“Trust me, I haven’t. It’s why I stopped. I needed to think.”

“If you’re waiting for them to latch on to somebody else who can do what you do, then you might as well set up camp in Vermont. I doubt they’ll come hounding you there.” He paused, then said, “But if you’re thinking you might want to come back to the place that is also your home, you know they’ll hound you for a while. Given what you’ve done for them, they’d be stupid not to try. But it’ll settle down; at some point, it has to.”

“Or they’ll burn your house down.”

“Goddammit, Brett, we told you, me, Dad, even Vanetta. We’re not buying that bullshit. Shit happens, sometimes bad shit. Believe in bad karma after so many years of good, whatever. But even the most desperate manager, promoter, or casino owner wouldn’t reach to that extreme.”

“Your naïveté is both touching and amusing, but also dangerous. Wait,” he said, before Dan could launch into a refrain of the argument they’d had far too many times, never with a new result. “I know that world; you don’t. You think I’m living in a fifties’ movie and I know it’s still very real. It’s all beside the point. It’s more about what I want, what I’m willing to risk, and how much shit I’m willing to put up with if what I want is to still live in Vegas.”

There was a much longer silence this time, then, “You think you really might not want that?”

“I don’t honestly know,” Brett said, never more utterly truthful.

“You have some other place in mind where you think you should be?”

“Again-”

“Like Vermont, where the mountains apparently aren’t snowy and a guy can get laid regularly?”

“Because you’re pissed off and worried about me, I’m not going to beat your face in when I see you, but…tread carefully there, my friend.”

“So…it is like that.”

“It’s like…I don’t know. But I know enough to realize that it’s like something I’ve never encountered before.”

“Okay,” Dan said, this time sounding more sincere…and considering.

“And don’t even think about putting Vanetta on my ass. She knows I worry and you know I worry and I don’t need her worrying about me.”

Dan snorted. “Right. Like saying that will make it so. You know she worries about you day and night. Until you come home-”

“I might not, Dan,” he said. It was the first time he’d let himself say it, even think it, really. And it wasn’t as scary and weird as he thought it would be. In fact, it was kind of…exhilarating. In a way that nothing in his life had been up to that point, maybe other than the day they’d handed him those diplomas…or in the early days of winning at cards. But there was another really high-stakes game he might want in on…the kind where you risked something other than your bank balance.

“You don’t mean that,” Dan said, sounding far more subdued, maybe even a little hurt. “This is your town, your people, your family.”

“Sometimes people grow up and move away from their families.”

“Brett-”

“Dan…it’s not about you. Or your dad, or Vanetta.”

“I know that. We all do know that. We just…we can’t imagine you anywhere else.”

“I think that’s been my problem all along. It’s why I got stuck for so many years, doing what I never expected to be doing, not for that long. I really couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else.”

“And what, working for my dad, or with me-”

“Was good for my soul, and saved it. Regularly, Dan. You know that. Your dad was the closest thing I ever had to a real male role model. You’re my brother. And, in her own way, I guess Vanetta is like my crazy old grandmother. You are my family, always will be. At least I would hope so. But maybe in order to figure out what I’m supposed to do, or what I really want to do, the thing that will truly satisfy me, fulfill me…I need to not be there. Where routines and patterns and ruts-no offense, you know better-aren’t there to pull me back into that sense of complacency. Because it doesn’t feel complacent any longer. It feels suffocating. Not the people, the work. And I need…I need more than people.”

“I wish it was different,” Dan said quietly. “I don’t like it, and I wish there was more for you here, but…” They both took a break, and a breath. Dan spoke first. “So…it’s Vermont, huh?”

“For now. I need to stop running. I need time. To allow myself to just be, to think, to figure out what works. Or what might work. But, right now, what works isn’t being in Vegas. That much I do know.”

“Okay,” Dan said. He didn’t sound happy about it, but he sounded, well, resigned to it. Which was a start.

“I still need you to keep an eye out, just…don’t let your guard down. Okay?”

“Sure. But I swear to you, nothing’s happening. I really think it was all just a freak bad streak.”

“All the same-”

“Right, got it. I will. Has anyone been in touch? Anyone hounding after you?”

“No.”

“Good. Then maybe, at least, while you’re sitting there contemplating your navel, you can let that part go. We’re all fine here. We miss you, but mostly we just want you to figure out what comes next. Consider what is, not what might be. Okay? Promise me that much.”

“Dan-”

He sighed deeply. “Right. I’ll keep an eye, okay? I have to get back to work. Enjoy your…stay.”

“I already am.” Then he hung up before Dan could piss him off again, or worse stick his nose in, and his unwanted opinions, about Kirby.

Speaking of which, she walked, just then, into the kitchen. He had just clipped his phone back on his belt and was stirring the sauce again, but he stopped when he saw her face. “What’s wrong?” She was pale, well, paler than normal, and she looked…hollow. “Is everything okay?” Which was a stupid question, given everything clearly was not okay, but what else was he supposed to say? He didn’t know enough about her yet, or anything really, to know what to ask about.

It was right then, however, that he realized that he wanted to know. Wanted to be more involved.

He put the sauce spoon down and walked around the center cooking island to the kitchen table where she’d stopped. She was looking at him, but it was obvious her thoughts were somewhere else completely. “Kirby?”

It was like the little bubble they’d created had burst. First with Dan’s reality check and now with this, and suddenly he didn’t know what the boundaries were or what she’d accept from him. But what the hell, he thought, he’d saved her from falling out of a tree. He’d made love to her. He figured that gave him some options. At least ones he wouldn’t have to apologize for making assumptions about later.

So he did what he instinctively wanted to do, which was take her hand and tug her gently forward. She stutter-stepped into him, still looking poleaxed, and he put his arms around her and nudged her face up so she looked at him, but it was more like through him. “What’s wrong?”

Her expression shuttered then and she ducked her chin.

So he lifted a hand to her face, cupped her cheek, and tipped her face up again. “Maybe I can help. Or at least listen. Tell me what happened.”

“It’s…not your problem.” And then her eyes got glassy and he tensed, because that’s what guys did when women cried, or looked like they were going to. Except this wasn’t about him, or even them, like it might have been in the shower…so he stuck with it.

“It doesn’t have to be my problem to listen, does it?”

“I-you want a nice dinner. Not to hear about-about-” And then her bottom lip was quivering and he could see where this wasn’t so much about not wanting to tell him as about pride and integrity. And being made to cry in front of him about it, when she clearly wished she was being strong, was just making it worse.

So he did the only thing he could do. He kissed her.

And it took a moment, several actually, before she kissed him back. He shifted her arms up to his shoulders and pulled her more deeply into his arms. He let her guide the kiss at first, then slowly took over, taking it deeper, coaxing her to be more aggressive, until he was pretty damn sure they weren’t thinking about anything except the kiss and what it was doing to them, what it was making them want, making them feel.