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Danny had a drink in hand, a mission to complete, and, most of all, he had doubts.
Expensive was the name of the game in the rich people’s playground, and this was no exception. The yacht he found himself in was truly huge—a multiple-levels expensive-looking contraption, full of the usual tackiness of new money royalty. A swimming pool (of a very respectable size, Danny found), several bars, some of the richest people in the country—this place had it all, and most of it was particularly loud. None of the discreet luxury he’d become accustomed to around those kinds of people in his early adulthood. This place was certainly closer to a Las Vegas casino than Beverly Hills in its flashiness.
Good thing his first order of business had been to find an empty spot, then.
Danny sighed and tugged at the collar of his shirt. The fabric was light and sand-colored, the uncreasable kind—perfect for summer’s heat—but even with the two top buttons open, he could still feel it, pressing up against his throat. The warmth was suffocating, and the sea breeze did nothing to appease his discomfort—but it was less crowded here, by the side railing, where most people feared the fall. Quieter, too, with only the hum of the waves and yacht motor to break the monotony. It wasn’t nice, per se, but it was as good as it was going to get. It almost made him forget what he was there to do.
But Carl Bates wasn’t a man you said no to. Once you were his, he led the way and you followed. No questions asked.
The night was still young, bright full moon taking its spot proudly among the stars, and the dark blue of the expansive sky made everything but the yacht feel too distant and dark to matter. Sipping his whiskey, Danny wondered whether this was a good idea at all, to be planning the next heist so soon after Larry’s mistake. No, not mistake—glaring incompetence they’d missed. Well. Carl’d missed. Danny had known the man to be unreliable from the very start, flighty and inattentive, and now, well… they were one member short.
And Danny wondered.
A talent for the ages, Carl had called him more than once—tonight, though, he didn’t feel like much of anything. He was getting a headache—the kind that stuck. To make matters worse, there he was, the man himself, maneuvering his way through the crowd like a fucking pro. Checking on him like one checks on a prone-to-misbehaving dog.
“How long you gonna keep nursing that drink for?” Carl asked, pointing toward the mostly untouched dram of whiskey in Danny’s glass. There was a subtle mockery to the tilt of his mustache-hidden upper-lip, a playful-but-sharp look to his brown eyes. The man was shorter than Danny by quite a bit, but one thing he never failed to do was make him feel small.
“Shouldn’t be getting wasted on a job,” Danny muttered in response, a frown fixed on his forehead.
“You want to blend in, don’t you?” Carl’s tone was dry, but, then again, it always was. Danny found it sometimes rubbing off on him.
“Should I do cocaine too?” he asked sharply, but he barely meant it. He’d been sulking all night, blaming Carl in his head for introducing Larry into their crew, but he was gone from the roster—it was done. And, as Carl had put it, he got to call the shots from now on. Spread his wings.
A condescending asshole, yes, but Carl never let the same mistake play out twice. If he trusted Danny, then it meant something. Six years working together couldn’t be erased by a single mistake.
It’d be foolish to hold grudges, and Danny wasn’t a foolish man.
Carl huffed. “If it will take out that stick shoved up your ass, then sure. Go ahead.”
Danny didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a close call. This push and pull of a conversation was doing nothing to alleviate his headache, so he remained quiet instead, gaze shifting back to the horizon ahead, and to the tinged-with-light blackness of the moving water.
He was here for a job, but surprisingly, the suit-clad, roman-nosed douche bags—children, really, judging by the looks of it—that found yacht parties like this a pleasant night out also knew how to keep their secrets well hidden. Not even the drinks and cocaine habit opened up their mouths. He wasn’t pressed for time this time around, exactly, but, still. A failure was a failure regardless of how hard you tried… or didn’t.
Danny kept holding onto the railing, fingers now tight in place. There would be other opportunities, more chances and parties and loose lips, but time was always a scarce resource in this kind of thing—in one way or another. Danny was sick of the constant swaying, sick of the stupid party tricks and party favors, sick of the European top 40 songs on a loop, sick of his mentor’s taunting eyes—sick of everything. Yet, above all else, Danny was a professional. He’d dragged his ass out here to do a job, just like he was meant to, just like he’d always done. The work, however boring, however tiring, was always worth it in the end.
Tonight, though, he couldn’t help but feel like it was simply pointless.
