He smiled, and in a breath he felt sad. He wished this was last summer. Wished this was the ignorant and blissful world he’d lived in when he first met her, back when he’d had no clue she was pregnant, no clue about her ex, no ties to her aside from his attraction. No ties to Fortuity, so when he inevitably fucked it all up, he could just roll back out of town with his sights glued firmly on whatever came next.
Oops. Should’ve thought of that before you bought a bar and started bonding with her goddamn baby. Shit. He’d gone from a completely free agent to a business owner, boss, babysitter, and bodyguard in what felt like a breath.
Guess when I step up, I step all the fucking way up.
“Tell me about the house,” he said, wanting a distraction, and something familiar and innocent, to settle his racing mind. “Where’d we leave off? Two bedrooms now. Washer and dryer.”
“Tell me about your tattoo,” Abilene countered, her voice spacey and quiet, barely louder than the crackle of the fire.
He glanced at his outstretched arm, his sleeve pushed up to expose the ink on his shoulder. “What about it?”
“Why a horseshoe, but then a thirteen in the middle of it? Doesn’t that kind of cancel out any good luck you’re gunning for?” She traced the simple black design—dark gray, really. He’d gotten it in Vegas during his gambling days, probably seven years ago, now. He shivered at the touch, chest and neck warming in its wake.
“Horseshoe’s only lucky if its ends are pointing up,” he told her. “Like above the entrance to the stables, out back. Like a cup, to catch the luck or something like that.” His was the inverse.
“Oh. Then why on earth would you get an unlucky horseshoe?”
“Because fuck luck.” He smiled at her. “Luck is for idiots. If you’re smart enough, you operate above that bull.”
She looked thoughtful a moment. “You used to count cards, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “It’s legal, even if it doesn’t make you too popular with the pit bosses.”
“Was it just you, on your own?”
“No. I worked with a team of about twelve to fifteen, and we moved around constantly, trying to stay forgettable. You never do, though. But anyhow, fuck luck. Only suckers gamble for real.”
“Huh.”
“What?” he asked. He eyed her hair, curling his fingers into a fist behind her to keep from touching it.
“I dunno. I believe in luck. I mean, it feels like the only thing propelling people through life, some days. I wouldn’t be sitting in this beautiful old house now if it wasn’t for having the good luck of meeting all of you. I wouldn’t have a job, either. Though I wouldn’t have wound up here to begin with if it hadn’t been for a bunch of bad luck. And some good stuff mixed in too, I guess.”
“That’s bullshit,” Casey said. “Bad luck is just what people who make shitty choices blame their problems on.”
She sat up, frowning, looking hurt by that.
“I don’t mean you, honey. Abilene,” he corrected quickly. Can’t go calling the girl “honey,” now, can I? Fucking dangerous territory to go wandering into. Though which of them he was worried about getting attached, he couldn’t say.
“Sometimes our circumstances are out of our control,” he said. “And that’s not bad luck, either—there’s no such thing. That’s just life.”
“I guess,” she said slowly, still frowning, but looking more curious than offended now. “I never thought about it like that. About choices. I always thought I was just getting shuttled around by these things that would happen to me, like a leaf in the wind. I’d end up someplace bad, or maybe someplace good, and I was either scared or thankful about it. I guess I never gave much thought to it being all my doing.”
“Well, not everything is within a person’s control. But it’s not luck—that’s for fucking sure. At the end of the day, there’s always someone to blame. And in my experience, it’s almost always your own self.”
“Huh.”
“Luck’s just an excuse that dumb-asses use so they never have to smarten up.”