Play Dirty

by JA Huss

“What’s it say?”

  “It just all goes to you. That’s all.”

  “What did it used to say?”

  “It all went to the club.”

  “What club?”

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh. I didn’t realize. I thought you knew?”

  “What club, Mom?”

  “The Barrister Club. His club. His sex club. He gave all his money to them. It was part of the… deal, I guess.” She shrugs. “Some mutually assured destruction pact they had. He sold you out so many more times than you knew, Jordan. And I’m sorry. I should’ve left and taken you with me, but that was a losing battle if ever there was one. He’d never give you up. You were his legacy. So I stayed. I did it for as long as I could, but the other night, after you left, and I saw what he’d done, what my staying had done to you, I decided I’d had enough. And then your friend came and told me she owed you. And did I have a way to help her pay you back?”

  “And you did,” I say.

  “I did. I injected succinylcholine into his ass while he slept.” She smiles. And if she wasn’t my mother, she might scare me. But the smiles fades and so does the fear. “It’s the perfect poison. He did die of a massive heart attack. He was sick. And if I had left him alone, he’d be dead in less than a year. But if I had left him alone that Club would’ve gotten your inheritance. Would have gotten you, because they’d have dangled that money in front of you and promised you the one thing you thought you needed above all else. And even though you and I both want to think you’d resist and say, ‘No, thank you’… you wouldn’t have, Jordan. Because your father groomed you to say yes. It was inevitable.”

  “Holy. Fucking. Shit,” I say.

  “Holy fuckin’ shit,” she repeats. “He was a goddamned genius. A very sick genius.”

  “That’s why he didn’t want me to buy the old Turning Point building?”

  “That’s why. You already had a club. He didn’t want you to have an alternative. That’s why he bought it back when it went on the market. I always knew he did. I saw this coming because I was the one who made him sell the old club. The one your friend’s bought. I’ve heard they ran it well. I’ve heard it was a nice place. Your father’s clubs? They were… not so nice. So Chella didn’t talk me into anything, she was just… a perfectly-timed catalyst. Please don’t blame her.”

  “And Augustine? And Alexander? What—”

  “Blackmail,” she says. “He saw Ixion come home and was afraid the two of you would become close again. Not that way, Jordan. He was afraid the two of you would figure out the part he played in Ixion’s family’s death. So he looked up Augustine and Alexander and blackmailed them. Oh, they don’t know anything about Ixion. They had no part in that. But your father knew the moment Ixion returned you two would grow close again. He wasn’t worried about you being bisexual. I’ll give him that credit. He was worried about you finding out he had them killed.”

  “But why did he do it?”

  “Because Ixion’s father found out that Ix took the blame for you. That’s why. Your father couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen. He was a sick, sick man. So he brought your other friends back and used them to get to you.”

  “Alexander’s family,” I say, putting the final piece into place.

  “They are as dirty as they are old. He was the only one to make a clean break. And your father threatened to take it all away.”

  “So they…”

  “So they came. And they tried to tell you so many times. Augustine is a lovely woman, Jordan. We’ve talked extensively since she came to Denver. I reached out to her that very first week I discovered she was here. She loves you still. I don’t know what you feel for her, but she did this for you. And Alexander didn’t just go along. He was invested not only for himself, but for what you were to them. They didn’t want to lie to you. They were sick over this whole thing. But I told them to do it. And I told them to trust me. And I told them to be patient. And they did. So please don’t blame them either.”

  “Jesus. Fucking. Christ,” I say.

  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” she repeats. “I am a goddamned game player.”

  I just look at her and laugh. I can’t help it, I laugh. Because my fucking mother is the genius in this game. She is the game master. Not me. Not my father. Her.

  “And if there’s one thing your father taught me over these last thirty-odd years, Jordan… it’s how to play dirty.”

  EPILOGUE

  So… weird.

  Turning Point was finally mine. It was all I could think about for the past six months. And hell, if I’m being totally honest with myself, for the past year and a half since it closed down.

  And then that day came when my inheritance was truly mine. That building was truly mine.

  So ironic… that when all that finally happened, when I’d finally gotten the only thing I thought I wanted… I didn’t want it anymore.

  I gave the house to Ixion and Evangeline as an engagement present. And then I threw in the building as a bonus. Signed the whole thing over to them.

  Ixion was always a good guy. He just never knew it. When he told me that story of why he was in jail up in Wyoming—that day I bailed him out and brought him back home—well, that sealed his fate, I think.

  He’s just a guy who wants to help. Just a guy who wants to do the right thing.

  And he did, I knew he would

  Turning Point is now called Safe Place. They partnered with Smith and Chella and combined their gyms for troubled teens with the six-floor building that is now sort of a foster home, I guess.

  And looking back, I don’t even recognize myself back then. Don’t have any clue why I was so consumed with the idea of that club. Don’t know why I’d ever want to go back and have sex with strangers.

