Parker is pacing around in the jet, her heels sinking into the hand-tufted carpet.

"So this whole time Georgina knew about Carlotta?"

Parker repeats, staring at my face deeply to catch a lie. But I nod strongly. "Yeah, as I said, Orson found me in Georgina's room once and I took her phone at her funeral from her room. I had no idea she was talking about in her messages but when Orson saw her phone in my bag, he explained everything and that's when he put together...she had been the one blackmailing him this whole time."

"Orson told me about the texts," Aidan says quietly from the corner. The dark-skinned ex-boyfriend of Carmen Calloway and Orson's right-hand in command is nursing a gin and tonic as he speaks, looking out at the airport runway.

"Yeah, he told me too," admits Hanif darkly. He's staring blankly ahead and it's the most serious I've ever seen him. Such a change from jovial, life-of-the-party Hanif. "He said he's been getting threats from a blocked number, someone pretending to be Carlotta."

"What the fuck," Parker runs a hand through her hair white-blonde hair, "What the actual fuck."

"Calm down," Phineas says to her as the flight attendant on Parker's jet returns with his bourbon and coke. He thanks her politely, ever-so-gracious with his Asian manners, and returns to the conversation.

"But why?" Parker crosses her arms, her eyebrows scrunching.

"Because I think her family was broke," I supply for her. I show them the same image I showed Orson of Georgina's eviction notice.

They all look at it in disbelief. Aidan is the first one to break his silence, his tone full of disgust and hatred. "That's why she came back- for Orson's money."

I nod.

"And Orson found this all out three days ago?" Phineas's warm brown eyes search my face for an answer and I nod again.

"That's why when he started not showing up to school, I was worried. You say it's normal for him to be absent but...after finding out about this? I don't think he'll be in good shape," I sigh and resign myself into the camel-hair upholstery of the jet's chairs while I try not to marvel at the seeds of destruction I've sewn into the group.

Orson disappearing off on me I expected to happen but sadly, I'm not the expert in where Orson Calloway hides away in a deep bout of depression. Which is why I turn to Phineas and Hanif, his closest confidantes, on his whereabouts. Orson is at his most vulnerable now- he had just found out his ex-girlfriend threatened and blackmailed him about one of his darkest secrets. I need to position myself as his saviour, the one he can depend on in a time like this.

"Shit," Hanif swears. He flags down the incoming flight attendant and says to her: "Tell the captain we'll be heading to Las Vegas effective immediately."

"Why Las Vegas?"

"Because," Hanif claps his hands today, "Orsan always said it's Heaven or Las Vegas."

-

I can feel him from across the room.

Despite the pounding music and the slough of sweaty, swaying bodies separating us, I can still feel him.

I wrinkle my nose slightly at the heavy scent of overheated flesh, cheap perfume, spilled alcohol, and the occasional waft of the earthy, sweet smoke of a cigarette. Heat is pouring thickly from their eager bodies and it fills the cold club with its humid excitement. Shouts of laughter and drunken declarations, the DJ's speech, and the clinking of bottles bleed beneath the deafening music like the drones of insects, and they all blur together as Parker, Hanif, Phineas and I meander through the strip club in Vegas Orson's friends say he frequents.

There he is. My eyes become snared by the boy surrounded by fervent admirers clad in short dresses, lingerie, and high heels that look like delicate instruments of torture, clamoring around him as he coolly puts his mouth around a cigarette. A girl in a lacey white thong and bra set tilts a large bottle of Grey Goose down his throat.

I step forward, swiveling through the gyrating throng of masses. I watch him as he shifts in his seat, bored and unamused, as he observes the dance floor from his VIP section, lounging on the plush purple booth like a lazy cat. The girls on his tables, the strippers dancing on him, trying to talk to him, attempting to engage in useless conversations, half of which are barely sober but he ignores them like static, unimpressed, and cold as he brushes them aside and lights up another cigarette. Dressed ironically in his Kensington blazer, he looks like a King sitting upon his velvet throne.