Carl had fallen into a charged silence as well, standing too close to Danny for his taste. He carried himself with the kind of easy disposition Danny had always strived for, the kind of confidence that one could not fake without coming off as a try-hard. If Carl was silent, it was because all had been said. He knew Danny well enough to know he would do whatever was expected of him.
Always the follower, never the leader.
There was still bitterness in bittersweet, after all.
“You do whatever you think it’s best,” the older man croaked out. “You’re experienced enough.” Danny didn’t turn, but he could feel the intensity of Carl’s gaze as he spoke his next words. “Just a heads-up, though. You might not be the only asshole working his way through the crowd tonight, so maybe do us both a favor and call first dibs on the job before pretty boy does.”
That did make Danny turn around, suddenly struck by the feeling of his heartbeat reaching his ears, but Carl had already found someone else to distract himself with. Bastard. Would it kill him to give out some more details?
A new player on the field, though, also there, doing recon on the same targets. Unlikely. Was Carl lying to him, trying to get him riled up, or was this a coincidence for the ages?
Or, the most logical part of his brain chimed in, somebody tipped the guy off. Maybe Carl himself.
A test: spot the enemy. Some sick attempt at motivation.
Like Carl always said: a little competition never killed anybody who didn’t already deserve to keel over.
Danny’s eyes were now alert, casing his surroundings with hawk-eyed vision. He might not carry out any meaningful work on the target part of the job that night, and he surely didn’t appreciate Carl’s schemes, but he would still do his best to stop the leech from attempting to get ahead behind his back.
If Carl was being serious, then he knew he should be looking for someone who didn’t belong there—someone like him. Someone a little too interested in what the coked-up populace had to say, someone with sharper eyes than everyone else around. It was easier said than done, though—people were more bodies than individuals here, and anyone with half a brain would attempt to blend in. Anyone outside of Danny, of course.
In the end, though, it was the curve of the guy’s neck that gave him away.
There, by the giant bar counter—right in Danny’s field of vision, too—looking as at home as one could in such an environment, stood an older man—well, younger than Danny, but older than most of the people there. Stood, however, was a bit of a misleading descriptor—he was borderline perched on the counter, his back to the bartender, and Danny saw how he moved, smooth even in the way his neck twisted to look somewhere to his right. Danny couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t tell whether the man was attentively scoping his surroundings or sleazily looking for his next lay, but despite the lax body language on the surface, Danny could see the tight fists carefully tucked to his sides, the rigid muscle in his neck. And, when he turned to look ahead, the man’s gaze turned from intense to incredibly, painfully bored in record time.
Bored. People in this place had all sorts of looks in their eyes, from lustful to annoyed to dazed, but one emotion that had managed to evade Danny’s observation consistently so far was boredom.
That had got to be it. The one he was looking for. And if it wasn’t…
Well. He had the rest of this long, long night to find out.
Danny remained on high alert, but the blond intruder remained just as dully hyperactive as before. Hyperactive, not anxious—an important distinction. An odd combination, Danny could admit, but the man made it work. He kept changing drinks and exchanging words with the bartender, who seemed far too interested in whatever he had to say, and Danny waited. There was something deliberate in the way he moved, though, like part of everything he did was an act. He seemed like the type of man to hide his competency under wraps until it was too late for whomever he targeted to see it coming.
The type of man Danny couldn’t help but admire.
There was a shift in his competitor’s behavior, then, something that Danny realized too late led to the other staring straight at him. He tried to appear inconspicuous, at least until he had a proper game plan, but he could feel that gaze burning through his skin. He was itching to meet it head-on. So, against his better judgment, he did.
The stranger was a confident one, if nothing else—his gaze didn’t waver even for a second once it was reciprocated. The strangest part was that it didn’t seem like he was seeing Danny for the first time, like he’d just felt his eyes on him and reacted accordingly, an instinctual reaction. It was clear there was absolutely no questioning present in those eyes.
In fact, the first thought to hit Danny at that moment, to stick, was the unshakable conviction that the man had been aware of his presence on the yacht the second he’d stepped in.
The man started toward him, gaze still never leaving his face, and Danny did his best to school his features into an indifferent expression. Something that said, loud and clear, you’ve got nothing that interests me. Walk away.
