Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 19 TRISTAN

“This is my fiancée, Tessa,” I say, pulling out of Brandi’s rather tight embrace to awkwardly introduce the two women. “Tess, this is Brandi.”

“Nice to meet you,” Tessa says, reaching out a hand to shake hers.

“I know I look crazy, but I swear I dance professionally,” Brandi says to Tessa with a giggle. “Sometimes we’re asked to walk around the Strip in costume to advertise our show.”

“Where do you perform?” Tessa asks.

“Fremont Street,” she says. She turns toward me, and my heart races because I know what she’s going to ask before she even asks it. “Will I see you at the club later?”

I shake my head just slightly. “We have plans.”

She sticks out her bottom lip in a pout, and I shift on my feet as I try to find some way to escape this uncomfortable situation. I wasn’t expecting to run into Brandi of all people just walking down the damn Strip.

“Too bad,” she says. “Some of the guys there really like pregnant women.” She lifts a shoulder and rolls her eyes. “It’s a whole thing, you know?”

I clench my jaw as I try to come up with something to say to that. Tessa clearly has a question in her eyes, and I’m not quite sure how to answer it.

“Anyway, I need to get back to my girls,” she says, nodding up ahead where we see more women in fruity headdresses and gold bikinis. “But you should stop by sometime this weekend. I’ve seen your boys around a lot lately.” She winks as she walks away.

“Club?” Tessa asks the moment we’re out of Brandi’s earshot. “What club?”

I clear my throat.

We have literally been in Las Vegas three hours and this is already about to come out.

No secrets, right?

It’s time to tell her the truth.

I lower my voice and lean in toward her as I grab her elbow and direct her back toward our hotel. “It’s an exclusive club for, uh…for people who can afford it. Athletes, celebrities, millionaires. Let’s get back to our room and I’ll tell you more about it, okay?”

We haven’t even been up to our room yet. Maybe that’s the right place to tell her everything. Out here in the middle of the Strip surrounded by people, however, is not the right place, particularly given the nondisclosures we had to sign.

She gives me a strange look, but she just shakes her head and shrugs a little as if she doesn’t get it but she’ll go along with it.

We’re almost back to the Venetian when we see a huge crowd of people at a standstill.

“What’s going on?” Tessa asks. She moves to her tiptoes as she tries to get a peek, but I’m tall enough that I can see over most of the heads of the people here.

And when I spot who the crowd is circled around, I suck in a sharp breath.

What are the goddamn chances?

“Holy shit,” she murmurs. “Is that Victor Bancroft?”

“Yep,” I say, and I turn to leave.

She tugs my arm. “He’s, like, my favorite actor! Number two on my list, only behind Ben Olson.”

I freeze. “Excuse me?”

She tries again. “I mean behind Tristan Higgins?”

“Better, but still. Olson?” I ask.

She giggles. “You know what I mean. It’s just a meaningless list.”

“Uh, not really. Not when Ben Olson is one of my close friends and there’s an actual shot you could meet him. Besides, he’s married . He has kids,” I say.

“You think that makes him less attractive?” She giggles, and I can’t tell if she’s just being silly or if I’m overreacting and about to pick a fight because I don’t want to get into how I really know Brandi.

“Let’s just backburner the list discussion for now, but I don’t have a list and I don’t think you should, either.”

“It’s just for fun,” she says, and she almost seems a little hurt that I’d insinuate otherwise.

I lower my lips to her ear. “You’re cruising for a punishment.”

She squirms as her eyes connect with mine, and just at that moment Victor spots me through the parting of the crowd. “Tristan!” he says. He starts to move in our direction, but it’s slow progress because of all the people.

And, of course, when he calls my name, everyone turns to look at me , and then I’m recognized as some of the throng moves in my direction.

I wasn’t expecting this. I just wanted to take a walk down Las Vegas Boulevard with my fiancée to show her some of the most famous sights.

“Oh my God, you know him?” Tessa murmurs as he makes his way over to me.

Yeah, I know him. He’s one of the owners of the club I’m a member of…but I can’t exactly say that.

Someone asks me for a selfie, and then another and another, and I just keep taking them because what the hell else do you do when Victor Bancroft calls you out and is making his way over to you?

“Good to see you,” he says, slapping my back. “You coming tonight?”

I shake my head, and we’re getting married is on my lips, but I stop myself from saying it. We don’t want it getting out to the press that we’re here this weekend to get married, and telling Victor Bancroft in the middle of a throng of his fans that’s why we’re here would probably not be a well-kept secret.

Tessa lurches forward, and I grab her, slipping an arm around her waist. “I’m gonna take her back to our hotel before she gets pushed over,” I tell Victor, and he nods.

“Good seeing you. Hope you’ll stop by,” he calls as we walk away.

People are following us, I’m sure of it, so we duck into a Walgreens.

“What are we doing?” Tessa asks. “And how do you know Victor Bancroft? What is this club?”

“I’ll tell you everything later,” I say in a hushed tone. “I’m just making sure nobody’s following us up to our room.”

We leave Walgreens and walk past the Venetian and over to a coffee shop on the other side, where I grab a quick cup. I think whoever might’ve been following us would have lost interest at this point, so I finally walk her back into the Venetian. We walk through the maze of the casino to find our elevators, and then we head up to our suite.

