Heath told me I should unseal the box or it would never make it past security, so I grabbed a kitchen knife and slit it open again. It was early afternoon when we hit the road, our truce unspoken. I hadn’t accepted his apology but ultimately I knew—even if he didn’t—that the differences between Adam and me had not been Heath’s doing.
Heath asked me about the details of the commencement ceremony, and told me he’d make plans to be there and sit with my mom. As we drove, my frosted heart that wanted to cling to the resentment began to thaw.
Fifteen minutes later, we exited the 405 freeway and drove down one of the broad, perfectly planned streets that the city of Irvine was known for. Heath turned in to an industrial park that housed the campus of Draco Multimedia Entertainment.
We approached the central building in the complex. It was designed like a modern day castle with intricate turrets of mirrored glass lined in steel. The mirrors caught the early afternoon sunlight and the entire building gleamed as if it were the fabled seat of Camelot. So, the knight protector spent his brooding days inside a castle. Why did that not surprise me?
We entered a huge lobby with a circular information desk. Everything inside was chrome and granite and bright as the daylight outside, thanks to all the windows. Heath and I gaped in awe. There were displays and artwork from the various games produced by the company everywhere and I couldn’t decide where to look first.
In fact, I was so gap-jawed looking at an exact one-quarter replica of “The Mistress’s Lair”—a three-dimensional model of an ice palace—that I forgot to address the guy at security.
“Oh! I’m dropping off a package for Mr. Drake.” The security dude looked unimpressed.
I opened the flap and he made a quick search of the contents, then wrote my name on a temporary badge and instructed me to drop the package off at his assistant’s desk. Then he called back to the desk to let the assistant know that I was coming.
I nodded and shrugged. “Okay.”
Heath was still gazing out over the mezzanine at even more elaborate game displays downstairs. “Oh for God’s sake, go down and look, then. I’m sorry you didn’t get your tour.”
“You okay to walk back there?”
I shrugged. “It’s not that far away and it’s just one of his assistants. He’s still out of the country. I’ll just dump it and be right back.”
Heath wasn’t looking at me. A certain display had caught his eye.
I cleared my throat. “Wow, is that an alien coming up behind you to assault you with an anal probe?”
No reaction.
I laughed and he walked off with a wave of his hand. With my box in hand, I followed the security officer’s directions through a big set of double doors, past glassed-in offices that consisted of open desk configurations—no cubicles, it seemed, at Draco Multimedia. People were working on sleek desktop computers, collaborating over tablets and generally focused on work. It was a hive of organized chaos. Down the central hallway, I continued past a glassed-in atrium and patio with grass and planters and artfully arranged tables, now empty because it was just after lunchtime.
I finally made it into Adam’s neck of the woods. The security officer had made it seem much closer in his directions than it actually was. Adam’s office—and that of the other company officers, for their names were all on the doors—was preceded by a large atrium complete with receptionist and several busy-looking assistants.
I moved to the nearest one. “I’m leaving a package for Mr. Drake. Security said to bring it here?”
The receptionist pointed to an assistant at a desk a little further back. The assistant, a bespectacled college-age looking kid in dress shirt and tie, glanced our way, standing up as I approached. “Ms. Strong?”
“Yes. They told you about this package I was bringing up?”
He shot a curious glance at me and then to the box. “Yes. I’ll need to inspect the contents before I can take it off your hands.”
“Yes, of course. There are just some…personal effects.”
He nodded. “He asked me to tell you he’ll be out in just a moment.”
I frowned, looking up from his work. “Who?”
The assistant looked puzzled. “Mr. Drake.”
“What? But—but he’s still out of town.”
The assistant shot me a concerned look. “No, he came back yesterday. He’s here.”
My eyes rose from his inspection to a set of heavy double doors that led toward the inner sanctum—likely the offices—all lined in glitzy chrome. At that moment, they swung open.
I jumped back from the assistant. “I have to go,” I choked. But I was nailed to my spot when I saw a man and a woman emerge. The man was dressed in an impeccable suit, deadly handsome. My chest tightened as if caught in a constricting band. Adam.
If there had been any chance of my seeing him here, I would never, ever have come. He bent to speak to a woman at the desk nearest to the doors—giving her some instructions, it looked like. The woman said something to Adam and then, horrifyingly, glanced in my direction.
Before I could step back, before I could turn and bolt like a coward, my eyes flew to his companion. I knew her too. Her platinum blond hair was artfully arranged around a gorgeous, glamorous face. Lindsay. They stood so close together, they looked like a couple.
I was so dumbstruck that I couldn’t move, even when Adam straightened and his eyes immediately flew straight to mine. Every muscle in my body turned to jelly and I could hardly breathe. The assistant continued digging around in the box, oblivious to my distress. He extracted the laptop and laid it on the table in front of him. Adam saw it and his features hardened.
He looked away then, and, to my increased astonishment (was that even possible?), he slipped an arm around Lindsay’s waist, bent and whispered something in her ear. Something that made her laugh and sway against him.
