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sure I was getting played, it didn’t matter. Because if I wasn’t…if his life really was on the line, I had to do something.”
    “So, what did you do?”
    “What any rich boy does when he’s in trouble.” He sounds so bitter it breaks my heart. “I called my father. Explained the situation. Begged him to advance me the money on my trust fund, just for the few weeks until I turned twenty. He argued with me, but in the end he agreed. Told me it was the one and only time it was going to happen. I agreed, partly because I was desperate to get the money to Dylan and partly because I knew he was right. I couldn’t keep doing this, couldn’t keep bailing Dylan out whenever things got rough. We’d both end up on the street.”
    He pushes me away now—not to be rude but because he’s filled with a nervous energy that won’t let him sit still. He starts pacing from one end of the office to the other, head bowed and hands tucked into his pockets. I’ve never seen him look so defeated.
    “Something went wrong,” I prompt, when I figure out that he’s done talking. That he has nothing else to say.
    He snorts. “You could say that.”
    “He used the money for drugs instead of to pay off his gambling debts?” It’s the only guess I’ve got, the only thing that makes sense.
    “I wish. Then I could find a way to blame him for the whole thing. No,” he says, shoving a hand through his hair. “Dylan didn’t spend the money on something else. He never got the money.”
    It’s my turn to stare as I try to assimilate his words. “What do you mean? How could he not—”
    “My dad refused to pay. He promised me one thing, but when Dylan came to collect the money, he got a major fuck-you instead. My dad never gave him a cent, even after he told me it was all taken care of. And the Mafia did what they’re known for. They set Dylan up as an example for everyone else who owed them money to see, and then they killed him. Left his body in a ditch next to Mobile Square,” he says bitterly, mentioning the small group of backroom card parlors and gambling houses that the mob runs about fifteen minutes off the Strip.
    “I was at school—hell I was at a party—when I got the call,” Sebastian tells me. “And it wasn’t from my dad. It was from Janet, who ended up yelling and cursing and crying at my answering machine because I was out partying. Coming home to that, listening as she demanded to know why I didn’t come through, why, the only time it really mattered, I left her kid out to dry.” He picks up his glass off the table, throws it as hard as he can. It hits the wall, shatters.
    And Sebastian curls in on himself, this proud, beautiful man all but staggering under the weight of loss and grief and misplaced guilt.
    I’m sick. I’m literally sick—head whirling, stomach churning, body revolting—and it’s all I can do not to run to the nearest bathroom and hurl up the peanut butter sandwich I force-fed myself before coming here. Because this is bad. This is really bad. And with my past, I don’t have a clue how to fix it.
    So, in the end, I do the only thing I can. I cross to Sebastian, wrap my arms around him. And murmur, “It wasn’t your fault. I know you blame yourself, I know you want to shoulder responsibility for everything that happened, but it wasn’t your fault.”
    He shakes his head, and I notice for the first time just how pale his skin is, just how dead his own eyes are. “Sebastian, listen to me. You’ve beat yourself up for ten years over this and it’s not. Your. Fault.”
    He shoves away from me. Not hard enough to hurt but definitely hard enough to get me to drop my arms. To let him go. When he’s standing next to the window, staring out over the deceptive beauty of Las Vegas’s glittering lights, he says, “I was getting laid while my best friend was being murdered. How the fuck is that not my fault?”

Chapter Four
Sebastian
    I keep waiting for her to walk out. For her to