1
JENNIFER
"Jennifer, what are you doing?"
"Currently?"
I pour the minibar whiskey into the glass, then drink it as if I'm not sitting in my room alone, pretending that I’m in some bar.
Pathetic.
"Drinking cheap hotel bourbon."
"And?"
Anna, my sister, makes the sound. I can picture her in Cedar Ridge right now, probably standing in that kitchen that smells of butter and fresh bread, the baby balanced on the other, her alphas somewhere nearby being large and useful in the way that makes me feel like I wandered into the wrong fairy tale as a child and never fully found my way back out.
I look around the suite and take a slow breath.
Okay. So it's nice.
It is nice, actually. Floor twenty-two, corner suite. The windows are enormous and the Strip is doing its whole thing down below, gold and pink and relentless, which is usual in Vegas. There's a fruit basket on the marble counter that I haven't touched because I'm not here to be nutritious. The champagne isgone. That happened fairly early in the grieving process. I don't regret it.
The envelope is on the coffee table.
I stopped looking at it approximately forty minutes ago and I intend to stay that way until these little babies have hit the right spot.
"With what money?" Anna asks.
"Three hundred dollars."
I carry the whiskey glass to the window and press my free hand flat against the cool glass. Twenty-two floors below, a group of men in matching shirts are doing something enthusiastic outside the casino entrance. A bachelor party, probably. There's always one here.
My scent shifts, which is my baseline, my everyday, the scent my mother used to say meant I was comfortable somewhere. But underneath it something else rises, rose going sharp and acidic, the way it does when I am emotional and trying very hard to pretend I'm not. My omega body, narcing me out to anyone within a twenty-foot radius with functioning scent receptors.
Fantastic. Absolutely love that for me.
I lean my forehead against the glass for just a second. The cold of it is honest in a way the rest of the room is not.
"Here is the short version, because the long version is something I've been narrating to myself for three days and I'm bored of it. Ricardo left."
"What do you meanleft?"
There's no other way to describe it.Anna, left is left.
"Left means gone, far away, to a destination that he didn't disclose."
"Two-time loser. Then again, he could have just taken a break. You said the taco truck wasn't doing well. That's why you took up the job as a stewardess."
I tilt my head to the side, glad that she can't see me right now.
"Well, that was part of the truth. Business wasn't doing well, so I took this job. But he didn't come home. I flew in and saw all his stuff was gone, and his number is out of service."
"Jennifer.Sorry."
Yeah, not as sorry as I am for being one of those women who are so weak they give everything to their men.
"David did that to me. He left me with so much debt. And worse, when you have another mouth to feed too."