At Any Moment (Gaming The System Book 3) Read online

  She looked like she was permanently raising her eyebrow at me, like Mr. Spock’s freeze-face. I half expected her to turn to me and say, “That is illogical, Captain Kirk.”

  And I knew, under any other circumstance, Emilia would be laughing at this situation. But she was so delicate now, especially about her looks. I just didn’t have the heart to laugh, or even break the news to her that she was now one eyebrow short of a good frown.

  Without another word, I turned to the wheel of the boat and maneuvered us the short ride across to the slip beside my house, dodging the tiny ferry that went from the mainland to the Balboa peninsula and back multiple times every day.

  When we got there, Katya was waiting for us, sunning her very pale Canadian skin on one of the lounges on our small beach. When she caught sight of us, she came running up, wearing big, white sunglasses and a huge smile.

  When she saw Emilia, the smile dropped off her face. Before I could flag her and signal her to shut up with a finger slashed across my throat, she lifted her sunglasses and squinted at Emilia.

  “Huh. What the hell happened to your eyebrow? It’s gone!”

  Ah, goddamn. So much for preserving Emilia’s feelings. She ran straight into the house, demanding to look in the mirror. I gave Kat a long-suffering look.

  “Yeah, you could have handled that better.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise and she threw up her hands. “What? Like you could have hidden it from her that she looks like she’s permanently about to say something sarcastic. I mean, she’s her and she’s always saying something sarcastic, but damn. How long were you going to let her walk around with just one eyebrow?”

  I sighed, giving up. When I saw Emilia about a half an hour later, she had no eyebrows and most of her eyelashes were gone, too. She’d either pulled them out or shaved them. I didn’t have the heart to ask which. In fact, I never mentioned her lack of facial hair at all.

  I resolved to get my hair bleached blond and dyed pink if her looks became a big issue for her. At least I’d be drawing the freak looks to me instead of her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mia

  I was sure that Adam thought I couldn’t handle a little more hair loss. The truth was, I’d been expecting it. So I got a few different shades of eyebrow pencil and even a hypoallergenic Sharpie pen and practiced drawing in new eyebrows with Kat while we watched still more make-up tutorials online about eyebrows and eyelashes. With the swish of a pencil, I could go from appearing fierce and angry to permanently shocked or even a purely logical Vulcan. I could draw in weird zigzags and symbols, like a rock star.

  In short, I decided that I could either cry about it or laugh about it and since there had been so much to cry about lately, I chose the latter. This whole situation was starting to teach me something about the nature of happiness.

  And having Kat around to help me laugh at myself sure helped too…

  “Spock, Captain Kirk, Mr. Sulu,” Kat said to me a few days later when I was thumbing through my notes on the secret DE quest in order to prepare for another blog post. We were on the floor in my room and I was using the bed like a desk.

  “Hmm,” I said, tapping my lip. “Original series or reboot movies?”

  “The reboot. Duh.”

  “Let’s see…Fuck Spock. Marry Sulu. Kill Kirk.”

  Kat raised a brow at me and we both laughed. “Yeah, I kinda want to kill Kirk, too,” she said. “Okay, my turn.”

  “I think the dudes from The Big Bang Theory,” I said. “Leonard, Howard and Raj.”

  “Dude, no!” She started laughing. “I want to kill all those guys.”

  I pinned her down. “The game is called Fuck, Marry, Kill. Not Kill, Kill, Kill.”

  “That’s brutal, Mia. Damn…uh. Fuck Leonard. Marry Raj. Kill Howard.” And then she shuddered.

  I would have laughed, but I was already distracted by my notes.

  “Are you obsessing over that quest again?” she asked.

  “Yeah…I’m completely stuck. I’m this close to finding out where the princess’s prison is located but every time I get near the location, I get wiped out. I wish I had a healer…”

  Kat looked at me like I was crazy. “And what is Persephone, chopped liver? I’m one of the best healers on the server.”

