The Hothead

by Myra Scott

  Devin cracked a sad smile at that.

  “Were you working that night?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Devin said. “I only caught glimpses of it, though.”

  “It’s insane,” I said. “I can’t believe it got to that point, but I guess everyone has their limits. Anyway, by the end of that, I thought I was going to get cut out of the partnership. I said some things I’m not proud of, but I’ve got to stick to my guns, you know?”

  “Why?” Devin asked suddenly, and I raised an eyebrow at him, a little surprised. He looked like he regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth, and he didn’t say anything else.

  “Because it really is hurting the business,” I said. “Zane even admitted it. He finally talked to Diego and cooled off the partnership, but now I’ve just got more to worry about—it’s only temporary. He’s going to get the security system installed, and Mick and I are getting a chance to hire and train more people, and then everything goes back to normal, with me miserable and the two of them flaunting their relationship for everyone to see.”

  “It sounds like the business isn’t the problem, Gage,” Devin said, this time with a little more courage. I noticed that his drink was suddenly almost all gone.

  “What?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrow.

  “You heard what I said,” he insisted, straightening up a little bit. “Gage, I know you’re hung up on Zane, but this isn’t you. This isn’t healthy.”

  “What do you know?” I asked, feeling my face get a little red.

  “I know you, Gage,” Devin said emphatically, slapping the table. “We talk about this constantly. You talk about this constantly, and it makes you a different person! You can be the most charming, kind, sweet person I’ve ever met most of the time, but as soon as anything in the conversation comes remotely close to Zane, it’s like someone flipped a switch in your mind, and that’s all you can think about.”

  I had no words. I just stared at Devin in disbelief. I’d never seen this kind of fire from him, but once it started coming out, he didn’t show any signs of being ready to stop. He stood up and grabbed the bottle of vodka to start making himself another drink.

  “And honestly, Gage, it sounds like Mick might be trying to help you out, and maybe you should listen,” he said, looking me right in the eye. “You need to get over Zane, Gage.”

  “Okay, I didn’t bring you up here so you could judge me, Devin,” I snapped, taking a step back and feeling my heart pounding.

  “No, of course you didn’t,” Devin said, and I realized there were nearly tears in his eyes. “You came here to talk to me about Zane like you always do. You brought me up here to use me as a shoulder to cry on, and maybe to jack you off if you can forget about Zane for a few seconds of your life and look around for someone who actually cares about you!”

  “Devin,” I said, my face falling, guilt hitting me like a ton of bricks. “I’m sorry about last time, I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m sure you didn’t mean it,” Devin said. “But it happened. It came out because you can’t get over Zane, and it’s getting insane, Gage!”

  I clenched my jaw. “So?” I retorted. “You’re one to talk, Devin. You told me yourself that you’ve got your eyes on someone in the casino, but you won’t even work up the courage to talk to him. You just mope around and let him torture your feelings before you come vent to me about it. Why don’t you just go tell him how you really feel?”

  “Fine, I will!” Devin nearly shouted, standing up and downing the rest of a nearly full drink before slamming the glass on the bar so hard I was worried it would break. He glared at me with sharper eyes than I’d ever seen in a man, and he took a step toward me.

  Before I could do anything to react, he cleared the ground between us, wrapped his hand around the back of my head, and kissed me. It was hard, hot, and fast, and when he broke away, that same angry, fiery look was in his eyes as he took a few steps back.

  “It’s you, you unbelievable, gorgeous idiot!” he gushed, tears flowing from his eyes.

  My jaw dropped, but Devin didn’t give me time to get a word in edgewise.

  “You’re the one I’ve had a crush on since we first talked! How could you not notice? I’m here every time you ask. I laugh at every joke you make. I’m a nervous mess around you. And I play therapist every time you want to talk about this guy who doesn’t even give you a second glance. And do you know why, Gage? Because you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. You’ve got a heart bigger than this whole casino, and when you know how to use it the right way, goddamn it, Adonis himself would be jealous of you! You’re caring and you know how to flirt, and I feel just so goddamn comfortable around you, and…”

  He moved his hands as though struggling for more words, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything either.

  “…and I can’t stand you lately!” he finally said, wearing the most desperate gaze I’d ever seen in my life. “You’re obsessed, Gage, because you can’t get a grip on that beautiful heart of yours! All you ever talk about is Zane this, Zane that, and you’re destroying your career and lashing out at anyone who tries to help you!”

  “Devin—”

  “No!” he shouted. “I’m going to say all this, and you’re going to listen! I’ve been trying to open up more to you so much these past few weeks, and all you ever give back is bullshit. I just tried to tell you everything that’s been weighing on my mind, and as soon as you could turn it into something about Zane, you ran with it. I can’t do this anymore, Gage. I’m so fucking head over heels for you that I can’t stand it, but if this is how you’re going to treat me, I’m done. I don’t want to be friends anymore!”

  With that, Devin stormed out of the lounge faster than I had a chance to react, and the door slammed behind him.

  I was alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - GAGE

  I was completely stunned.

