"You know three words of French and used them to short-circuit Matteo," Tomas says. "He hasn't spoken French in nearly four years."
Matteo says something in Italian that sounds like a correction.
"Cinque," Santos says cheerfully. Five.
"Five years," Tomas translates, without being asked.
"Bonsoir, Jennifer," he says.
His accent is better than it has any right to be.
My scent goes completely rogue. Full strawberry, warm and open and embarrassingly honest, the rose beneath it dropping every pretense of restraint and broadcasting my interior weather to anyone with a functional nose, which at this table, is everyone.
One inhales slowly, his scent sharpening in a way I feel against my skin before I properly smell it. Another reaches me next, dark and controlled, grounding and insistent. A third shifts almost imperceptibly on his stool, his scent barely there, cool and clean, trying very hard to stay quiet.
I wrap both hands around my drink.
I focus on what led me here in the first place, being dumped by an alpha who ran off with an omega I hired to help him with the business.
Also an omega in a Vegas casino at what has to be near midnight, wedged between three gorgeous alphas who smell like a coordinated case for bad decisions. My three hundred dollars is gone. They've been feeding me chips for the last forty minutes. The wheel is spinning. None of this is heading anywhere I didn't agree to, on some fundamental level, about forty minutes ago.
The ball drops.
Black.
I watch the croupier sweep the last of the borrowed chips from my side of the table with the calm efficiency of someone performing a mercy.
"Well," I sigh. "That's that."
Santos looks at the empty felt. Then at me. Theatrical sorrow, clearly performing, somehow still charming. Impressive range.
"Tragic," he says.
"I had a system."
"Red," Tomas says.
"It was working."
"You picked red every time," Matteo says, and there it is again, that almost-smile.
"Consistent," I say. "That's the only way to do it in Vegas."
I look at the empty felt and feel the tail end of the evening arrive. That particular quality of lateness where the magic hour either tips into something real or tips into a cab home and a long, very sober consideration of your recent life choices.
Here is the thing. For one hour, I didn't think about Ricardo, or the truck, or the baby, or the envelope on the coffee table in the suite the airline paid for out of guilt. For one hour I was just the woman in the red dress having a good time at a roulette table.
Santos reaches across, unhurried, and tucks one loose strand of hair behind my ear with a single finger. So gently it almost doesn't register as a touch.
Almost.
"Stay," he says.
I look at him. Then at Tomas, watching me with that quiet that doesn't push but doesn't look away either. Then at Matteo, simply present the way he is always simply present, patient in a way that feels like it could outlast most things.
My rose scent does one small, decisive thing.
"Stay where?" I ask.