Page 26 of Texas Hold Em’ (The Devil’s Luck MC #3)

CARRIE

I hovered around Tex like a lost puppy dog the whole evening after going to Grant’s and for the entirety of the next day.

If it bothered him, he didn’t say a word about it.

When he got up from the sofa on Wednesday night where we were watching a movie—his rather desperate attempt to distract me from my dark thoughts—I looked up at him and blurted out that he couldn’t leave.

He’d smiled almost fondly at me, which seemed strange at the time because there was no way my clingy behavior wasn’t annoying.

He’d cupped my cheek and told me he was just going down the hall to the bathroom, which he did.

In his absence, I tried to focus on the movie, but my eyes glazed over, and a different movie scene played over and over again in my mind.

Tex lying on a cold tile floor, bleeding out.

Tex with white skin and blue lips.

Brody screaming at me that we hadn’t done enough.

Jackson falling to his knees when he’d found out what happened.

The others calling me a monster.

When he returned, he went to the pit and lit a cigarette. I joined him out there, standing barefoot on the paving stones, and watched the ember of his cigarette blaze in his eyes.

“Can I have one?” I asked.

“You smoke?”

“I used to when I was in my early twenties and went dancing every weekend.” It had been an easy way to impress drunk boys puffing on primetimes in the back lanes of the city.

I came to enjoy them, and for a brief two-year stint before I joined the Ranger Academy, I’d have a cigarette every now and then when I was stressed.

Tex handed me one and lit it for me.

I took a couple puffs, coughed like a dying pirate, and puffed again.

He smirked. “You’re not very good at that.”

“I’m out of practice,” I croaked.

Tex leaned back against the corner of the doorframe with one hand in the pocket of his jeans while he flicked ash and smoked. He repeated the languid movements, all muscle memory, and if I hadn’t been so queasy with fear, I might have jumped his bones right then and there.

No man had ever consumed me the way he did, though consumed felt like a mild word to describe it.

Possessed seem a tad more accurate.

He’d infiltrated every crevice of my being.

Every vein, every skin cell, every hair follicle, every eyelash, all of it.

He was the last thing I thought of as I drifted off to sleep and the first thing I thought of when I woke up.

It never used to be that way for me. I was an independent, self-sufficient woman, and I never pictured myself as someone who would have so much riding on a guy.

But I did.

Maybe I only felt this way because I felt responsible for his life. Maybe if all this ended well, this obsession would become less intense and I’d be able to leave him behind and go home.

Home.

It seemed so far away now. So out of reach.

How would I ever go back there after this?

I flinched as the end of my cigarette scalded the tips of my fingers. The filter fell to the ground and went out. Tex caught my burnt hand and put my two fingertips in his mouth.

I froze like a deer in the headlights. His tongue was warm but not unpleasantly so. He sucked gently before pulling my fingers from his lips and gently blowing on them. My cheeks burned hotter than my fingers did.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Rookie move, Hart. Rookie move.”

Oh God, I thought as I gazed up at him, my wrist still clasped between his fingers, I think I love you.

“Hart?”

I pulled my wrist free. “I’m okay.”

He chuckled. “Good. Maybe you should steer clear of this shit? Leave it to the professionals.”

I wanted to return his joke and play along. Under other circumstances, I’d have been able to. But not right then. My heart hammered wildly in my chest, as if she had a mind of her own and was trying to tell me how she felt about this man.

Save him.

Save him.

Save him.

But my mind knew the truth of things, and it was simple—this was not my choice anymore. It was his. I’d said my piece. I’d begged him to change his mind. I’d pleaded and cried and screamed at him not to do this, and none of it had worked. There would be no deterring him from his task.

And if there was, would I feel the same way about him that I did? If he wasn’t so selfless, so brave, so damn reckless, would I want him as badly? Selfishly, I wanted to believe that I would.

Tex put out his cigarette and tipped his head inside. “It’s late. We should try to get some rest.”

I knew sleep wouldn’t come, but I went through the motions of getting ready for bed anyway. We stood side by side in his bathroom brushing our teeth. It seemed a terribly mundane thing to do together. I splashed water on my face and he told me he’d meet me in the bedroom .

Alone in the bathroom, I gripped the counter and stared at my own reflection.

Beads of cool water rolled down my cheeks and dripped from the end of my nose, landing soundlessly in the porcelain sink.

The woman staring back at me had lost weight.

Her cheeks weren’t quite as full as I remembered, nor as rosy, and her lips were chapped.

