The Player's Club: Finn (17 page)

“Yeah, you’re multilingual,” she said, torn between irritation and concern. She’d never seen him this wretchedly bent. “How much did you have there, Pierre?”

He laughed hoarsely. “Pierre. Good one. Dunno. Stopped counting.”

He staggered toward his room, and promptly crashed into a spindly legged end table. “Come on,” she said, hoisting his arm over her shoulder. “I’ll help you get to bed.”

“Haven’t gotten enough, huh?” he huffed, as he stumbled along, cracking his knee sharply on the door frame. He howled in pain.

“Well, watch where you’re going!” she snapped. Thankfully, the European rooms were small compared to, say, a suite in Vegas. She let him fall like an axed tree onto the bed. “Good night!”

She started to retreat, then noticed…he still had his shoes on, his knees were hanging off the bed. He’d be horribly uncomfortable. She couldn’t just leave him like this.

She grabbed his feet to yank off his sneakers, but his shoes were laced too tight. “Of course.”

“Diana…”

“They’ll be off in a second.”

“No,” he muttered. “Gonna be…”

And promptly was sick over the side of the bed.

“Oh,
lovely.
” She winced.

By six in the morning, she was starting to freak out. He was violently ill, even though he had nothing left in his stomach and he was ghost pale, sweating bullets.

“I think you might need to go to the hospital, Finn,” she said, wiping his face with a cool cloth, helping him lean over to reach the wastebasket one more time. “I think you’re really, really sick.”

“No,” he croaked. “No…no hospitals. I’ve spent enough time in hospitals.”

His eyes were closed, and he looked like he was in a lot of pain—but he was too twisted around to sleep, despite his obvious exhaustion.

“I guess that shouldn’t surprise me,” she said, just to say something.

“What shouldn’t surprise you?”

“All the hospital visits.” She smiled gently, brushing the sweat-soaked bangs from his forehead. “Considering you’ve been in the Player’s Club for nine years, I’ll bet there are E.R. doctors that know you by your first name.”

Finn didn’t even smile. “When I was a kid. Lots of damned hospitals. Swore I’d never eat frickin’ Jell-O again.”

“When you were a kid?” He was the drunk one, the sick one. So why was she having so much trouble following this conversation?

“Cancer.”

Her heart stopped for a second. “You had cancer?”

“In remission,” he said. He never opened his eyes. “That’s why I hate hospitals. Spent enough time in them. Hell, spent enough time in my house, kept in a practical bubble…just so my parents wouldn’t see me back in one.” He shook his head. “Like keeping me a prisoner would stop it. Like
anything
would.”

“Could…could it come back now?” The thought of him, so vibrant, so amazing… Her stomach tightened like a fist.

What if I lost him?

“Always can.” His voice was matter-of-fact.

“And you’re okay with that?” How could he sound so…so casual?

He cracked open an eye, staring at her. “What do you think?”

Then, suddenly, like a puzzle all the pieces fell together.

The stunts. The adrenaline addiction.

“That’s why you started it,” she murmured. “The Player’s Club.”

Finn turned over onto his side, shivering. She covered him with a blanket. “Lincoln and I. He was in for cracking up his car—I was in for my last bout of chemo, from my last round with the big C. And we got to talking and…we just talked about what we hadn’t done, wished we’d done. It sort of became a thing.”

Her admiration of him grew in one big pulse. “And then…?”

“Went skydiving.”

“Had you always wanted to?”

“God, no,” he groaned, and it surprised a laugh out of her. “You think you’re seeing puking here…I was so scared, I almost peed myself. I cursed at Lincoln the entire way down.”

“Then what?”

“Then I felt more alive than I ever have in my life.” Despite the sickness, his weak voice sounded proud, happy. “It was the ultimate rush. We kept doing stuff, knocking out our list. Then we tried adding new stuff. Then, on a fluke, I asked George if he wanted to join.”

“George?” she blinked. “The weasel?”

“He wasn’t always a weasel,” Finn said, then laughed. “Okay, he was always a weasel. But when I was a kid, when I was sick, he was always doing stuff. Sneaking me candy, things like that.”

“If you’ve got cancer, you shouldn’t have candy!” she said. “It makes it worse, doesn’t it?”

“What can I say? He thought he was doing the right thing, and I thought he was pretty cool for a while there. He used to take me drinking and stuff in college. Anyway, I brought him on board, then Lincoln brought on a friend, and it sort of…grew. And it made it all fun. Seeing people change like that.”

“An even bigger rush.”

His eyes were closing, his exhaustion finally taking over. “Something like that.”

She washed his face. “You’re a good man, Finn Macalister.”

“Don’t let it get out,” he said, snuggling into his pillow. “Got a rep to uphold.”

He fell asleep, and she stared at him for long minutes.

He was a good man, she thought. And now that she knew, she couldn’t blame him for how he behaved. If she knew she might die any day, would she have the guts to do half the stuff he’d done?

Would you quit your job?

She stared out the window. Her job was the only thing that had showed she meant anything in the world. It was the only thing she valued.

Until now, she thought, and smoothed the blanket over Finn’s sleeping body.