  I stared at her for a minute, a little shaken by having missed something so obvious. If it had been a dog, would have bitten me in the ass. “Uh, yeah, I suppose I could do the quest with other players…you think that’s okay?”

  She shrugged. “Uh. Hell if I know. Ask your boyfriend.”

  “Oh no, he doesn’t ever say a word about anything to do with the quest.”

  Kat wagged her eyebrows at me. “You haven’t tried to use sexual favors to bribe him?”

  I looked away laughing it off. It would be more like the other way around. It seemed these days that I wanted it more than he did.

  “So, seriously, I’d need a tank, too.” I said, referring to the common term for a character with a lot of life points who could stand in front of the “squishy” characters like me and Kat and take all the damage.

  “Um, Fragged,” Kat said. “Who else?”

  “DPS.” A character that could inflict a lot of damage on opponents.

  “FallenOne.”

  I sighed. Why hadn’t it even occurred to me that I could get my regular gaming group in to help on the secret quest?

  “Um. Gee…maybe you were meant to ask for other people to help you, eh? Did that ever occur to you?”

  I scratched my head with my pencil, peering over my notes. “No, it didn’t.”

  I frowned, kind of shocked by my own stupidity. The next time we all had a gaming night, I’d ask for their help. And Adam would just have to sit there and keep his mouth shut and go along with what we were trying to do.

  And that’s exactly what I did…and that’s exactly what he did. Over the course of the next little while, as we made slow but steady progress, my regular group of gaming friends helped me progress in the quest.

  ***

  My life settled into a weird pattern of days. I’d go to the hospital for a new round, sometimes surrounded by my friends. Kat was there, and sometimes also Heath, Alex and Jenna. William also showed when he could, but hospitals freaked him out so he wasn’t terribly happy about it. Adam was always there, but he very seldom did much talking. He just kind of hovered near me, like a watchman.

  Then we’d go home. Just him and me, and I’d be alone with him for days while I felt like I was being put on the rack for my many sins. Sometimes a nurse was there, too, on the first day, but Adam was there for every minute of it. And it occurred to me that he must be exhausted because he never stopped working during that time, too. Jordan or a messenger brought the work to the house and he’d spend an hour or two away from me—almost always while I was sleeping anyway—and then be back by my side.

  The moment I started feeling better, he’d pull twenty-hour days at the office until a few days before I was supposed to go in for another round. Then we’d do something special or different, or just a walk on the beach or take a boat trip around the harbor. Or friends would come over and we’d play on the game and eat pizza.

  My twenty-third birthday came and went. It happened to fall on one of the days when I was still sick from chemo. My mom was there to nurse me and later, when I was feeling better, Adam made it up to me by having our friends over. But I was in little mood to celebrate. Who knew how many birthdays would come after this one?

  And who knew when things between Adam and me would go back to normal, if there was even a normal that we could go back to?

  Nowadays, he spent almost every bit of every waking hour with me. But never the nights.

  On one such day, a late morning with typically gorgeous weather, we sat on the back porch. Adam was reading the news on his tablet and I was flipping through some gamer magazines for ideas for my blog. Between all that was going on with me and the effects of chemo-brain on keeping me from
thinking clearly, it was getting harder and harder to maintain a façade for the blog.

  To say nothing of the awkwardness of blogging about DE. I’d gotten a lot of attention with my announcement about opening the quest. A lot of readers were following my vague progress reports and attempting to glean knowledge from them, but I was feeling more and more torn about the conflict of interest presented by my being with Adam and also blogging about his game.

  As I paged through the magazine, I stopped at an article about the San Diego Comic-Con. Adam looked over when, about halfway through reading it, I huffed loudly.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Mm. An opinion piece about how hard it is to get tickets for Comic-Con and how it’s getting harder and harder every year. I’d always wanted to go…someday…” I let my voice trail off, without explaining the implication that, given my current condition, there was a chance that “someday” might never come. I glanced up at him and his dark eyes were somber.

