Loving and Loathing Vegas by Lex Chase

could while holding a baby. “Parenting, am I right?”
    “Damn right,” a mother shouted out from one table. Her teenage children shook their heads in embarrassment.
    “Free white chocolate truffle cake for you,” Jackson said, smiling bright.
    Behind him in the kitchen, he could hear Vegas slap his tongs to the grill. Jackson glanced back and caught the disapproving glare. It wasn’t a matter of the cake stock. It was the giving it away for free.
    “Customer service?” Jackson mouthed with an apologetic expression.
    Vegas continued to glare from his place over the grill. His eyes filled with green arcs of energy, and his aura visibly flared. The licks of pale green aural flames danced over his body, and his hidden demonic tattoos drew over his skin in ornate swirls.
    Not good. Not good .
    Cillian returned to the counter and set about refilling the water pitcher. He smiled at Jackson. “She stopped crying.”
    “Huh?” he asked, distracted by Vegas’s escalating power. He cleared his throat. “Oh. Right. Right.” He snuck a quick look into the kitchen again and then back to Cillian. “Hey. Um. There’s a guy over in the waiting pool. We have a single seat here at the counter. Think you can bring him over?”
    Cillian came closer to him, and Jackson slid in front of the pass-through window, trying to block the view. “You told me we don’t seat incomplete parties,” he said, concerned.
    “Oh no, he’s meeting someone who’s already here,” Jackson said as Jeshebet muttered to herself. “See him? Blond guy with the glasses.”
    Cillian turned just as Ennis made eye contact with him.
    Jackson congratulated himself; he couldn’t have timed it better.
    Cillian gripped his ordering pad and clutched his pen as his eyes widened.
    Jackson arched a brow as they held each other’s gazes, but Ennis was the first to break it, as if he were just staring into space. Jackson leaned in to whisper in Cillian’s ear. “You know him?”
    Cillian nodded mutely. His cheeks flooded with blush. “It’s been a… very long time,” he finally managed to say.
    “Do you want to bring him over?” Jackson asked as Cillian trembled. The poor guy’s expression was a mixture of nerves and fear. “It’s okay, right?” He had to check, just in case.
    Cillian nodded as his grip tightened on his pen.
    What would they talk about? How it was too little too late? How Cillian had moved on from… wherever he came from. How Ennis was so desperate to leave it all behind, buy a rusted-out VW Beetle, and take a chance on a hunch.
    That love could endure time and space.
    Jackson snorted. Space. He had a lot of work to do on getting over how bizarre Cillian could be.
    Or Jackson could have misconstrued Ennis’s feelings for Cillian as actually obsessive stalking. Oops? He hoped he was right about the first, because the second would prove incredibly awkward for a Christmas party with an incubus hulking out in the kitchen.
    He took the initiative and nodded to Cillian. “Follow me.”
    Cillian obeyed, shyly walking along behind him. Jeshebet’s infectious giggles grew into belly laughs as they neared the waiting customers.
    A portly woman wearing a hoodie stitched with gaudy patches spelling out Albuquerque stepped in Jackson’s path. “How much longer?” she asked. “I saw you guys on TripAdvisor. They said the pie is worth the detour.”
    Jackson put on his best smile while Jeshebet gave her best resting bitch face. “Just a few more minutes, ma’am. I can arrange a pie sample for your party.”
    Vegas would kill him for it for sure. Jackson would add the cost back on in gratuity.
    Instead of being entitled, the woman flushed bright red and stumbled against her husband. Her knees trembled. Her husband muttered, asking if she was all right. She nodded, grinning as bright as a prom queen popping her cherry.
    Uh-oh.
    Jackson glanced to Cillian, and Ennis slipped through the crowd to the two of them.
    “Are you okay?” Ennis