“Okay.” Dax picked up his cards, his air of confidence gone.
Maybe he was upset about his hand. I picked mine up as well. I had a pair of threes, an ace of spades, a king of hearts, and a two of clubs. Basically nothing. Should I keep a low pair or hope for another king or ace by trading in three cards?
“Do you want to trade any?” I asked.
“I . . .” He studied his hand again. “Am I trying to get the same suit or make pairs?”
I could feel my mouth drop open before I could stop it. He didn’t know how to play poker? Wasn’t he the one who had spent four months in juvie? Not that I knew what happened in juvie, but I’d imagined poker was one of the things. “You don’t know how to play?”
“Obviously.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not that shocking.”
“It sort of is,” I said with a laugh. “Um . . .” I’d never had to explain it before. “There are several versions of poker but this one is called five-card draw. We each get five cards.”
“Hence the name.”
I smiled. “Right. And then you can trade in up to three of those cards for three more from the stack.”
“Do I have to trade?”
“No. Each hand is valued differently. The best hand is called a royal flush. That’s when you have the same suit of a ten, jack, queen, king, and ace. You can have a straight flush . . .” I paused, realizing this was going to take forever to explain. Plus, he was staring at me with a blank face. I’d lost him.
“Maybe we should just play and I’ll teach you as we go. In fact, let’s just show our hands for the first couple rounds and then I’ll say what I would do if I had that hand.”
I placed my cards faceup on the table. “So see, I have a pair of threes and then not really much else. Ace is high card, though, so if both of us ended with the same hand, I could win with the ace. But if you had any other higher pair, you’d beat my threes. So I was thinking of keeping my face cards and trading in my threes and two. Am I making any sense?”
“Yes.” He put his cards faceup. He had two sevens, two jacks, and a five.
“You punk. You already have me beat.”
“So this is a good hand?”
“Well, sort of. I mean, it’s really the third lowest. Seven hands can beat it, but that’s assuming I get one of those seven hands. A full house would be better. So definitely trade in your five and hope for a jack or a seven. But at this point, either way you’ll probably beat my hand.”
He handed me his five and I flicked him a card, faceup on top of the ones in front of him. It was a seven.
I huffed. “You lucky SOB.”
“Did you just call me an SOB?”
“Sorry. That’s what my dad always says to his buddies when they’re playing. I forgot what it stood for until after I said it.”
He looked at the card. “I take it I just upgraded my hand.”
“Four slots, yes.” I placed my threes and two facedown next to the stack and drew three more. I got a friend for my king but the other two were an eight and a jack. “So a pair of kings. Basically the lowest hand. You won.”
“What do I win?”
“Well, if we had bet anything, you would’ve won the bet. But since we didn’t, you win the honor of knowing you won your first hand of poker.”
He didn’t respond.
“So, do you want to play for something?” I asked, meeting his dark eyes.
“We already established that you have nothing,” he said.
“We could play for secrets. Questions.” I had a feeling this was the only way I was ever going to get to know Dax, because he certainly wasn’t volunteering any history about himself. And despite my better judgment, I was curious about why he was the way he was—the dark, withdrawn loner.
CHAPTER 9
“Were you hustling me?” I asked after an hour of playing. We’d long ago stopped showing our hands. He’d picked up the game easily. He didn’t quite know which hands beat which, or so he claimed, but that didn’t matter; he was still beating me nearly every time. I was glad he’d turned down my offer of playing for secrets. “You already knew how to play, didn’t you?”
“Nope.”
“You hiding cards up your sleeves or something?” Without thinking, I grabbed his hand, flipped it palm up, and ran my fingers along his wrist. I could now see his tattoo clearly. Three numbers. 7, 14, 14. My finger traced the numbers without my permission . . . or his.
He met my eyes. “I don’t cheat.”
I pulled back my hand. “It was a joke.”
He gathered his cards together and handed them back to me. “Maybe you need to shuffle better.”