  These thoughts were constant gremlins that I mostly managed to shove to the back of my mind. Most people my age were very unaware of their own mortality unless, like me, they were forced to face the possibility their own imminent death every day. But I also knew that, given Adam’s own history, he was all too aware of it. It haunted us like a poltergeist that we tried to ignore. Simple expressions that included the word “dying” took on new meaning for us. We were no longer “dying” to see a certain movie or even “dying” of laughter.

  Because when you’d been given a fifteen percent chance of actually not making it through to see your next birthday, it was no longer just a figure of speech. I cleared my throat and shoved the gremlins away again.

  “I can hook you up with a pass to Comic-Con,” he said. “But I’m surprised that you never applied for a press pass given your status as a blogger.”

  I laughed. “You overestimate my influence in the grand scheme of things.”

  “But GameGlomerate hasn’t, apparently, because they want to buy you out.”

  I shrugged. “It’s weird. I was never desperate to go, unlike Alex or my other friends. It was just on my ‘things to do before I’—‘things I really gotta do someday’ list…” I corrected myself midsentence and Adam’s lips thinned.

  “Well, then, I’ll give you one of the tickets assigned to Draco. You can take the place of one of the interns. One less silly idiot I have to deal with on the trip.”

  “I shouldn’t—” I sighed. I no longer worked for his company.

  “What if I said I really want you to come?” He cracked a smile.

  I smiled back. “In that case…why not? Life’s too short.”

  He frowned and turned away. Ah, there it was—another gremlin had popped up to replace the one we’d cleverly avoided. I sighed. Instead of pretending not to notice his reaction, I moved to sit next to him, resting my head on his shoulder. “You hate it when I say that, don’t you?”

  He was silent, then glanced at me and kissed the top of my head. “Yeah, I do.”

  My arms slipped around his shoulders. “Then I won’t say it anymore.”

  He pulled me against him, kissing me again. “Thank you.”

  We stayed like that for long moments. And I wanted to kiss him so badly. We hadn’t had a good kiss in a long time. How was it that we could be with each other every day, in each other’s presence so much, and yet I’d never felt more distant from him?

  I turned and kissed him on the lips. It was one of those kisses that an old married couple might give each other after fifty years together. Adam and I hadn’t been a couple for even a year. But what a year it had been. Full of so many highs and so many lows. Had it caused our love to burn out?

  I looked into his dark eyes as I kissed him again, feeling that familiar lurch in my heart. My feelings hadn’t changed but I was well aware that our past actions may have irreparably damaged that fledgling love. I pressed him for more, opening my mouth, but he didn’t respond.

  I pulled away, watching him. We stared into each other’s eyes and I could hardly breathe. That same uncertainty, those same questions were squeezing my heart and whirring around my mind. His eyes were mirrors…but were they reflecting what he thought I wanted to see?

  I took a deep breath. “It’s my barf breath, isn’t it? I have barf breath.”

  His mouth crinkled at the corners. “You don’t have barf breath.”

  “You could tell me, you know. I can take it.”

  His mouth curved into a full-fledged smile. “You do not have barf breath. However, your eyebrows are disturbing me today.”

  I brushed my fingertips over the Sharpie-scribbled markings. “You don’t like the magic symbols today?”

  “You look like a dark sorceress.”

  “I’ll turn ya into a toad if you don’t kiss me.”

  “That’s backwards.”

  “Dark sorceresses swing that way.”

  He pulled me closer and kissed me again, presumably to ward off the toad curse. After a moment, the kiss grew into something more and with a sigh I rested against him, enjoying it. Adam always started every kiss with a soft touch—like a light taste. An amuse-bouche that left you craving more.

  It usually didn’t last long. Soon that taste kindled a hunger that demanded fulfillment. From taste to indulgence, it invited complete immersion, a mutual relish. Then came the back and forth. I’d feed him, he’d feed me. We’d feast on each other and the more we did, the hungrier we became.