  Because the two people I belong with were always there in my past, waiting for me to forgive myself and come home.

  I found them in LA.

  I went to the Cheeseman Park condo, but they were gone. The leasing agent told me that the condo was under my father’s name, and so it actually belonged to me. He even gave me their address.

  So I found them in LA.

  I was surprised to find them in the old Westwood condo, the very same one we all lived in together all those years ago. They told me they sold it, but it was a lie. Just in case shit went askew in Denver and they needed to lie low.

  I don’t hold that against them though.

  It was a long, messy week of arguments, and accusations, and begging for forgiveness. On all sides. Mine, as well as theirs.

  But the really cool part is that we got past it. And the even cooler part is… now I know what he whispers in her ear when he’s driving her crazy with lust. It drives me crazy too.

  I mean, how could I hold all that shit back in Denver against them? They were up against a master. My father made the rules of the game and then he put them on the board and told them to play.

  And I owed them my forgiveness, though that’s not why I gave it.

  I turn over in bed to find Augustine’s naked breasts in my face.

  “Good morning,” she purrs, still half asleep.

  “Good morning,” Alexander says, reaching around her waist to pull her close.

  Our eyes meet over the top of Augustine’s bare shoulder and we share a crooked smile.

  “Good morning,” I say, taking my turn.

  Because we’re a chain reaction.

  A triple bond.

  One of those rare things in nature that are held together not by attractive forces alone, but by something much stronger.

  By love. And commitment. And friendship.

  Maybe it doesn’t work, but if we fail, it won’t be because we were afraid to try.

  It’ll be because we tried and failed.

  START TAKING TURNS NOW

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End of Book Shit! This is the part of the book where I get to say anything I want about the book and you can read it or not. :) They are
never edited and always written last minute right before I upload the files to the distributors so there will be typos and you should ignore them!

  So wow. 2018 started out with a twisted psychological thriller called Total Exposure and six months later the series is complete. Four full-length books in six months. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. Add in the Julie & Johnathan books (Original Sin series if you haven’t heard of them) and that’s eight books. I’ve released eight books in 2018 and it’s only June. I have definitely never done that before.

  So in a previous book in this series I said something in the EOBS like… We’ll see if I can pull this off. (Referring to the story ARC of the Jordan’s Game series) You never know if you can do a thing until it’s done.

  Well… I think I pulled it off. And I’m really happy with this last book. I think all the books in the Jordan’s Game series came out well. Total Exposure isn’t a book for everyone because it’s psychological and kinda slow. But it’s deep. And I think the poems in there are cool.

  Pleasure of Panic was just your classic JA Huss romantic suspense. I mean, you could compare that book to Guns or Panic in the Rook & Ronin Series. Books I wrote back in 2014. And that’s all I wanted out of it. I had just come off writing the second book in the Original Sin series with Johnathan and those books were intense. I just wanted Pleasure of Panic to be fast-paced and sexy with a big reveal at the end.

  I had the most fun writing The Boyfriend Experience. I really loved bringing back the Rook & Ronin characters and meeting Vivi Vaughn. And the whole Shrike Bikes thing was a hit with the fans. And the book had a little bit of suspense but not a lot. Most of it was just two people thrown together though circumstances and hitting it off. The ending there was big, but not dangerous.

  So Play Dirty probably wasn’t what you were expecting. Some of it wasn’t what I was expecting either because that’s just part of my writing process. I like to make things up as I move through a series and box myself in a little bit. I’ve talked about this before in the EOBS of Meet Me In The Dark. How Merc (the main guy in that book) was in so many books before he finally got his own story. And how it mapped out his life in a very non-linear way. So when it finally came time to write his story I had a lot of constraints. And that’s pretty stressful if you’re a writer. You have to constantly go back and look to see what you wrote (off the cuff, most of the time) in previous books so you don’t fuck everything up. You have to keep them on a timeline, because even though the character’s backstory didn’t start out linear, by the time he’s the main hero, it IS linear. Everyone’s life is linear. So you gotta go back and piece things together so it all fits and makes sense.

  This is probably the hardest part of writing mysteries and suspense and that’s why not everyone can do it. And I’m not saying I’m special, because you know, everyone has their talents and one isn’t better than another. It’s just… this whole putting the previous puzzle pieces together in an unexpected and new way is sorta something I’m pretty good at. My imagination sees around corners. I know how to fit that square peg into that round hole.

  So I’m pretty happy with how this series turned out. My main goal was to write standalones and I think I did that well. Yes, there’s some crossover because all the Jordan’s Game books share the same world, but for the most part you can jump into the series at any point and be just fine.

  I suppose some readers might think—Did Jordan really need all these books?

