His smile faded and the amusement in his eyes was gone when I met his gaze once more. “You know I had nothing to do with all that.”
He sounded so serious, so…not like Luke. I found myself swallowing a sudden flicker of guilt. I shoved it aside. Why on earth should I feel guilty for accusing him of something that he was a part of?
Sure, he hadn’t been one of the people posting the hashtag or cruelly calling out the nerdy kids in our class with ugly photos—but his friends had. And that was just as bad, right?
He hadn’t done anything to stop it, and he hadn’t taken our side. With that thought I tilted my chin up and met his gaze evenly. “So then what are you doing here?”
He held his hands up, his smile once more in place. “Can’t a guy take an interest in gaming around here?”
“Not you,” I said. “You’re not into video games so why would you want to be a part of this?”
“Ah, see that’s where you’re wrong,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
He sat upright in his chair and his intense gaze clashed with mine. “I am into video games. MageLand, in particular.”
I blinked rapidly, my mind trying to register this new fact while simultaneously replaying every interaction I’d ever had with him—including yesterday’s. At lunch. When he hadn’t so much as dropped a hint that he hadn’t merely heard of the game, but played it. I crossed my arms. “Since when?”
He crossed his arms too. “Since it came out about a year ago.”
I opened my mouth and shut it. The fact that he knew when it was released meant nothing. “What’s the secret to beating the first level?”
“You have to score the Shield of Akron to make it through the final gate.”
I stared. No, I gaped. Gawked, even. I had not been expecting him to know the answer let alone rattle it off like I’d just asked him to give me the answer to two plus two.
“Fine,” I said, trying to hide my shock and failing if his smug look was anything to go by. “How many times can you cross the Bridge of Nydor before you have to start the level over again?”
It was a trick question. You can’t cross the bridge, but most newbies get stuck on that level and never move on.
He scoffed. “Oh please. There’s no getting over that bridge.”
He was right.
Crap.
He arched one brow. “Convinced?”
“That you’ve played the game? Yes.” I arched my brows in return so we were sitting there with matching poses and expressions—a standoff. “But I still don’t understand what you’re doing here.”
He let out a little sigh that surprised me. “Is it so hard to believe that I might actually be into the idea of coding?”
“Yes.” I said it so quickly that I felt a flicker of guilt at his disappointment.
“You think I’m too dumb for this kind of thing, right?” He was using that teasing voice but I got the unnerving impression that he was actually serious. He spread his arms wide. “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful, babe. Not all who are pretty are dumb.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or apologize. He covered it well, but I had this nagging thought that I might have actually hurt his feelings.
Which was crazy because I wouldn’t have even guessed he had feelings to hurt.
Nevertheless, I found myself hedging the question. “I didn’t say I thought you were dumb,” I said. “But do you have the time to commit to this? I mean, I know you’re on the basketball team, but this competition is in a matter of months and I need to work with someone who can—”
“I’m not on the basketball team.”
For the millionth time I found myself staring at him. Temporarily speechless. “Since when?”
“Since this morning when I told the coach that I wouldn’t be playing this season.”
He was serious. But he couldn’t be serious. No one who played varsity just walked away senior year, especially not when the player in question was beloved and revered like Luke was.
Does Dale know?
I shook my head. Didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was rapidly running out of excuses to avoid working with this guy. He knew it, too. That smirk was back as he leaned forward over the table, entirely too close to my face. “So, you see,” he drawled. “I have all the time in the world for you.”
My breath got trapped in my throat. I blamed his scent—he smelled too good. Far better than the average teen boy. How did he do that? And how did he manage to make a simple comment like that sound so freakin’…flirty? Sexy, even.
I forced myself to exhale and it came out as a strangled gasp. Not cool, not flirty, and not even close to sexy.
Just like me.
“Please, Suzie Q,” he said quietly. “Just give me a chance to show you that I’m serious about this.”
He looked serious. He sounded serious.
How do you make someone see that you’re serious? Act serious.
That insanely awkward chat last night came back to me with a jolt but I shook it off. Now was not the time to reminisce about how pathetic I must have come across. Sure, it had all been true but there was no reason for DataG to know just how unpopular I was, or just how unattractive to the opposite sex. Granted, he knew about the whole #GeeksGoneWild thing, so clearly my lack of social status was a known factor.
It was the fact that he probably thought of me as some hideously ugly troll that rankled. I wasn’t as pretty as most of the other girls in our class but he didn’t need to know that. With him I could keep up the fantasy that in real life we’d be together. If only we were ever in the same room—or the same state, for that matter—we could be a couple.
That was one of the reasons I’d never asked him about a girlfriend until last night when he’d brought the topic up. It was why I’d never asked where he lived, too. The beauty of my crush on DataG was that it was all fantasy.
Not our friendship, obviously, but the whole requited love part. If I didn’t know he had a girlfriend, for example, then it was that much easier to daydream about what if.
