The Poker King Returns novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: A Year

I walked out through the middle of the Wren with two hundred people stepping out of my way.

Nobody said a word.

The doors let me out into the cold, and the sign above me buzzed its one pink bird.

I got as far as the middle of the parking lot.

Then I heard his boots on the asphalt behind me.

"Pamela."

"Don't."

"Let me say it once."

I turned around and hit him.

It was not a slap this time.

It was a closed fist against his chest, and then another, and he stood there and took both.

"A year," I said. "You ate my food for a year knowing."

"Yes."

"You slept with me on my father's desk."

"Yes."

"On his desk, Cade."

His gray eyes did not leave my face.

"I'm not going to say it was nothing," he said. "It was the opposite of nothing."

"Then say why."

He pushed his hands into his vest pockets.

"A year ago in October, I carried a tray into your father's office."

"He had an order sheet on the blotter."

"The sevens had bars through them."

I said nothing.

"I had read those cash logs for three months," Cade said. "I knew that hand better than my own."

"And you said nothing to him."

"I stood there with six drinks on a tray and I understood that the man who wrecked me had been feeding me soup."

His voice stayed flat, and that was how I knew it cost him.

"I went upstairs and I packed my duffel bag."

"Why didn't you leave?"

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