"There he is," I point out to Parker.

"Of course," Parker mutters but I ignore her and begin to move through a sea of bodies. The throbbing music acts as a bath of stimulation, pushing my heart to beat faster, pumping in sync with my pulse, vibrating against me as my eyes bore holes into my target.

Suddenly, the room stills. Orson notices me, his gaze landing dense and heavy on me. I smirk; inviting him to play my games. He smiles back. I step forward, out of the crowd, in front of him. I point to the cigarette he's smoking, which glows cherry red at the tip.

"Can I have a cig?" I ask him yelling over the music when I approach his table. Even though I'm more clothed than most of the women in the whole club, I do not miss the way his gaze skims over my Prada merlot corset waist dress and admire the deep plunge of my dress emphasizing my chest.

"What are you doing here?"

I ignore his question. "Can I get a cig?" I look at him pointedly. I notice how disheveled his hair is up close and how the bags under his eyes look darker than ever, making him look haunted.

Orson tilts a yes with a nod of his head.

"Get my girlfriend one, Chloe," he orders the girl beside me. The girl beside him is in overdone makeup and a stripper G-string with rainbow pasties over her tits. She plucks out a packet of cigarettes attached to her body by the thin neon lacey straps and produces one for me to take. Chloe flicks her lighter and in a sharp, short burst of fire, smoke curls up into the dark air from the thin outline of my cigarette.

"Thank you," I tell the girl, I glance over her through my mascara-coated lips, and the minute smoke billows out from my mouth I say: "You can go now."

She leaves, standing up from the velvet booth and stalking off in six-inch heels. I assess a number of bottles stacked upon each other in ice buckets and the mess of half-empty glasses scattered over the obsidian table.

"Care to make me a drink?"

"And why should I do that?" He's staring at my boobs, which have been nicely pushed up by my Victoria's Secret WonderBra. Hook, line, and sinker.

"I'm hot."

He raises his eyebrows at me and takes a drag before grabbing a clean glass, pouring Grey Goose and ice into the cup, and handing it to me. "You're lucky I'm bored."

I take the seat next to him. Parker looks at me inquisitively, "I can take it from here," I mouth to her and she nods before wading through the crowd to join Hanif and Phineas doing shots by the bar.

His eyes are peeled onto the stage- which is erected in the middle of the room. The DJ calls out a name and a girl in all-black lace approaches the podium. The bass line hits and she hops on the pole, her legs doing drop-splits and spins, syncing her moves perfectly with the beat. Her presence commands attention as she loses herself in the euphoria of rhythmic movement, dropping upside down and spinning as the bass throbs and the spotlights wash over her skin.

The girl is extraordinarily pretty; dewy skin, bright eyes, fuck-me-daddy legs, Lolita hair, lips that know how to pout. As she twirls upon the pole, her eyes fixed upon the crowd and focus on our table- the table with me and Orson on it.

"What are you doing here, Scout?"

"Making sure you're alive," I reply smoothly. He puts a hand on my thigh and slides it up but I slap it away.

"Oh come on, don't be like that." His breath is so laden with alcohol it could've set my ear on fire as his breath grazes my neck.

"What the fuck have you been doing?" My eyes flicker to the harem of girls surrounding our table, all scantily clad in their lingerie stripper outfits. "Or rather, who you've been doing?"

His smirk inches closer to my ear, "Couldn't imagine doing any of these girls without you."

I roll my eyes. And he chuckles at my dismissive attitude. I don't play the needy card. Instead, I get right to business. "Why did you disappear?"

He looks me in the eyes and for a sobering moment, there is a glimmer of seriousness in the drunken stupor on his face.

"You know why."

"So you decided to come here? Drown your sorrows in Vegas? Go on a bender to all benders?"