His unspoken warning did little to dissuade him, however, as he kept on until he reached Danny, head tilted slightly. Something in Danny told him to take a step back from the other man. An uncomfortable sense of anticipation lingered. He was being... sized up. Evaluated. Like prey.
Desirable prey.
“You gonna stare all night or you’ve got a game plan for how you want this to go?” the man said by way of introduction. His voice was deep, smooth. Blue eyes stared Danny up and down, no flicker of emotion in them outside of faint amusement.
What was he implying? Cooperation? Divide and conquer?
At least they seemed to be on the same page about each other’s intentions that night.
“Have you?” Danny asked, eye contact unwavering. “Got a game plan?” he added.
The other man huffed out a laugh.
“You’re the one who’s been keeping your eyes on the prize, man. I’m just collecting, since you seem unable to do it yourself.”
The words took Danny aback immediately. They could still be talking about the targets, but this didn’t feel job-related. If anything, judging by the tiny smirk on the man’s lips, the way he’d started to get closer, no qualms about personal space, Danny couldn’t help but feel like he’d misunderstood the whole thing. Like the man was, well, flirting.
“This isn’t what you think it is,” Danny immediately course-corrected. He was trying, very hard at this point, to avoid the blush coming up his neck. Danny didn’t do flirting, especially not at jobs, and not with competitors. Especially not with men.
Not since he was a teenager, anyway.
“So you haven’t been ogling me for about half an hour?”
God, what he wouldn’t give to know the other man’s name. To have something to hold over him, something to shift the dynamic back in his favor. Danny didn’t like feeling cornered, and he certainly didn’t like feeling out of control. His poker face worked better when he knew all the faces sitting around the table.
“Maybe I was looking around and simply didn’t shift my eyes once they landed on you.”
The man’s eyebrows shot up. “Of all the people here, I find it hard to believe you just happened to land on me. Or that it didn’t mean anything.” He breathed out, lips slightly apart. Danny found the gesture distracting. “The real question is whether you are willing to fuck me or if you’ll just chicken out all night. My bet is on the latter.” The man leaned forward, those same lips close to Danny’s ear, now, and Danny felt completely rooted in place. Helpless. Lost. “What you gonna do now, huh?” he whispered. The air coming out of his mouth gave Danny a chill that no sea breeze had been able to all night.
“Who are you?” he muttered, voice so low it would hardly be audible to anyone who hadn’t had this man’s gall to step this close.
But this man was truly a brave one, it seemed, and he smirked even more at the question. Danny absentmindedly noted in his mind that he had dimples. “Rusty. For this, you don’t need to know anything else.”
Whatever Danny had to say—whichever way he’d been about to choose from to reject Rusty—immediately got caught in his throat.
Another surprise. Another goddamn twist of fate.
This sort of thing was always funny until it wasn’t.
Danny took a step to the side, putting some distance between them in order to stare right into the other man’s eyes. He then asked, without measuring any words, “Fucking Carl’s Rusty?”
“Well, this is a surprise,” Rusty said, laughter in his tone. “Nah, I take it back. This is exactly the kind of shit he would pull.”
Great. Marvelous. What a magnificent situation to be stuck in.
The worst part was, Danny could see it.
He really should have downed that drink after all.
“He wanted us to meet each other? Like this?” Danny wasn’t flabbergasted at all at the notion, but he’d still figured Carl would have a bit more class than that. But, then again, their meeting being a coincidence would just be astounding. And Carl had played Danny like a fiddle by sending him into a wild goose chase, after all, pretending he had competition when, really, he was holding both of them by the strings.
It all fit like a glove.
“You’re Danny Ocean, right? The one whose crew is a member short?”
Danny nodded, defeated. Rusty wasn’t the enemy, not tonight anyway. Tonight, they were both idiots.
“The real question, Danny Ocean, is why do you reckon we haven’t done this together yet?”
You really need to ask? Look at you. You command attention everywhere you go. With your history, you’re a liability. You need handling Carl knows I can’t be in charge of.
But he couldn’t say any of that, not without revealing something he didn’t want to about himself in the process.
“You know the man likes his secrets. He’ll blabber about his talent all day, but god forbid you hear a word about any of his plans before you absolutely have to.”