Her eyebrows were thinner from days of anxious and absentminded picking and plucking.

Her hair was disheveled and one might go as far to say unkempt.

Baby hairs around my hairline curled every which way when I usually had them slicked back into my bun.

“Who are you?” I whispered to myself.

Naturally, the woman in the mirror didn’t answer. She continued staring back at me, her blue eyes deadpan and endlessly hollow, like an ocean cave that went on forever, full of truths and horrors both realized and never to be known.

What horrors would I come to know over the next few days?

Who would I see in the mirror if I lived to see Saturday morning?

Tex called my name from the bedroom and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Coming,” I called back, my voice shaking as my grip on the counter tightened and white-knuckled.

I didn’t want to go to bed. If by some miracle I managed to fall asleep, I’d wake and be one day closer to Friday night. I wanted to cling to every minute I had and hold it tight.

Instead, I turned off the bathroom light and made my way into the bedroom, where Tex was already in bed with his hands clasped behind his head. His eyes were closed, but he cracked one open when he heard me come in. He watched me undress.

I climbed into bed with him and he enveloped me and pulled me into him. His chest against my back was warm, his heartbeat steady, his breath on the back of my neck hot and reassuring that he was, at least for now, breathing.

He kissed my shoulder. “Goodnight. Try to turn that mind of yours off. You deserve and need rest.”

He buried his cheek into his pillow and nestled in even closer to me .

I clung to my pillow and listened to the silence of the apartment as the minutes passed.

All I could hear was his breathing, and in time, it evened out and he fell asleep.

His grip around my waist slackened, and I found myself mindlessly running my fingers over his knuckles and tracing the veins in his forearm until the feeling was committed to memory.

Eventually, sleep took me too.

My eyes fluttered open.

I wasn’t sure what had woken me, but as I lay in bed, I became aware of several things that weren’t quite right.

Somewhere close by, something dripped in a steady pattern and echoed as if in a well.

It was full night, but a pale blue light shone down on me.

I sat up and shielded my eyes as I looked around and tried to get my bearings.

There, at the end of the bed, sat a man in a chair.

I gasped and scrambled back until I hit the headboard. I drew the blankets up to try to conceal my nakedness as the man chuckled. I knew the laugh before a cigar appeared seemingly out of thin air in his mouth. Smoke curled about his head and glowed blue in the pale light.

He spoke in a menacing mumble that sounded like he had a sound system attached to his voice. The base of it rumbled through the bed and rattled my ear drums.

“Miss Hart,” Walter Bates purred, “I’m impressed. You do good work.”

Good work?

What work had I done?

My mouth formed the shape of words, but my voice was caged in my throat. I clawed at my neck as my voice threatened my windpipes.

Walter Bates stood up and walked around the other side of the bed. I watched, horrified and confused, and he stopped on Tex’s side of the bed and smiled down at the rise under the blankets beside me.

With a flourish, Walter Bates pulled the blankets down.

I tried to scream, but no sound came out.

Tex lay on his back in the bed beside me. He was covered in blood, his skin slick with it, and he was naked. His eyes were wide open and staring unseeing at the ceiling. Blood splattered the headboard, and when I looked down, I realized it was splattered all over me, too.

My palms were dark with his blood. My thighs were stained. My knees, my forearms, my stomach, my breasts—all of me was covered in Tex’s blood as if I’d murdered him and rolled around in it.

Walter Bates began to laugh.

I scrambled out of the bed and landed hard on my ass on the floor. Pain bit into my tailbone and lanced up my spine, but I managed to get to my feet and run to the door.

My way was blocked by a blonde-haired man with broad shoulders and angry eyes.

Jackson.

“What have you done, Carrie?” he asked, his voice ghostly and muted before it became a monstrous bellow. “What have you fucking done?”

I tried to tell him it wasn’t me. I hadn’t done it. But still, no words fell from my lips. All I could manage to do was whimper and grunt, and this just seemed to make Jackson angrier. He shoved me aside and rushed to the bed, where he fell to his knees beside his dead friend and bowed his head.

I had to get out of here. I had to run.

Austin.

Yes, I needed to go to Austin.

I ran out of the bedroom and into the living room, where Brody stood with a defibrillator in his hands, the paddles held up in front of him as he stared at them in a daze. He looked up at me, his broken heart reflected in his eyes. “Why did you make me do this?” he whispered.

I plunged my fingers into my hair and fell to my knees. There, with my forehead pressed to the cool hardwood floors, I finally managed to scream.