11

FINN DECIDED TO BOOK the private plane to hurry them back to the Bay Area. He’d originally had romantic intentions. Now, between Diana’s revelation that she was about to completely betray him—on his father’s orders—and the mortifying aftermath of his drunken episode and his decision to tell her all about his past and his cancer…

Well, it was enough to make him not want to be in the same country as Diana, much less the same air space.

She kept sending him these soulful looks, which only made the situation worse. “Isn’t there a movie you want to watch?” he said sharply. “Or…I don’t know,
work
that you want to do?”

“I guess I deserve that,” she said. “If it’s any comfort, I’m glad you opened up to me.”

“It isn’t, and I’m not,” he retorted. Yes, it might be childish, but he sank into his own seat, opening up his iPad. He scrolled through movies until the battery died and realized he hadn’t brought an outlet converter, so he couldn’t charge the damned device.

Now he was stuck. He should’ve bought a book at the damned airport.

“Did you want to use my laptop?” she asked, her tone subdued. “I’m done with my manual, so I won’t need to use it for the rest of the flight.”

“Your manual?” He scoffed. “Why did you even bother? You didn’t want anything to do with the Player’s Club anyway. What’s the point?”

“I’d started,” she said, stretching out on the large gray leather seats. “So I figured I might as well finish.”

“That’s you. Dedicated. If your job says do it, you do it.”

Her chin rose as if on cue. At least it was preferable to this kicked-puppy martyr expression she’d been sporting for the past twelve hours. And how the hell did she occupy the moral high ground to pull
that
look off? he wondered.

“My job is important to me,” she said quietly. “It’s my life. I don’t suppose you’d understand.”

“Why? Because I’ve never had a job in my life?” He didn’t mean to bark the words, but his temper got the better of him. He was still too hot to handle at this point. “Because I’m a useless freak who’s coasting on his inheritance? Listen up, sweetheart, a lot of my money comes from a lawsuit. I almost died when they used the wrong chemo on me. My parents went for blood. I netted a few mil, and they kept it in a bank account for me. So yeah, I don’t work for it, but I guess from a certain point of view you could say I earned it.”

“Who are you trying to convince here, Finn? Because the only one who bitches about you being a useless trust fund kid is
you
.”

He tried to look away, look anywhere…but as plush and luxurious as the plane was, it was still a private jet, not Air Force One. He had nowhere to go, no way to escape her relentless reasoning.

She got up and sat down across from him. “If you’d do me the courtesy of listening, like I listened to you, I would feel better.”

Now he felt small. He grumped, then nodded.

She seemed…numb. He knew that look. He’d seen that look in the mirror often enough.

“I’ve told you how I got the job at Macalister. I told you that your father approved my law school scholarship—
indebted
doesn’t even cover it.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I can imagine.”

“No, you really can’t.” Her voice remained a soft monotone. There was something in its intensity that finally made him shut up and listen to her. “I grew up in Oakland. Broke. My mom was a junkie. I don’t even know who my father was. When I was born, she pretty much just smoked pot and partied. My Chinese grandmother was the one who raised me.”

Reeling from the revelation, Finn grasped at the only hope he could sense in her small story. “Your grandmother must’ve been a good influence.”

“Not really. She was the one growing the weed.”

Finn started to respond, then knew he had nothing to say that could make what she was saying any less painful. He closed his mouth.

“I grew up in a family of criminals, Finn. Not a huge, organized mafia sort of thing. But they were thieves nonetheless that sold stolen goods. Hustlers, dealers, scammers, con artists. Despite that, they were fanatically loyal to one another. That’s why I was never taken and put into foster homes. When my mom’s addiction progressed—” only the slightest bobble revealed the pain behind her softly spoken words “—I was shuttled off to one aunt or another. I don’t even know what I would’ve become if it weren’t for libraries.”

“You decided you didn’t want anything to do with any of it.” He said that firmly.

“I had a cousin who made it out. He went straight, became a lawyer. He was the only one I knew that wasn’t sleazy. He worked for the district attorney.” Her grin was wide; obviously the memory was a good one. “He had to move out of state, my family was so pissed at him. But he really inspired me. I thought, hey, I could do that. I could be a lawyer. I was already taking care of my mom and dealing with a lot of the English paperwork for the rest of my family, helping them dodge things.”

Finn stared at her, fascinated. “So you went to college.”

“On scholarship. Then law school. They almost wouldn’t let me in, didn’t have the money…until I interviewed for a special grant from Macalister Enterprises. I met your dad for all of two minutes. He looked at me, nodded, and said, ‘You look like you’d kick some ass.’ Next thing I heard I’d got the money.”

“That sounds like my dad, actually,” Finn said, with reluctant fondness. His father had a way of sizing people up quickly. And he was often right.

“It felt like a miracle. And later, when he offered the internship at Macalister, I couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to. I wanted to prove that I was worth it and sort of…pay off my debt.”

“Then you were hired and promoted.”

“He trusted me,” she said. “I’d never had anybody trust me like that.”

They were quiet for a long while.

“Do you see your family anymore?” Finn asked, stroking her hand. He couldn’t even remember when he’d reached for it.

“No. Not for years.” She took a deep breath. “My job’s my life, Finn. I can’t help what I feel for you, but I also can’t help what this means to me. I can’t throw it all away, just like that. Not for something so new. And I wish you could understand, although I know why you won’t. I’m destroying the thing that means the most to you. Of course you’ll hate me.”