By this point, Danny started to realize how he was feeling, and what he was about to do—and more specifically, what he would not. The first thing he realized was that he was no longer as anxious, distracted by the presence of Rusty, by his existence in his orbit—and that he didn’t know what that meant, but he knew it was a sign—or an omen—of some kind. And the second thing, the most important thing he was absolutely sure of as he looked at Rusty, was that he was most definitely not going to be doing any more work tonight.
Voluntarily giving up was still failure, Carl would say, but he’d been the one to set them up for it.
Danny ran his hand through the hair, too tired and frustrated to care about how it looked, and sighed heavily.
Might as well get a new drink.
“What are you even doing with a man like him?”
The first question Rusty asked Danny as soon as he had a full glass was loaded. The kind that begged for a backstory as an answer that Danny was not about to go into, certainly not with Rusty fucking Ryan.
“What are you?” he shot back.
Rusty shook his head. “You first.”
Stubborn. One more thing to add to the list of why he is known as a terrible team player.
“I have the connections, he has the means.”
“Arrangement of convenience, then?” Rusty’s eyes didn’t let up—always, always on him. Like Danny was the only thing worthy in his field of vision. It’d been like this since he’d gotten back from the bar.
“You could say that.” Danny licked his lips, feeling his mouth suddenly dry at the look Rusty gave him. He took a sip of his whiskey. “How did he snatch you up?”
Rusty’s blue eyes got darker, shifty. Touchy subject? “I have the knowledge, he has the means. Arrangement of convenience. Not that much different from your story.”
Except Danny knew a lot more about Rusty Ryan than he seemed to know about Danny, and that was barely half of it. It made him want to chuckle a bit.
“This can’t be the whole reason, though.”
Rusty’s eyes asked the question back, a silent ‘I could say the same.’ Still, he just shook his head slightly. “I like him.”
So simple, so succinct. I like him. As if liking Carl was an easy task and not a chain.
“That’s it?”
Rusty laughed softly, a strange but captivating sound. “I don’t get why you’re so surprised. Don’t you?” It wasn’t a question. “I can see it in your eyes. You like the old man too. Behind all that built-in resentment whenever he gets mentioned, there’s affection. What is he to you, some sort of father figure?”
Danny snorted softly. Rusty was both right and so, so wrong.
“It isn’t about affection. Crews change all the time, members get replaced. Getting attached is suicide—or at least an invitation to never work in this field with anyone competent ever again. It astounds me you don’t get this.” Danny watched Rusty closely as he said his next words. “Isn’t your whole shtick running away, being unattached? Unreliable?” Volatile, Danny thought but didn’t say. Untrustworthy.
The Carl that lived in Danny’s mind whispered his well-repeated adage: Be careful with that one. Rusty is a lone wolf. Don’t expect him to get you out of trouble.
Rusty always comes first.
Danny expected anger, at least a glimpse of it, but nothing but amusement was present on Rusty’s face. “Is that what he says about me?”
“You’ve been better since he stepped in.”
“What would you know about improvement, golden boy? Haven’t you always been the best, the one that ‘came in knowing the trade’?”
Rusty’s answer caught Danny off guard—not only because of his suddenly less playful tone, but because of his words. The implication of what Carl said about him behind his back. Real life had been an illusion, a pastime, but it’d had its advantages—the fantasy allowed Danny to wear a mask like a second skin, the kind needed for this lifestyle. He knew all too well that Carl liked to use Danny’s for himself, but he hadn’t known he bragged about it.
“Me? The golden boy?” Danny let out a disbelieving laugh. “I assume no one’s told you about Rusty, the diamond in the rough.”
He hadn’t planned on saying it, on unwittingly exchanging compliments, but he’d let down his guard with Rusty. A trap, perhaps, but one so well laid Danny couldn’t tell its purpose. At least not yet.
Rusty scratched the back of his hair. “Of course he’d say that,” he laughed. He did that a lot, Danny noticed. Laughed as if the entire world was a big joke. “Ugly on the outside, waiting to be cut and polished. By him, of course. You don’t have any value until he assigns it to you.”
For a man with such a tendency to find humor in everything, there sure was bleakness in Rusty Ryan.
Layers. Like a scratch ticket. Nothing deeper than that.
Nothing I need to waste this much time thinking about or feeding.
Danny’s mouth, however, didn’t follow his brain’s logic. “If you think like this, then why do you work for him?”
“I don’t work for him, I work with him. On occasion. When it strikes my fancy.” A deflection. Danny had started to realize this man was very good at those.