He drains the rest of the contents in his whiskey glass. "It's the only way I know to make my problems away."

"Why Vegas?"

"Because it's either Heaven or Las Vegas," he intones like it's a chant. He narrows his eyes at me. "Did you come all this way for me, Scout? Did you miss me?"

"Maybe. Maybe not."

The girl on the pole hoists herself with her whole leg, lifting her toned body expertly upside down in one swift motion. Orson looks from me to her, then back to me again. "I'd bet you can dance circles around her."

I smirk at him back. "Maybe I could."

"Bet to make a wager?"

"You and your bets." There's this dangerous, coy lilt to my words.

"It's Vegas," he says as if that answers everything, "Like you don't come here for a gamble."

"Fine; prepare to lose, Calloway." I stand up from the booth on one foot, then the other. My spine straightens, showing my full height. From this angle, me looking down on Orson, Orson can barely keep his eyes off me as I slide down the zipper of my dress. I slowly peel off the red velvet off my skin and reveal the diamante Wonderbra set I'm wearing; it glistens as the spotlight hits the crystals studded across the black bra and lace underwear. My gaze skirts across the two-story complex of the club, examining the crowded dance floor painted in artificial fog and an array of laser lights.

The DJ plays a slow R&B beat over the speakers and I step forward to the podium. The girl who was dancing smiled at me invitingly, beckoning me to the stage. The high-waisted lace and gem underwear further emphasizes my shape; I'm thanking the efforts I've put in the gym that emphasizes my waist-to-hip ratio scientists have concluded affects men like a drug. It's the kind of body that, as they used to say, could get a girl in trouble.

I know it's a body I've harnessed well because when I appear up by the podium, Orson cannot keep his eyes off me. His gaze is glazed over but the penetrating blue color pierces me. They burn into my skin, hotter than any spotlight.

-

Orson pulls out the baggy and we giggle while breaking up the crystals with his credit card. The first line is always a shock. It clears up the foggy haze of alcohol.

He kisses me after. I memorize these details, within moments of clarifying sobriety- the way his eyelashes tickle, and his hard heavy boy hands, grave and turbulent, I can feel all kinds of wonder and surprises charging through him as we kiss.

All of this enchants me powerfully, and the day feels rare, the dawn rising purple behind the hotel's windows, and Parker must be drunk because I think I hear her voice far away, saying crazy things, asking me if I'll kill for him.

The party before us unfolds as I spin out of Orson's arms. Soon, Parker and I are dancing, hip-shaking to the beat of the rap beat. The rum, and the hard lemonade, and the shots of tequila zoom and zag through me, and the spell cast so deeply. The coke feels like oxygen blasting through my brain, blowing everything away and leaving only immense joy that shakes tic tac–like in my chest and then sinks away so fast it takes everything from me.

Orson's laugh is hard and cruel in my ear. "This may be the nitrous and cocaine talking but I wanna do more nitrous and cocaine."

So we do.

Orson's wanting, so easily won—well, it bores me. I know every flex and twist of it because there are no flexes and twists to it. But his love is another quest, it's thorny and full of obstacles, a path with a new challenge coming after the other. It's a quest I think I almost completed- now with Georgina gone and the image of her soiled in his mind and him more vulnerable than ever.

His hands-on my waist are dancing and roaming over my skin. His teeth catch the skin on my neck and leave a ringlet of hickeys. As the night disappears and the volume of drugs depletes from our system, our friends rotate out of our room and we are left alone.

"Why Vegas?" I slur at him sometimes halfway through a night. I'm spanning across his lap, my legs bare and looped around him like a pale ribbon, feet dangling high, and his dress blue blazer asunder, wrapped around my snowy nakedness.

Orson stares deep into my face as he whips a can of laughing gas into a balloon. He holds it to my mouth and lets the nitrous oxide hit my brain. I suck until I can't and when he lets go, euphoria swells in my mind. For thirty seconds, I am literally out in space.