I chose the presidential suite. You only get married once, after all—or twice, in my case, I guess—and I wanted the very finest accommodations for my bride.

Her jaw drops when she walks into the suite. She beelines straight for the window to check out the view. We’re facing the Strip, and the Mirage is just to the left across the street. It’s beautiful, and I glance around as I take in all the details of the room. Two couches, a bunch of wingback chairs, a fireplace, a large dining table with eight chairs…even a piano in one corner.

Tessa turns from the window and looks around the suite. “This is too much, Tristan.”

“Nothing’s too much for you,” I say.

She shakes her head a little. “I’m a simple girl. I don’t need all this fancy stuff. A room with a bed would’ve been just fine. You didn’t have to spend all this—”

I hold up a hand. “I wanted to.”

She sighs as if she’s simply giving in, and she perches on one of the wingback chairs. She sinks a little more into it when she realizes how comfortable it is. “What’s this club? And how do you know Victor Bancroft?”

I glance out the window and chew my bottom lip for a second as I try to figure out how to explain myself, and I decide to start at the beginning. “The day of your father’s funeral, I had to get out of town fast because I had practice the next day. I got home and was ready to just call it a night when my ex-wife came in the room and just pissed me all the way off. A buddy had asked earlier if I wanted to go out, and I accepted the invitation. I went to his house, and a couple other guys I’m close to were already there. He asked us if we wanted to try a new kind of club that we hadn’t been to before, and he wouldn’t tell us anything about it until we signed nondisclosure agreements.”

“Nondisclosure agreements?” she repeats.

I nod. “We basically had to agree not to tell anyone about the club. I’m not even supposed to be talking about it with you.”

“What the hell kind of club is this?” she presses.

I suck in a breath as I turn my gaze to the window. “It’s an exclusive place for people who can afford membership. The first floor is a basic nightclub. The second is an upscale gentleman’s club. And the third floor…uh, the third floor is a place where people can explore sexuality in a safe, open environment.”

“It’s a…a… sex club?”

I stand and walk over to the window to look down over the Strip. “Yes.” I turn around to face her, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get that look of shock on her face out of my head. “Well, the third floor is. I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into, and I went that first night out of curiosity mixed with peer pressure. I’d been fighting to get out of a divorce for two years, I saw you holding Cameron’s hand at the funeral…I was in a bad place mentally, so I went.”

“Just the one time?” she asks carefully.

I shake my head as I stare down at the floor with shame. “I became a member.”

“Oh my God,” she murmurs. “Did you…did you sleep with the bikini girl?”

“No!” I shake my head quickly. “No. I never slept with anybody there. I spent more time on the first floor than anywhere else. But Brandi and I became…friends.”

She arches her brows as she folds her arms over her chest and settles back into her chair. “I’m supposed to believe you went to a sex club more than once to make friends and you never had sex at it?”

“It’s the truth. And it’s not exclusively a sex club. It’s more of a members-only club where sex happens on the third floor.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispers.

“It never came up. It was just a different sort of club where I hung out a few times before we reconnected, and I was embarrassed that I went at all.” I shrug. “Can you understand that?”

She shakes her head a little. “I…I’m not sure, Tristan. I feel like I don’t know you at all right now.” She purses her lips. “Did you spend much time on the third floor?”

I lift a shoulder. “Not a lot, but yeah, I did go there a few times.”

“What did you do there if you weren’t having sex?”

I clear my throat, hoping what I’m about to say isn’t even worse than having sex. “I watched. Sometimes I provided aftercare.”

She gives me a confused look. “Aftercare?”

“It’s hard to define. In its most basic form, it’s a way of checking in with somebody after they’ve had sex and making sure they’ve been taken care of both physically and emotionally,” I say.

She wrinkles her nose, and it’s clear she’s disgusted by what I just confessed, as if she’s picturing something that’s not at all what it was really like. “So you cleaned up other people’s messes?”

“No,” I say, pushing hard not to get defensive over this. “It wasn’t like that.” I blow out a breath. “Brandi wanted to sleep with me. I didn’t want to sleep with her, so I told her I’d watch her fuck somebody else.” She winces at my language, but I continue. “She had sex with a guy and when it was over, he just walked out of the room. I felt bad—like it was because of me she slept with the first guy who agreed to after I told her to find somebody, and then he treated her like shit. So I handed her a washcloth to clean herself up. I talked to her and made sure she was okay.”

“Did you kiss her?” she asks through gritted teeth.

I shake my head and turn toward the window, a sudden sadness sweeping through me. “I was never interested in her. Ever since you disappeared, all I’ve been trying to do is find somebody who makes me feel half the way you do, and nobody ever measured up. I’ve been trying to find myself for seven goddamn years, and no matter what I did, I was lost. It wasn’t until you came back into my life that I found myself again.”

She’s quiet for a moment as she processes that. I expect some reciprocation, but that’s not what comes out of her mouth at all.

“Is that what you were doing when you slept with Tiffany Gable right after I left? Trying to find yourself ?”

Her voice is a low hiss, and fear filters through my veins.

I guess we’re really doing this.