When Danny didn’t find an answer to Rusty’s non-answer, didn’t immediately poke and prod, the man looked at Danny with what seemed like genuine surprise.
Danny liked the look. He liked how it disarmed Rusty’s suave, quick-witted offense—a complete deconstruction of his face. A break in the façade. With his eyes wide open, mouth following suit, and interest and questions all over his expression, Rusty looked younger. Full of possibility.
Alive.
“You always do what he wants you to do?” The surprise had transferred to Rusty’s voice, the pitch of his voice slightly higher. Danny doubted he’d meant it as an insult, but it was hard not taking it as one. As a sort of snarky challenge.
Like Rusty was saying he was better than him. Daring him to do something about it.
He couldn’t then help the defensiveness when he spoke, “I strive for order, not chaos. Carl assists me with that. You’ve been lucky, I’ll grant you that, but that only gets you so far.”
“No luck. Strategy. I don’t need authority up my ass to know what I’m doing.”
Funny, Danny thought. “You would be in jail if Carl hadn’t stepped in two years ago. By the way, was it also strategic when you robbed a bank at 19 years old? You sure you even had an escape route planned for that one?”
Now there was some edge to Rusty’s gaze. No longer a challenge—an affront.
“Didn’t get caught, did I? Didn’t need him then either. Don’t need him now.”
Touché, Danny relented in his mind. Out loud, though, he simply snorted, shaking his head. Not a mockery, just an acknowledgment of the absurdity of their situation. Barely a peace offering, truly, but Rusty took it as one, if the way he leaned back onto the railing next to Danny meant anything.
Open. Unguarded. I could shove him right into the ocean and he wouldn’t even have time to react.
Danny blinked at the thought.
Something about Rusty—something tucked between his blasé attitude, his perpetual smirk, his undone tie—just brought out a less polished version of Danny. Something he’d abandoned for discipline, for routine, for stability; something wild. Most people didn’t get under his skin, didn’t get to pry underneath, let alone this fast. It was unsettling.
And Danny might have often chosen strategic passivity in his life, but he wasn’t one to run from a job when it got hard. Or a conversation.
“You went by a different name back then, didn’t you, though?”
His was an attempt at rattling, at getting a reaction—and at that he was undoubtedly successful. Rusty’s jaw clicked, a muscle in his cheek twitching just once, and his eyes darkened. Whatever vulnerability he had shown before had had nothing on this—Danny had struck a nerve. As fast as the reaction had come, however, it left, leaving only a lazy smile in its wake that didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t we all in this line of work?”
It was barely another attempt at deflection, a weak one at best, but Danny let it slide. Rusty wasn’t the target tonight; at best, he was a distraction.
But Carl had brought them together. And Danny was short a man for the next job.
If there was something he had learned real fast growing up, it was that you took the opportunity wherever you saw it.
“You’re truly working tonight or did Carl just point you in my direction to spite me?”
“What do you care? Willing to settle for me as replacement?”
The question lingered in the air. Rusty had a bad reputation, yes, but he was also damn good at what he did. Truth was, despite all his flaws, Danny could do a lot worse as far as replacements went.
The doubt in Danny’s mind was whether Rusty would take the invitation or get offended at the notion of being a last-minute choice.
“Can hardly call it settling with your success rate.”
Rusty smirked.
“Thought I was ‘unreliable.’”
“You’re individualistic. That’s definitely a downside in Carl’s crew. But you get the job done.” Danny snorted. “That’s more than I can say for the last one.”
Danny could see Rusty thinking, running the proposal through his head, searching for weak spots or anything that crossed his scant little lines. Whatever the answer was, he came to it fast.
“No.”
“No?” Danny hadn’t been a hundred percent confident he’d receive a yes, but he’d thought Rusty would have realized he had no other choice. A no was equal parts foolish and worrying.
“I’m working for myself from now on. Calling my own shots. Maybe setting up my own crew.” Rusty scratched the side of his hair, head tilted, considering. As if in thought, Danny remarked in his head. But he knew better. This had been the plan all along. “I might be a ‘diamond in the rough,’ but I like my rough edges right where they are.”
It was insane. Stupid. The kind of risk no man in their position should take.
“You don’t have the resources. Your reputation is shot to the high heavens. Who is ever going to follow you?”
