She should have taken her day off.

But now, it's too late. She's seen him near the bar. With a girl. She was dancing around him, with him, on him.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, she kissed him. This random girl kissed Danny and Sam felt like the ground tremble, and her heart, in her chest, ached enough to make her hand turn into a fist.

Sam saw red, and maybe she even wanted the girl dead. Because in her stomach, everything twisted, everything burned and the terror crawled all over her, from her toes to the tips of her fingers.

So Sam took a step back and swallowed the jealousy that was choking her, that was mocking her.


"Hey."

She is sitting up straight in front of her glass of wine. She ignores him.

"Are you alright, Sam?"

"Peachy."

Danny frowns a little because Sam, he likes her beaming and grinning but right now, she is a bit stony, a bit chilly and whenever she's not looking at him like she is doing right now, he feels like he can't reach the distance that is separating them. It's the unknown, he realises, that will end him, that will kill him because he never entirely knows what to expect from Sam, what to do with her and it terrifies him because he will never truly and fully understand this woman, and Sam deserves someone that can understand her, the whole of her.

But Danny doesn't want let her go though. He refuses. Because he can truly and fully love her. He already does. And that's supposed to be enough, right?

"...Are you mad at me?" he asks as his fingers close around her glass of wine. He notices that her lipstick, delicious and vicious lipstick is almost gone and he wonders how many glasses she has had so far.

She turns to him, licking her upper lip and her finger glides over his mouth, slowly, softly. He smiles and then she abruptly stops and Danny feels like he has ruined everything.

"Who was that girl?"

Danny blinks, the frown on his brow deepens. "What? Who?"

Sam wonders if he is doing it on purpose or if he's truly being clueless. She just wants to get up, throw her glass at his face and scatter his cuteness all over the floor.

Instead, she just hops off the chair and leaves him there, confused and his heart bruised.


She remembers her grandmother, her Abuela, and the sweet cakes she used to make.

Sam remembers loving one cake in particular, and eating the whole thing on her own. She was tiny but stubborn and she was hungry, but by the end of the night, she was hurting, crying and emptying her stomach in the toilet because even if she loved the cake that much, it seemed that the cake didn't love her back.

She remembers feeling soft and content in her grandma's arms and Abuela smelt like apple and cinnamon and that was the way mothers were supposed to smell according to Sam.

"Love is great but love never lasts. When you love, your heart gets walked on over and over and ten years later, it still hurts. So, Sammy, listen to your poor ol' Abuelita, never like or love something too much or too hard, alright, 'cause it's not worth it. Don't give it the power to hurt you. You're far too pretty to cry over an ugly thing like love."

And Sam smiled like she got it, like she understood the secrets of the universe by just listening to her grandmother. "No crying over cakes, then?"

Her grandmother chuckled, kissing the top of her head, praying that innocence would never leave Sam's naive heart. "Exactly, no crying over cakes, Sammy."


She barely closed the door of her suite when soft lips land on hers, arms wrap around her slim waist and it's his perfume that makes her heart race and her head spin. She could get lost in this sensation, floats, swim in it forever and ever.

But then she remembers she is mad at him, and Danny, she pushes him away. Hard.

"Don't you have another mouth to go kiss?" she spits, sarcastically as she wipes her lips with the back of her hand as if she is trying to clean the taste of him kissing another woman off her.

"Jealous, aren't we? Green is definitely your colour, honey," he jokes and the smirk on his face is suddenly the most annoying thing on the planet. He dares smirk and all she wants to do is smack the smirk off his face.

"Get out, Danny."

She opens the door but his hand forces it close again as he moves towards her.

"Listen to me, Sam," He traps her body with his and he strokes her cheek with his thumb. "The girl that you saw, the one who kissed me—because yes, she kissed me. I didn't. I didn't kiss her back either, but you were probably gone when I pushed her away. That girl has been kissing people all day long. She dances and when she's done, she kisses people, men, women, whatever. She's done that all day. She even kissed Mike, just ask him."

He is not lying. He would never.

"You're my favourite person in this casino. You're my best girl, you know that, right?"

But Sam doesn't answer because now she feels stupid. He makes her feel stupid and just for that, she wants him gone but it's her—it's her hand that reaches his shirt collar, it's her heart that races for him. And Sam stubbornly ignores the little voice in her head, she pushes away the little secret that wants to come out, and soon she is kissing him like she wants to have him right there and then but the need to cry tingles her heart and her eyes, because getting attached wasn't part of her plan when she came to the Montecito.

"Don't ever make me jealous again or I will murder your sorry ass. Your cuteness won't save you," she threatens but her lips are soft and lovely and Danny is fairly certain he wouldn't mind getting his heart broken by her.

"Got it, Ma'am," he says his lips never leaving hers as he grabs her tights to pull her up against him before walking up to the bed.