What if we met someday? What if we fell in love? What if I liked him just as much in person as I did online…and what if he felt the same?
Luke was watching me closely and I bit my lip hard to get my focus back on him. Luke was the one sitting here in front of me and it was Luke who was acting serious right now.
Of course, it could all just be for show. I narrowed my eyes as a new suspicion took hold. “This is just about the scholarship money, isn’t it?”
He met my gaze evenly. “Would it make a difference? Do my intentions really matter if it means that I’d be taking this seriously?”
“That seems like an awfully philosophical response for a very simple question.”
His lips twitched a bit and I saw humor spark in his eyes. He squelched it though. “Aren’t you interested in the scholarship money?”
Yes. I totally was. I had great grades and my parents had set some money aside for me and Dale, but it wasn’t enough and I could use all the help I could get. “Do you know anything about coding?”
Some of his smugness faded and he gave a little grimace. “Not much.”
I arched one brow.
“Okay, nothing at all.” He got that serious look going on again and it made my belly do a flip-flop. Serious looked good on Luke Warner.
“I’m a quick study, though,” he said. “And I want to learn. I know I’m behind since I’m coming in late to this group and all but—”
“You need to catch up,” I said.
He nodded. “I will.”
“I’m not going to do all the work, you know,” I said. Although, in all honesty, I was kind of hoping I’d be the one doing all the work. That was the whole reason I’d wanted to be on my own. But I still held out a tiny bit of hope that if I made this sound difficult, like actual work, he might still walk out of here.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” he said.
“Uh huh.”
&n
bsp; “You don’t believe me.” His lips did that little twitch again like he was trying not to smile.
“Is it that obvious?” I deadpanned.
“Give me two weeks,” he said.
“What?”
He leaned forward again and this time I braced myself against his particularly yummy scent that had blindsided me last time. “In two weeks we have to present our ideas to the club, right?”
“Right,” I said slowly.
“Then give me two weeks to prove I can be useful to you. If you decide I’m not, I’ll bow out.”
“Two weeks,” I echoed. “And if I say you’re not up to snuff?”
“If you use the term up to snuff I will mock you for the rest of your life,” he said solemnly. “But I will also walk away from the project with no hard feelings.”
I stuck my hand out. “Two weeks.”
He shook it, his lips curving up ever so slightly as his warm hand enveloped mine. “Two weeks,” he repeated.
Two weeks, that wasn’t so bad. Of course, if I was wrong about him and he actually proved to be serious about this, then there was a good chance we’d be working on the presentation for the entire student body together two months from now. And if we won that, as I planned to…
That was when it dawned on me. If Luke surprised me—if he proved to be more useful than I originally gave him credit for—then there was a possibility that he and I would be joined at the hip for months.
The original creators of the project would be the ones to travel to the final competition if it made it that far, and they would split the prize money and the glory.
I drew in a long deep breath and let it out with a sigh. This could be a very long two weeks.
Chapter Five
Luke
I was in. Now all I had to do was prove to her that I wasn’t the idiot that she seemed to think I was, and that I could actually be serious about something.
About her.
Focus, idiot. First things first. “So, did you have any thoughts on what new setting you want to build?”
She gave me an incredulous look. If I was hoping to convince her I wasn’t a moron, clearly that had not been the right question to ask.
She pulled a notebook out of her oversized tote bag and set it on the desk between us. She flipped it open to a page in the middle that was marked with a sticky tab.
“What the…” I muttered under my breath.
For the first time since she sat down across from me, Suzie looked like she might smile. “I have a few thoughts.”
I let out a short laugh at the understatement. Two pages of lined notebook pages were covered from top to bottom with her small, precise handwriting. Each line was numbered which made it clear even from my upside-down view that this was a list—a crazy long list—of all her ideas.
I waved a hand toward the list. “Okay, hit me.”
She pressed her lips together in an adorable and rare display of vulnerability. Then she tucked one of the bright red curls that had slipped free from her ponytail back behind her ear and turned her attention to the list. In a no-nonsense tone she rattled off her ideas.
By idea ten I wasn’t fully listening. I got the gist of where she was going with her ideas and it wasn’t what I’d had in mind. It wasn’t bad, but it was more of the same. By idea number twenty I realized that her reading to me like this gave me the perfect excuse to study her in a way I rarely got to do. I took note of the impossibly pale lashes, the telltale fair skin that held a hint of a blush even now just because I was watching her read. I catalogued the freckles on her nose and made a mental note of how they spattered her cheekbones and disappeared into her hair. I studied the way her hair was held back neatly and efficiently and let myself envision for one moment what it would feel like if she let me bury my hands in those curls as I kissed the hell out of her.
She glanced up then and whatever she saw on my face had her cheeks turning twenty shades pinker. “What?” she said, her tone defensive.
I shook my head and cleared my throat, shifting in my seat in an attempt to hide the fact that my mind had not only strayed…it had gone rogue. “Nothing.”