  And I say – YES. Most definitely. I’ve been building his character arc since the very first chapter of Taking Turns where he was just a nobody. And throughout that series he grew, and got more involved, and kinda found his place in the world. So when I started Total Exposure he knew that place. He was kinda settled in. But he wasn’t quite ready to take his own journey yet. It really did take all four books for us to see the whole story behind Jordan Wells. We needed to meet all the players and get all the details. So that’s why I started introducing Jordan’s father early. I always knew he’d play a part in Jordan’s final ending but I didn’t really know what that looked like. I just knew they had a fairly good relationship, Jordan cared about his opinion, and even though his father knew about his “games” he wasn’t interested in flaunting his lifestyle in front of him. That’s why Finn was on the lookout in The Boyfriend Experience. That’s why I mentioned his dad’s heart attack. I always knew his father was gonna die at the end of book four, I just wasn’t sure how Jordan would feel about it.

  And that house. I knew the family was dead in book one I just didn’t write it into the story because I wasn’t sure why they were dead. I just knew it was a pretty tragic story to walk into someone’s house and see all their stuff left behind. And then to find out later that it wasn’t left behind, it was… forgotten.

  And the Club. I knew Alexander and Augustine “owned” it back in Pleasure of Panic. I just didn’t yet know who was pulling all their strings.

  Another cool thing that all came together was Washakie Ten, Wyoming. I chose that town back in Total Exposure because I liked the name, it was in the right part of Wyoming, and it was too small. Way too small for such big things to happen. Which isn’t true. Big things happen everywhere eventually. So when Jordan decided to take off at first I was gonna have him go up into the Colorado Mountains. Aspen or Vail. Probably Vail because I write about that place a lot. But then I remembered Ixion was living in Washakie Ten. And I never did explain why he was up there. He didn’t know why, so I didn’t need to know why either. Back then, anyway. But people come to terms with things over time, and so Ixion did this (even though it was all in my head and not on the page) and he decided he was up there because he’d been there with Jordan at some point. Some good point in their friendship. So it all added up.

  I was a little worried about Chella’s baby being born in Boyfriend and not mentioning it. But there was no room in that story for Jordan’s side business. It was all Oaklee and Lawton. So I made Jordan wait until Play Dirty to go see Chella. Don’t hold that against him, it was all my fault.

  And Chella… will she ever stop showing up in new books? She has seven books now. Almost as many as Rook. I think these two must be my favorite girls, what do you think? ;)

  There are two themes running through this book and this series and they are:

  Be yourself.

  And.

  Don’t quit.

  Pretty simple themes that ended up embedded into some pretty complicated stories. And I think the last line of Play Dirty is probably the best last line I’ve written in a long time.

  Maybe it doesn’t work, but if we fail, it won’t be because we were afraid to try.

  It’ll be because we tried and failed.

  Because it’s so true.

  You cannot win the game if you don’t play.

  There will be a Happily Ever After book for the Turning Series and Jordan’s Game. When… I mean, ideally it would be Christmas 2018. But we’ll see. I have like seventeen projects going at the moment and I don’t want to promise anything I can’t deliver. And I don’t want to stress myself out about it because I have been writing non-stop since October 2017 and um, yeah. I need to take a break from deadlines and pre-orders now. :)

  My next book is releasing in mid-July and it’s a Julie & Johnathan book. And I have to tell you – I LOVE THIS BOOK!!! Love it. Love, love, love it.

  It’s a true romantic comedy. Because holy shit, that fucking Johnathan is funny as hell. I guess there’s a reason they put him on TV to make people laugh. We haven’t released the title of the book yet but we’re having a cover reveal on July 9th, so if you’re reading this after July 9th, 2018, you’re in luck. You can just go to www.HussMcClain.com and take a peek at it.

  Also, if you’ve stumbled into this series and didn’t read Taking Turns, Turning Back, and His Turn (collectively called The Turning Series) then you should really go do that. (Just visit my website at www.jahuss.com/the-turning-series to get the links) because you’ll meet Che
lla for the very first time. And Smith. And Lucinda, and Bric and Quinn, even though they’re not really mentioned much in Jordan’s Books. And yes, Jordan makes appearances in all three Turning books. But most of all you’ll enter the world from the beginning. See the Club the way it was and not the way it is now. Get a better understanding of why this place was so important to Jordan.

  And one final thing before I go… Thank you, Jordan. For being the guy you are to the person we both know. And for lending me your name in these books and being a good sport about where it all went. The story you two share inspired me and that’s pretty cool. And remember, it’s all fiction…

  …or is it? ; )

  Julie

  JA Huss

  June 21, 2018

  Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and I’ll see you in the next book!

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JA Huss never wanted to be a writer and she still dreams of that elusive career as an astronaut. She originally went to school to become an equine veterinarian but soon figured out they keep horrible hours and decided to go to grad school instead. That Ph.D wasn’t all it was cracked up to be (and she really sucked at the whole scientist thing), so she dropped out and got a M.S. in forensic toxicology just to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible.

  After graduation she got a job with the state of Colorado as their one and only hog farm inspector and spent her days wandering the Eastern Plains shooting the shit with farmers.