’t have the sense God gave him.
Sawyer grinned, tapping his fingers against his stack of chips, looking surer of himself than he had any right to be. He thought he had me.
“All in.” He shoved his remaining chips forward. They clattered against the wood. “That watch’s gonna look real good on my wrist, boss.”
I barely looked at my cards. I didn’t need to.
I sighed, shaking my head like I was debating. Like, this wasn’t going my way. Then, slowly, I slid my watch and cufflinks into the pot with the rest of the stakes.
"Call.”
Sawyerflipped his cards over, triumphant. He had a full house—eights over queens. He grinned like the son of a bitch he was. “Read ‘em and weep, boss.”
I let the moment stretch just long enough.
He leaned over to take the cufflinks, but I shook my head in warning. “I have two pairs.”
“And? Didn’t you see I have a full?—”
I slowly turned my cards, and he shut the hell up when he saw my two pairs were, in fact, four kings.