I didn’t stay to watch any more. I ran. The assistant called after me but I didn’t stop. I ran as fast and as far as I could. Because now the tears were coming at last. They blinded me. And I could hear his voice in my head. It was all I could hear. I’ve decided I wanted a woman in my life. You’re just a sad, scared little girl.
A sad. Scared. Little. Girl. And compared to me Lindsay was all woman…successful, mature, sexually experienced, and very much into Adam.
I dashed through hallways and out into parking lot, gasping for breath. And then I ran some more. I ran until I couldn’t breathe any more. Then I leaned up against the nearest car, doubled over.
Five minutes later, someone stood beside me. I almost jumped out of my skin until he spoke. “Mia, what the—?” Heath said. “You shot out of that door like a bat out of hell. What the fuck? Are you crying?”
By this time, I’d been gulping for air, tears and snot all over my face and, what’s worse, I had the hiccups.
“Heath, just get me the fuck out of here, please.”
Without another word, he slipped an arm around my shoulders and guided me toward the car. I kept my eyes away from the building. I didn’t want to chance seeing them again. Every time I thought about that hard look on his face, new tears seeped out and by the time we made it off the complex property I was a bubbling, oozing mess.
Heath’s face was grim. “I take it you saw him in there? What about staying on for business for another week?”
My face was in my hands, and thus my voice was muffled. “He must have been lying.” He just hadn’t wanted to fly home beside me.
Heath was very worried about me. I could tell. He insisted on ordering takeout after we got home and he sat across from me at my broken down little table while I picked at my mandarin chicken.
“Maybe it might do you some good to get away for a bit.”
“I just got back.”
“No, I mean spend a little longer with your mom. Maybe stay with her for the summer. She could use the help, now that she’s getting the place ready for guests again. I could pack up your place here and throw the stuff in
storage. Other than your miserable little orderly job, you really don’t have a reason to be out here for the next year or so. Why not save the money you’d be spending on rent and expenses?”
I sighed. “Because going back to Anza is going backward.”
“Just think about it. Maybe just get away for a week or two? It would make your mom happy and get her off my back for once.”
“If I take any more time off my job, they are going to fire me.”
“Good riddance, then. There are other jobs you can get. Or you could put more time into the blog and make more money out of it. I’ve got a new template design that allows for more ad space. You could sell more ads that way. Or we could go after a company endorsement. I know you’ve been reluctant, but—”
My chin was on my chest now and I was sniveling miserably. “I’ll think about it.”
And I did. I thought about it all night. Not necessarily the part about going back to Anza, but the whole bizarre sequence with Adam. The calculated action with which he, knowing that I was watching, had slipped his arm around Lindsay’s waist, obviously letting me know that the woman whom he’d selected to replace the scared little girl was Lindsay.
After crying out all the tears I thought I had, there was only numbness left. I had to be at work at noon the next day, but I didn’t put on my greens. Instead went down to my supervisor’s office in my jeans and resigned on the spot.
She wasn’t nice about it. But she could tell by my swollen eyes and dark circles that I wasn’t happy to begin with. She made sure to tell me that I’d been a good worker up until the previous month and I agreed with her. Things had been great until they fell apart. Until Adam. Now I had no job. No money in the bank and about a thimbleful of self-respect left to my name.
***
The day before commencement, Alex and Jenna dropped in to give me a graduation gift and beg me to spend the summer in OC with them. They had such plans! And they had tickets to San Diego Comic-Con! And…they had costumes for cosplay and needed another “hot chick” to complete their look for “Steampunk Sherlock’s Angels.” Alex’s mom was sewing the costumes for them.
They also wanted to know if I could get Heath to dress as Sherlock Holmes because he was tall, but he’d have to dye his hair dark.
“Come on, Mia, it would be so fun! Picture it—brass-plated corsets, fishnet stockings and kick-ass boots,” Alex said breathlessly. “If Heath won’t do it, maybe you could get your yummy man to—he already has dark hair and he’s plenty tall enough.”
Jenna perked up, upon hearing this. “Yeah, when do I get to meet this tasty man, anyway? I’m sick of hearing Alejandra gibber about him and I’ve only seen that long-distance shot she got with her phone—”
“What?” I slapped Alex on her arm. “You took a picture of him?”
Alex shrugged. “What else is a hopeless chismosa to do when you won’t give me anything to work with?”
I sighed heavily. “I’m not seeing him anymore and I’d rather not talk about it.”
Alex’s forehead buckled. “This isn’t because of that test, is it? You didn’t break up with him because you want to study or something dumb like that?”
I shot her a heated glare, but Jenna was the one who spoke up, watching me closely. “Alejandra! Don’t be rude.”
“No, it wasn’t because of the test.” My chest tightened. Something about her assumption bothered me. It reminded me of how I’d chosen to give stupid excuses about not going out, not socializing at parties. Throughout my four years of college, I’d huddled inside my comfort zone, spending any spare time that wasn’t consumed by study or work or blog to log on to games and lose myself in them. Because it was safe, known. Because there would be few surprises and anything that could happen, I would be ready for.
I dropped my head against the back of the ripped couch, gazing at the ceiling. Adam was right. I really was a coward.
