“Because it was too early. Like you and him, I’m not ready to leave our arrangement. None of us have reached that point. There’s still a lot of time until the end. And this is not it…” he says abruptly.
“What do you think it is?”
He falls back in his chair.
“I think emotions run high. For all of us, but especially her. What I did with her tonight was a first for both of us. It would’ve happened anyway, regardless of the circumstances.”
“Well… The circumstances are that she’s taught us a lesson.”
“I’m not so sure it was about teaching us a lesson.”
I place my drink on the nightstand, fall back into the pillow, and cross my arms behind my head, stretching my body and pinning my gaze on the ceiling.
“You’re trying to make me responsible for this.”
“You are responsible. For everything.”
His voice doesn’t carry a shred of reproach. Only a smile.
I tip my gaze to him and study his face before pulling upright and sitting on the edge of the bed.
Running my fingers through my hair and resting my elbows on my knees, I think about his words.
“As you said… It’s too early. There are many things that need to happen before we assign blame and say for sure what’s what. I just wish we all had paid more attention to her.”
“It’s a learning process for us as much as it is for her…”
“Yeah… It is,” I mutter, annoyed with the conclusion.
It’s fair and true.
It was mainly my fault. Because she said what she said to me, and I still didn’t believe she’d go through with it.
I got fooled by the fact that I thought I knew her.
I knew shit.
Maybe she didn’t know much, either. And maybe, as Francisco says here, I’ve given her the final push.
Tense, I look at my watch.
“She’ll come back when she wants to…” he says.
“Yeah… She will,” I mutter, not lifting my gaze.
She’s out there partying. The bodyguards said she was with people. Women, mostly. That’s what they thought.
By the time we got to the VIP rooms, there was no one sober to talk to. She was there with them––I had no doubt––but they wouldn’t want to talk to us, and she fled before we got the chance to grab her.
I got the message. We all got the message. She didn’t want to be found. She was still mad. Mad enough to spend the night with strangers. To be anywhere but here with us.
It hurt like hell. I’ll be the first one to admit it. And not only because we could’ve had so much fun together. But because her message was so damn clear.
Without her, we were nothing.
She’s also shown us something else. She’ll always cut us off. Never the money.
What she had done didn’t put her prize at risk.