Rusty raised an eyebrow. “You really think Carl knows what he’s doing? That he’s some kind of mastermind behind it all?” He snorted. “You’re just something he can use. He collects strays just like you in their most vulnerable moments and then discards them when they no longer fit into the little puzzle that is his reality. You’re barely part of a whole. You’re just spare parts, and the worst part is that you truly think you’re invaluable. It’s why you stay. He bought your loyalty, and you’re still his little puppy, no matter how long he’s kept you around.” Rusty clicked his fingers, almost absentmindedly—but when he said his next words, he had his full attention on Danny. “Want to be a big dog? Get the hell out from under Carl’s wing.”
Danny wanted to curse the man. Wanted to throw jabs at him, at his past, make him feel raw and exposed and lose the confidence he so dearly carried with him like armor. Danny wanted to deny every word in Rusty’s speech, label him a liar like so many had before.
But he didn’t do any of it. He stayed quiet.
Because, in some twisted way, Rusty was right. Of all the people in the world to get Danny to finally see the truth, Rusty Ryan had been the one to do it. The antithesis to everything Danny had ever stood for.
And in an even more twisted way, precisely because it had hurt, Danny realized he wouldn’t have it any other way.
There wasn’t much one could do or say after having their entire worldview shattered in seconds, so Danny did what he’d been doing all night—he drank his whiskey quietly, and stared out into the dark, black sea.
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, truly, after everything, but for Rusty to stay by his side in silence wasn’t it.
“I would have given everything to be on a yacht like this when I was getting started,” Rusty said in a low tone.
Danny hadn’t been willing to break the silence, but now that it was done, he had no choice but to start talking again. Rusty was a perpetual question, and Danny had always been too curious for his own good.
“This the kind of life you aspire to?” Danny truly didn’t see the appeal—money was one thing, but it didn’t always require this kind of lifestyle to follow it. It was a pipe dream for him anyway, to be this showy with the illegality of his activities. His was a name to be whispered in shadows, not shouted and traded in megayachts. Danny was always the friend of a friend.
Money or no money, it had never been his world to inhabit, and he’d made peace with that a long time ago.
“’s a dream,” Rusty muttered, like he’d been reading Danny’s mind. “The best kind.” Rusty touched the back of his neck softly, a sort of unconscious gesture by the looks of it, and Danny frowned. He knew how to read people, knew the basic body language signs and what they meant, but this didn’t read the usual nervous to him. It felt almost… nostalgic, like he was back in a different body at a different time. Reliving. “Not yours?”
Danny almost smiled at the idealism weaved into the question. “A goal, sure. Not naive enough for dreams.”
“Can’t have a goal without dreams.”
“You don’t seem to be working toward anything.”
Rusty looked at Danny, amusement back in his expression like it had never left. “Confusing roads can still lead to a destination.”
They were two glorified con artists, both sent on a recon mission neither truly wanted to be in—this was hardly the dream Rusty seemed to aspire to. To Rusty, this man now unbuttoning the third and fourth buttons of his shirt with not a care in the world, this line of work seemed to require passion to remain top of mind—hence the boredom when it felt wrong, because to Rusty, it was all about vocation, talent, intuition, feelings. To Danny, however, it was all about discipline. A plan to get to the goal in sight.
And if the rush of a well-executed score lent itself to Danny far too often, sometimes even clouding his judgment, well… it still didn’t say much about him. People didn’t steal the way he and Carl and Rusty did simply for the money. Being an adrenaline-seeking bastard came with the job description. He was just careful with the way he went about following his worst impulses.
“Would you ever throw a party like this?” Danny asked.
It was an inconsequential question, almost filler, but Rusty’s answer made Danny almost choke on air.
“If you’d show up, sure. Can’t say no to good company.”
Was he flirting again? Even now that he knew who he was, who he worked for?
“Not to burst any bubbles, but I’ll probably never set foot on a yacht ever again.”
Rusty laughed. Not a semi-mocking laugh, not a huff of faint amusement, no—a full belly laugh, the earnest, unrestrained kind. The sound made Danny feel something in his stomach, something he couldn’t name, but for now, he simply allowed himself to smile back.
“Fair. This place is a shithole.”