Chapter Sixteen
When the going gets tough, the tough go running home to Mommy. And after commencement, I did just that. I packed up what I could and I hit the road for Anza—a two-hour drive down some of the most remote stretch of highway through the Inland Empire and beyond. My car twisted along the road upward into the Cahuilla Mountains that overlooked the much more famous Californian resort town of Palm Springs.
And as I wound up that narrow two-lane highway into the hills, a measure of calm settled over me. I grew assured that things would be all right in the end. That this pain was temporary and like the dying sunlight of that day, would fade away to nothing. Someday. Sometime.
But it didn’t feel temporary. I felt changed, somehow, as if my life, my heart would never be the same. They say life’s experiences change you—that your brain grows new neural pathways in response to trauma and new lessons learned. I wondered how many pathways I was going to get from this. If I was ever going to learn my way around it. And in this moment, I felt more resolved than ever to protect myself—keep myself dependent on only myself. Because I was the only person in this world I could be sure of. I could be sure of Heath, until he met someone new and could hardly be prevailed upon to fix my eternal string of scrapes. I could depend on my mom, but as the experiences of the previous few years had shown me, she might not always be around. Her near-death had shaken me to my core and showed me that nothing was permanent.
But one thing was permanent. Me. My ambition. My drive. The fortress wall I’d built around my heart and kept vigilant watch over. And I’d spend this time reinforcing, repairing the weak spots that had allowed Adam inside to do his damage.
I had no idea how much Heath had told Mom while they’d sat together at commencement. I know she had no knowledge of the auction, but Heath could have couched his description of my time with Adam as a relationship without mentioning all the ways it was sick and twisted between us. Mom had known I was seeing someone, but she had no details, like the fact that her daughter had willfully sought a way to prostitute herself.
Our little ranch sat on fifteen acres of high desert scrubland. The main house, which my mother called the homestead, had many guest rooms on the top floor. There were also three matching little cabins that shouldered up to the homestead for guests who wanted more privacy. The main dining room in the home was huge, to accommodate the Bed and Breakfast crowd. Until her illness, Mom had run a fairly successful business, with many regular repeat guests coming up to spend time away from civilization, go hiking or ride our horses. My mood relaxed, as I looked down over our spread in the pale light of early evening under a golden high desert moon.
Mom didn’t question me too closely when I got home. She snatched me up in a big hug and made my favorite dinner—kabobs and hummus and baklava for dessert. Mom instructed me to get an early night’s sleep and warned me that we had a lot to discuss in the morning. Relieved, I fell into my bed, exhausted.
The next morning, I was out in the stables saying hello to my favorite four-legged friends. My horse, Snowball, greeted me with an excited whicker. He’d been my best friend since the fourth grade and his muzzle was aging and gray now, but he still snapped up the carrots I offered him with all due enthusiasm.
At lunch, I munched my garden-fresh cucumber and tomato sandwich on rustic bread as my mom tossed furtive glances my way. I knew she was dying to ask me about my relationship status with the mystery guy and trying to find ways to bring it up, so I decided to head her off.
“So you said you had some surprises for me. Do they have anything to do with the restoration of the cabins?”
Mom gave me an expectant look. “So you noticed?”
“I’d have to be blind not to. Did you win the lottery and not tell me?”
She laughed. “Kind of. If getting cancer could be considered a lottery.”
I sobered, suddenly my heart raced with fear and I could feel the blood drain from my face. “What? Is it back?”
Mom’s mouth dropped and she reached across the table to put her hand over mine. “Oh no. No, sweet pea. I’m sorry
. That’s not what I meant.”
She got up and went over to the desk where she kept her mail and business papers and pulled out a manila file folder from its stand. She placed it on the table next to my lunch plate. “Early this year, I got this in the mail. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It sounded too good to be true.
I opened the folder and quickly read the letter, which was printed on generic letterhead. It was from a charity institution that helped out adult cancer patients who had fallen on hard times because of the disease. It did sound too good to be true—like a “Make a Wish” foundation for adults. Generously, the institution—called “The Golden Shield Group”—had offered to foot half the balance of my mom’s mortgage and fund the other half as an interest-free loan to be paid back over the next twenty years.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, scouring the letter and flipping it over to read the papers beneath it. “This is—”
“Incredible, I know. I didn’t believe it either. But I checked them out online and went to Pohlman’s Law Office here in town and had him work with their attorneys. He assured me it was all legitimate.”
“Damn, Mom. This is better than the freakin’ lottery.”
She smiled. “Yep, see? Here’s the paperwork from my attorney. It gets better, though. One of the entrepreneurs behind the group, finding out about my setup, offered to front me some money as a silent partner. We’ve come up with a joint business plan and profit sharing—”
I took the papers from her. “Holy crap! So this is what you are using to pay for the renovation?”
“It’s almost done. And I’ve already been working with Heath to get the website redesigned and updated. He’s coming up next weekend to take new pictures. Isn’t it exciting?”
I sat back, marveling at how luminous and animated my mother was. She hadn’t been like this for years, since before the cancer. There was color in her cheeks and she had put on some weight and she actually, for the first time since she’d begun chemo, looked healthy.
At Any Price (Gaming The System) Page 28