  My body felt heavy, and I plopped onto the barstool behind me, staring at the door where Devin had been a few moments ago. I felt like I’d just been hit by a freight truck.

  For longer than I could keep track of, I just stared at the door, my mouth hanging open. I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe I thought Devin would magically reappear if I waited long enough. Maybe I would snap out of all this and realize that he’d been standing in front of me this whole time, talking about something I’d been ignoring.

  But no, this was reality. Devin was gone, out the door, probably already in the elevator by now.

  I reached over for the bottle of vodka and just took a pull from the bottle straight, not bothering to pour it into a glass. I needed it if I was going to process what had just happened.

  And the more I tried to process it, the more I felt like my heart was sinking into a deep, cold abyss.

  This was the one part of my life that I had thought I had under control. Devin had been my one constant through this all, my safe harbor in the storm. He was someone I could confide in, leave all my burdens with, and just be open and honest with.

  Or so I had thought.

  I’d been taking him for granted this whole time. The realization washed over me as if I was receiving some terrible diagnosis at the doctor’s office. I hadn’t just been a bad friend, I’d been a manipulative one. I’d turned a blind eye to this sweet, caring man’s advances for so long. I’d just treated him like a friend with benefits.

  And now, he had just walked out of my life.

  I had nobody to blame but myself. I was such a fuckin’ ass.

  Everything I’d held back after my last talk with Zane came spilling back into my heart, and I wanted to break down weeping right there in the lounge, alone with my bottle of vodka and my hot regrets. It was painful, and the finality of that slamming door had hurt more than any dagger he could’ve driven into my back.

  My memories started coming to the surface—every time I
spoke with Devin the past few months, every time we’d locked eyes or touched, every time I handled his manhood and felt his cock pulsing in my hands. It had all been so much more sincere than I assumed.

  And that thought wasn’t unpleasant.

  In fact, it was nice. It was really nice.

  As I sat there feeling the alcohol slowly working its way into my bloodstream and making me feel blissfully numb in all the right places, I realized that with my inhibitions down…Devin was the one for me.

  My eyes went wide, even though there was nobody in the room to see it. I stood up and made my way to the windows to stare out at the Strip. While that was usually a calming posture for me, I felt my heartbeat getting faster with every passing second.

  It felt like my whole world had been turned upside down.

  How could I have been so blind this whole time? How could I have ignored Devin, who was right in front of me? He might as well have been holding big flashing neon signs up to himself, but the more I thought about our meetings, the more I realized just how selfish I’d been.

  Every time he tried to get close to talking about his real feelings, I ended up shutting him down because…because he was right.

  I was obsessed with Zane.

  But what I was really obsessed with was the idea of Zane. I was taking everything that I liked about Devin and projecting it onto Zane as if he were some kind of surrogate. He was everything I wanted in a man, and it was nothing like who Zane really was.

  I clenched my jaw and tightened my hand into a fist as I looked down at the streets below. Right then, I wanted nothing more than for that glass window to vanish so that I could let myself fall into the inky black night’s sky. It was what I deserved, I thought.

  But Devin deserved so much better.

  Every kind gesture Devin had made to me came flying through my mind’s eye. Every time he’d been there for me and I’d been there for him, it was all one big movie reel I’d been too stupid to notice before. Something had been opened up in me, and now, there was no going back.

  I loved Devin, not Zane. All these feelings I’d been binding up inside my body and projecting on Zane, they were all for Devin and the things he was doing.

  And as soon as that realization hit me, something big changed.

  I felt nothing more for Zane.

  It was like a bolt of lightning had hit me, showing me the light. I suddenly didn’t recognize the Gage who had been pining after Zane all this time, and I felt like he was not just a stranger, but a monster.

  He was someone who’d wasted perfectly good months of his life, for what? For nothing. I had been chasing a phantom, something that didn’t exist and never would.

  For the briefest moment, I felt a huge weight off my shoulders. I was free, free of myself and free from the imaginary love I had for someone who didn’t really exist. And the next moment, my heart swelled up and felt overwhelmed with love for the only person who really did matter all this time: Devin.

  Love was the right word. I knew it. Truer words had never crossed my heart before, and I was going to hold onto them forever.

  But then I looked back to that closed door and felt like it was the lid of my coffin.

  No, I thought. It wasn’t going to end like this.

  I was Gage Taylor. I was a lot of things. I was a lover. I was a gambler. And sometimes, I was a huge, selfish jackass.

  I was a hothead.

  But I was not about to let the one good thing to happen to me in a long time slip through my fingers.

  I made my way back to the bar and slammed the vodka bottle back down onto it, and I turned to storm out the door and slam it behind me.

  I was going to get Devin, and I was going to give him the biggest apology I could come up with, and then, if he would still have me, I was going to make him king of the world. I’d take him on the most elaborate dates he’d ever dreamed of, buy him the most expensive suits, and take that unbelievable dick of his to new orgasmic heights that he could only dream of in his wildest fantasies. I’d…

  God, I was drunk.

  I felt the alcohol making me wobble a little on my way to the elevator, but the sheer adrenaline pumping through my system kept it from being too debilitating. I had enough willpower in me to make it happen.