"Because Heaven is Las Vegas," And my fucked-up mind is trying to decode him, I guess he's trying to say his love for Las Vegas is due to the nature of Vegas. The darkest, the most soulless place on Earth. Run by dark money, crime, extortion, and desperation.

We are officially out of whip cream canisters and I realize how he gives me the last of the balloons. We are officially coming down but somehow still awake as we watch the sunrise.

The mixture of serotonin and dopamine depletion has me quiet and lying lazily on Orson's lap; I'm soft and radiant with my blonde hair spread across his thigh wing-like. "I'm surprised I didn't scare you away," Orson says in the dawn-dark.

Someone's phone is plugged into speakers. A slow, sexy Chris Brown song is playing; there's a dark deep thrum and it's talking about getting hot and heavy. The beat and lyrics wash over us calmly and we're too tired on a massive comedown to even fuck.

I flick up my eyes at him. "What do you mean?"

"I told you about Carlotta. And you didn't even flinch."

"Well, we've all done terrible things, Orson. Though, no one seems quite as proud of it as you seem to be."

Orson sighs. "With Carlotta- I just didn't mean to get it all out of hand."

I stay quiet for a while. "I know what you mean."

"I can't believe Georgina would do that to me," Orson swallows; sounding forlorn and angry and betrayed. "And for what? For money? Georgina and I were puppy love- I get that. But even then, like we've been friends since pre-school, we've known each other forever and I thought even if she never loved me, didn't I mean anything as a friend to her?"

I eat up the brokenness of his tone but my face is stone, not betraying a single thing, and I lift my head up from his lap. I embrace him in a hug and kiss him on the cheek, "We'll never know why she did what she did. All I know is- when it comes to money and maintaining status in this world, there are some people who would do just about anything to get it or keep her. Just be thankful that that cab driver ran her over before she did some serious damage."

Orson stares hard-headed at the quilted wall ahead of him. "That's the thing. I wished she was alive. So I could confront her, so I could just hear why and asked her if it was worth it."

I sigh. "You're never going to get closure, Orson. The closure is like a dumb thing people invented in the movies. Trust me, I know."

I'm surprised by how raw and bitter I sound. I think the truth managed to trickle a little bit into my voice. And Orson can hear it because, for a second, his gaze rests on me. His drug-smeared face, the emptiness on it, and his bloodshot eyes on me. It might be the comedown speaking but he looks really sad.

"Amory..." Orson's voice cracked. "I don't like anything about me. I keep doing shit like this, wrecking people's lives and going around self-destructing, acting out in chaos because I'm bored, trying to dull the pain inside me. That's my legacy- I have no one in my life who has come off better after knowing me."

A flush overwhelms my entire body, right down to my toes, a knot hardening in my stomach. Something like a lump forms in my throat. I feel sad for a bit but then I remind myself why I'm here.

"That's not true, Orson. Look...with Carlotta, she was manipulating you into a relationship, trapping you to be with her and you acted out because she tricked you into having a baby with you. I understood why you were pissed- and how you acted was just an emotional outbreak. I get it. It's not your fault, Orson."

He pulls me closer and his lips take mine, he ripples his hands up and down me, gentle and with those great empty eyes of his shut tight, lashes long like a girl's. That funny way his nose bends slightly right, like a boxer's when his face pressed onto me. His hands follow the line of my skin to my stomach, which is as tight as anyone fed solely on tar and battery acid.

When we separated, I put my hands on his face, cradling it. "And what Georgina did was really cruel, I'll never do that to you."

"Really?" Orson whispers back into my ear as he traces shapes into my skin.

"Really."

Because I'll do worse, I think as he kisses me. 

-

oop! thank you so much for the lovely comments; they're fuel for my motivation!

for a good track to this chapter, listen to 'the knowing' or 'heaven or las vegas' by the weeknd (trilogy fits orson so much lmaoooo)