  His hands were now on either side of my face, holding me still, holding me against his mouth. The kiss deepened and I found it hard to breathe, my heart racing like I’d just stepped off a treadmill. A cold thrill went through me. He was touching me like a lover again. Finally.

  Pressing my mouth to his and opening it, I slid my tongue inside and I felt it—a sudden sharp intake of breath, the staccato of his heartbeat under my hand. I had no doubt in that brief moment that he wanted me. And I wanted him, too. And the heat that was generating between us held a promise in it.

  That was, until he pulled away—very gently and without warning. His face was flushed and I could easily tell he was aroused. But he ended it with another one of those goddamn kisses on my forehead—like a grandpa kissing his granddaughter. And I sat back, exasperated.

  “Adam—”

  “Aren’t you hungry? I’m starving.”

  I raised one of my drawn-in eyebrows. “Yeah, I’m hungry and so are you. But not for food.”

  He took a deep breath and let it go, sitting up and causing me to pull back from him.

  “Why don’t you want me anymore?”

  He blinked. “Who said I didn’t want you? It should be obvious that is not the case.”

  “Should it?”

  He glanced down, indicating his very ready erection. I moved a hand toward it but he grabbed my wrist. “That’s not going slow.”

  “You’re making me crazy. It’s been months…”

  “Let’s not argue about this, okay? You are going in for a new treatment tomorrow.”

  “That’s tomorrow. And I have almost twenty-four hours until then.”

  He didn’t say anything and I stared at him while he avoided my gaze.

  “When, then?”

  He shrugged. “When you are feeling better?”

  “I have a month of chemo left.”

  “I know,” he whispered. He pulled me against him. “I don’t think we’re ready yet.”

  But if not now, then when? And why not? What was fucking with his mind? Because it was obviously something. It was clear that he wanted it, that apparently the fact that I looked like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings had not completely repulsed him.

  What was it, then?

  Chapter Twenty

  Adam

  I knew she had questions that I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer. I knew she needed to feel close to someone. I needed it, too. But we weren’t ready. We were just getting our life back on the rails from the fucked-up mistakes we�
�d made.

  She needed a friend right now and I was determined to be only that. Because the last time I’d touched her—well, we couldn’t stand any more disasters. At least not until the debris from the current ones had cleared.

  ***

  “Ugh. Okay, let’s go again, I guess. Time for try number three hundred and sixty-two,” Heath muttered. He may have thrown a dirty look in my direction, too.

  With a long sigh, Emilia rubbed her forehead below the edge of the bandana wrapped around her head. “We must be missing something super obvious here. We’ve been at this for days and keep getting wiped out.”

  We were in the gaming room in my house, all sitting around a table with our laptops in front of us. Since we were all in the same room for once, we didn’t need headsets. I stifled a yawn. They always got extra irritated when I appeared bored. What did they expect? I had to mentally sit on my hands and let them figure this out by themselves.

  Kat straightened. “Okay, I’ve got all my spells back. We are good to go again.”

  “Shit. We have to do something different. I’m not just going to keep doing the same thing over and over again. This is bullshit. Seriously,” Heath moaned.

  Emilia was going over her notes again for the tenth time. “I agree that we are missing something…but what? We’re at the right location. There’s a fortress on top of the mountain and I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s where she’s being held. The clues state that there is a tunnel that leads to a secret underground entrance to the castle. In theory that should be here, next to Sergeant What’s-his-face. But every time we talk to him and he gives us the key, that horde of goblins pops out of nowhere and wastes us.”

  “Maybe we aren’t supposed to talk to him and just get to the entrance without him,” Kat suggested.

  Heath expelled a long-suffering sigh. “We need the key and the entrance doesn’t even appear until we talk to him. So if we don’t talk to him, there’s no key and no entrance.”

  “But the minute we do, a fuckton of goblins jumps our asses,” Kat said. “So either we are doing something wrong, or we need a whole lot more people here to help us.”