This time Danny was the one to laugh, to let loose. Rusty looked back at him with something like pride in his eyes, maybe even fondness, and Danny felt self-conscious. It was the kind of embarrassment that came with not holding back, with being seen. Danny had been hiding behind his façade for so long he’d forgotten how that felt like.
He didn’t know what kind of future he’d had, how he’d behave as Carl’s second in command after all this, but one thing was certain in this whole chaos, something he could cling to as his true north.
He wanted more of whatever this was.
The night was beyond its peak, and there was not even a hint of blue in the sky, the yacht and the places becoming closer and closer on the horizon being the only sources of light available in the infinity of darkness that surrounded them. Soon, Danny would be out of this glorified boat, back to land, back home to his loneliness and an empty fridge, and this whole night would feel like nothing more than a distant memory, probably closer to a dream than reality. But, for the first time since he’d become his own man unattached from his past, Danny didn’t ache to go home, didn’t feel eager for a job to be done so he could feed off the success and pretend it was enough. For once, he wanted to stay.
“We’ll be back on land soon,” Rusty murmured. Danny nodded.
“Back to civilization and reality.”
“Is it, though? Reality? Wouldn’t you want to just experience this all the time?” Rusty’s eyes were wide, childlike yet honest. Knowing.
Danny knew he didn’t mean the party.
“It’s just not realistic.”
“You create your own reality. This is real to them,” Rusty argued, pointing to the people partying around the yacht, oblivious to the incoming end.
Danny waved away the thought. “They’re fools. Out of touch. You wouldn’t want this.”
“Maybe,” Rusty agreed. His face softened as he looked at Danny, nothing concealed—still, Danny couldn’t quite read it. It felt like too much to decipher all at once. “I could afford to be more out of touch if I weren’t alone. If I had someone to keep me tied down to reality from time to time.”
Danny was aware of what he was asking, almost explicitly saying. What would a yes even mean, though?
Yet, could he afford inside himself to say no?
The silence between them was deafening as the yacht made its way back to shore, back to the world they had left behind. Rusty had started that night as nothing more than competition to Danny, someone to beat and stop and maybe recruit, but he’d quickly turned into something else. A question. Anticipation. Expectation.
Hope.
Most people had disembarked by the time the two of them made their way out, still silent. There was a chill in the air—the proximity to the ocean still making the weather cool and electric, like an incoming storm. It felt appropriate, to have this goodbye be set to the promise of something bigger.
“I’ll see you in another life, Rusty Ryan.” He couldn’t help adding an addendum. “I’m sure you can find me sometime if you need more than a one-man operation.” Danny chuckled. “We can’t have your lucky streak end now with you in jail, can we?”
He’d said the words with intentional levity, with plausible deniability, but any chance of pretending he didn’t mean them went out the window as Rusty answered.
“You’d do a job with me? No Carl, just us?”
The vulnerability in his voice didn’t go unnoticed by Danny. There was something raw, something new and untamed about Rusty that drew Danny in. Something about him that spoke of the highest highs and the lowest lows. He’d either help Danny reach legendary status or he’d ruin him entirely. The risk was there, if he went through with this, and it was shouting in his face.
Still…
“Wouldn’t have spoken to you all night if the answer was a definitive no.” Rusty’s smile was blinding. Danny felt terrible that he needed to make it disappear. “Not right now, but maybe. You never know where the winds will take you.”
Danny’s words didn’t take away any enthusiasm in Rusty at all, though. If anything, they made it turn into more reckless bravery.
“Want to form our own crew and ditch Carl entirely? Stop taking orders and make it solo?”
Rusty sounded like an eager child, manic and full of energy. It made Danny smile.
“Not this time.”
“That’s not a no,” Rusty observed. His eyes looked brighter now than they did before, bluer and deeper. Danny couldn’t help the laugh that left his lips at Rusty’s assertion.
“I’ll see you around, Rusty.”
Probably sooner than both of us think.
Because he wanted to see him again. He wanted to experience his mind in action, to see how well Rusty Ryan truly worked with a partner. With Danny.
The thought was overwhelming, but not scary. If anything, it felt right. Thrilling. Destined.
“See you around, Danny Ocean.” Rusty winked. When he turned around, he left, making his way through the remaining crowd, not sparing a single glance Danny’s way.
He knew what he was thinking, though. The same thing Danny was thinking.
No more middlemen. We’ll meet again.
And next time, it’ll be just us.