  Before I got to the elevator, I whipped out my phone. To my relief, the words weren’t swimming before my eyes on the screen. I must not have been that drunk. I didn’t have time to spill my heart, though—I had to get a word out to Devin before he left forever.

  I pulled up my texts and wrote out a single word:

  Wait…

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - DEVIN

  I stormed down the hallway and slammed the heel of my hand into the button that would open the elevator doors. I could feel every thumping beat of my heart, and adrenaline pumped through my veins. I could not believe what I had just done. How long had I been friends with Gage? How long had I been in love with him? How could I have let my feelings go unsaid all this time? And now that I had exploded and exposed my secret in such a dramatic way, what was going to happen to us?

  I knew the answer already: our relationship, whatever you might call it, was over now. For good. In one split second of pure emotion, I had destroyed what little affection I had built up between us. I ruined everything single-handedly. Just because I couldn’t take it anymore: the constant talk about Gage’s obsession with Zane, the way his feelings for another man overwhelmed and overshadowed our every interaction, every conversation. Hell, I still had not recovered from when he called me Zane while we were getting intimate. That, I reminded myself, was a huge betrayal. Of course, my heart was broken, and of course, it was unfair for Gage to expect me to just play along and accept whatever scraps I could get while he directed the bulk of his affections toward a guy who was already happily taken.

  I was so torn. On the one hand, I kind of felt like he deserved this. He deserved to be told off, to hear the cold, hard truth that I had been keeping quiet all this time. It wasn’t right, the way he treated me, and I knew I deserved better than to be kept on retainer as a last resort. I deserved to be more than someone’s second choice or knock-off surrogate. I deserved to be someone’s first choice, the man he would think about first in the morning and last at night. I deserved true love and dedication, not Zane’s cast-offs.

  But on the other hand, I could not imagine my life without Gage in it. I could not picture how hollow and empty I would feel, trudging into work at the Sentry every day, dreading having to see Gage walk by. It was difficult being his friend. I couldn’t deny that. It hurt me deeply to play second fiddle to Zane. But how much worse could it feel being… nothing? Knowing that the friendship, with or without benefits, I had with Gage was now over forever. It broke my heart. What would it be like working here now? Who would make my heart flutter? Who would I look forward to seeing every day? Whose face would I dream about at night, smiling at me with those gorgeous hazel eyes as he runs his fingers back through ginger hair?

  There were so many questions floating around in my head, and not enough answers. It hurt to even think about it too much, but I couldn’t force myself to think of anything else. It was too fresh, seared into my mind. I closed my eyes and instantly the image of Gage’s face, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, staring at me in surprise, came floating to the forefront of my thoughts. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just made a mistake I would regret all my life. But perhaps it was necessary. The break I needed in order to start fresh, no longer bogged down with the what ifs and unfulfilled dreams that occurred to me anytime I thought about a future with a guy like Gage. What else was I supposed to do, anyway? Just spend all my best years chasing after a man who clearly didn’t want me? How long could that have lasted if I hadn’t put my foot down tonight?

  “I made the best choice I could have made under the circumstances,” I told myself quietly as I stepped into
the elevator. I pressed the button to close the doors and took a deep breath as the elevator went down floor after floor to the parking garage underneath the building. “He didn’t give me any other choice. He was never going to love me the way I love him. He’s already set his sights on another man. Nothing I could do would have changed that fact. Gage doesn’t belong to me, and never will. Time to face up to the facts and stop letting my emotions get the best of me.”

  Although I said the words out loud so firmly and resolutely, it felt like my reassurances couldn’t come close to reaching my heart. I was already broken up inside. I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to keep the tears from burning in my eyes. I had to stay strong. I had wasted too much time and effort on Gage already. There was no use crying about it now. I had to make a new beginning and leave my crush on him in the past.

  But as I stood in the elevator, my mind flashed back to the memory of Gage pressing me against the wall, kissing me and groping me with the ravenous hunger of a passionate man. All I could think about was how exhilarating it had felt to pretend he was mine, even just for that short of a time.

  “But remember,” I told myself sharply, “Remember how badly that night ended. Remember how he called you by another man’s name. That hurt. You can’t let him keep hurting you like that.”

  I gave good advice, and I knew it. Even to myself. But god, was it difficult to imagine just… letting go. Even though he clearly didn’t reciprocate my feelings, the fact of the matter was that Gage had been a central part of my life for so long, I didn’t know what my world would look like without him in it. It seemed like a rather dull, dark world, to be honest.

  The elevator doors dinged and slid open with a whoosh. I swiped at my eyes and cleared my throat, straightening my back and trying to walk with confidence out into the empty, darkened parking garage. I had always been a little wary of the parking garage, since I had seen more than enough horror movies to know how dangerous they could be. And it wasn’t just fiction filling my head with ideas, either. Just last week a woman had been robbed in a parking garage across town. So, it was a well-founded fear. Righteous paranoia. Of course, right now, I was feeling pretty low already, so I was less concerned with getting attacked and more concerned with just hurrying to my car and driving home where I could wallow in my self-pity in peace.