“So?” she demanded, her brows arched in obvious anticipation. I didn’t know if she was expecting to be mocked or degraded, but there was no denying the defensiveness in her tone.
“They, uh…they all sound good,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes.
“I mean,” I toyed with a scratch mark on the edge of the desk. “They’re all…fine.”
“Fine?” She jumped on the word.
I shrugged. I might’ve liked the girl and yeah, I totally had the hots for her, but I wasn’t about to lie to her. She deserved to hear the truth. And knowing Prince Z, she’d want to hear it. She crossed her arms and glared at me.
Or…maybe not.
I sat up straighter. “Look, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with those ideas,” I started.
“Gee, thanks. So glad to hear it.”
I ignored the sarcasm. “It’s just not the direction I was thinking.”
“You were thinking?”
I couldn’t stop the shocked laugh that escaped. See now, that little rejoinder? That was totally something Prince Z would have shot back and having a voice to the quips made it that much better.
“I was, as a matter of fact,” I said.
Some of her defensiveness seemed to ebb in the face of my teasing. I wasn’t rising to her bait and she knew it.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “So what were your ideas then?”
I took a deep breath, oddly nervous now that it was my turn to talk. I cleared my throat. “Well, here’s the thing. I was thinking about what you said yesterday.” I paused for a second to gather my thoughts and she stared at me blankly.
“The thing about Fonzie?”
I laughed and earned a little smile in return. “No, Suzie Q, not the Fonzie comment. I was thinking about what you said about why Arcadia Games is holding this contest.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I’m listening.”
I leaned forward a bit but stopped from going any further when I saw her stiffen. She definitely was not cool with me being in her personal space…yet.
“You said they wanted to make this game more marketable to a younger demographic, right?”
She nodded.
“All the ideas you threw out there, they’d be providing more of the same.” I saw her open her mouth to cut me off but I hurried on. “I’m not saying they’re not great ideas—they are.” I paused to meet her gaze. “They’d be perfect if the company were looking to expand their current market.”
Her brows drew down and I could see that she wanted to argue with me but she didn’t. She let out a loud exhale. “So then, what are your ideas?”
“Uh, more like idea,” I said with a sheepish grin. “Singular.”
She rolled her eyes and waggled her fingers. “Hit me with this fantastic, singular idea.”
I swallowed down a ridiculous wave of nerves. “A ski slope.”
She stared at me, and for a split second it was impossible to tell if she was stunned by the awesomeness of my idea or blown away by the idiocy of my plan.
Then her brows drew together in confusion. “Are you positive you’ve played this game?”
Okay, so probably not wowed by my genius then. Fair enough. “Hear me out,” I said, leaning forward once again.
This time she didn’t pull away or stiffen. No, she got right up out of her seat and started collecting her notebook. “And here I thought you might actually be serious about something for once.”
“I am,” I said, coming to my feet as well. I could practically feel her pulling away from me, and not just physically. I could see her shutting down the gates that were harder to access than the freakin’ Bridge of Nydor.
“Suzie Q, I’m serious.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Why?” I said. “It’s cute.”
“It’s juveni
le.”
“It’s adorable, just like you.” I said it in a teasing tone but instantly regretted it because I could tell by the color in her cheeks that she thought I was mocking her again.
Teasing, I wanted to shout. Teasing, not mocking. There’s a difference.
The thing was, she did know that. She never took a joke the wrong way when I was DataG. She just expected the worst of Luke Warner. The sad part was, when I was DataG and she was Prince Z, no one expected more from me than she did. She pushed me and challenged me and never let me get away with any lame excuses. She also didn’t jump to conclusions about me or suspect me of being cruel and mean.
Right now, I missed the hell out of Prince Z. Which was sort of ironic since she was standing right in front of me.
I thrust a hand through my hair as I watched Suzie shove her notebook in her bag, two seconds away from dashing out the door.
I grasped her arms, not roughly or anything but she froze like I’d just electrocuted her. “Just hear me out, okay?”
Her jaw was clenched and her mouth set. I knew that stubborn, mutinous glare well. But I had no idea what I’d done to flip the switch. For a second there she’d been ready to listen to me, but then—
“I get it,” she said simply.
“What do you get?”
She arched her brows. “A ski slope. So, what, you’re thinking a blank white canvas? Basically, you’re going for the easiest plan you can think of, right?” She hitched her bag up on her shoulder. “Well, bravo, because you definitely came up with something easy. But I’m not looking for the easiest option, thank you very much. There are other people like me who will be taking this project seriously. They’ll be devoting time and energy and—”
“Are you almost done?” I kept my tone flat. Bored.
It made anger flash in those pretty eyes of hers.
Good. I was pissed too. I knew she didn’t think highly of me, but instantly assuming I’d tried to find the easy way out because I’m just such a slacker? Yeah, that hit a nerve.
My Virtual Prince Charming: Geeks Gone Wild #2 Page 5
