At Any Moment (Gaming The System Book 3)

by Brenna Aubrey

  “I was angry with both of you,” he said simply. “You were both behaving immaturely.”

  Adam and I exchanged a startled look. I hadn’t meant to open that can of worms. There was an awkward silence but then William continued. “If you would have talked to each other, you wouldn’t have had the problems that developed.”

  I swallowed and Adam’s hand tightened around mine. “You’re absolutely right. But we really don’t want to talk about all that right now. It’s not productive.”

  William peered at his cousin through slightly narrowed eyes and then nodded. “How did you two…How did you start dating?”

  Adam and I shared another long, uncomfortable look. Of our friends, only Heath knew the sordid circumstances of our beginnings—the virginity auction, Adam winning the bid and pretending he hadn’t been my online friend already for over a year. It was all a complicated mess that was either a) too hard to explain, b) too embarrassing to explain, c) none of their business or d) all of the above.

  “We met in the game, Liam. I told you that,” Adam said.

  “Yes, but you were only friends then. When did you ask her to go out on a date with you and how did it happen?”

  I shifted in my seat and fought the urge to giggle at Adam’s discomfort. It was funny, actually, watching him sweat it out, but I decided to let him off the hook and answer. “Adam and I decided to meet and then after we hung out for a while—as friends—things developed into more.”

  Adam’s dark eyebrows raised briefly at my careful arrangement of the truth and William seemed to accept that. Adam’s cousin frowned and then rubbed his thumb along his forehead. “So how do you go from knowing someone—maybe even being a friend—to having a romantic relationship?”

  Adam opened his mouth to answer and then shut it, looking utterly lost as to how to answer that. By now I was suppressing laughter behind my free hand. William really was asking the wrong person that question! Adam had had no romantic relationships before me. Just a series of standing hookups with various partners over the years—not so affectionately referred to by me as “fuck buddies.” In fact, our mutual inexperience in the relationship department was a big part of why our relationship had run into trouble in so short a time.

  I turned back to Adam’s cousin. “William? I’m curious, is there someone you’ve been thinking about asking out?”

  William looked down, a small smile on his mouth before he blushed and then straightened in his seat. “Yes.”

  Then he stood up and grabbed his keys. “It has only been forty minutes, but I can spend the last five minutes walking to the car.”

  I went to stand up but Adam stopped me.

  “William, can you spend fifteen seconds of that giving me a hug?” I said. And he stiffly bent and allowed me to give him a hug. “Thank you for the figurines. I love them.”

  And he was gone. Adam locked the door behind him and sat down beside me again with a smile on his lips, shaking his head. “Poor guy has no clue that I’m the last person he should be asking for advice about women.”

  “Hmm,” I said, leaning over to rest my head on his shoulder, relishing the feel of his arm coming around me. “I think you do quite well with the ladies…too well, as a matter of fact.”

  He laughed and tucked me into bed not long after that. But I noticed, when he thought my eyes were closed, that he picked up the pill container and checked the level on it.

  ***

  One week later and with the help of a blood test, I was declared officially no longer pregnant and ready to start rounds of chemo. It was honestly as matter-of-fact as that, like being told my red blood cell count was low, or something.

  I tried my best to show a brave face to everyone around me. To make sure those feelings of hollow worthlessness at what I’d done didn’t show on the surface. Heath checked on me regularly. My mom came over every day to spend hours with me. We’d talk about other things, never about what was happening to my body…that I had allowed my fight against cancer to kill the little life inside me one rapidly dividing cell at a time.

  And Adam. He spent lots of time over at my place. Things were tense between him and Heath for the first few days, but after that, they seemed to begin to go back to normal.

  Adam and I got along great on a surface level. But beneath that, it was weird—as if there was some kind of unseen barrier between us. Ironic, since we had both shed all our secrets. It seemed like we were finally open to each other, yet neither of us could really turn and look at the other and see them for who they were.

  Would it get better? Or was the demise of our relationship only a matter of time? We had way more baggage than any two people our age should have. And we were currently wading through the worst of it now. I worried about what our future would be—even more so, I think, than my own future. I took for granted that I’d still be around to worry about all of this stuff.

  Sometimes I caught him looking at me, his dark eyes nearly unreadable, but I could detect a sharp sort of worry. That look made my heart hurt. I didn’t doubt he still loved me. But there was some essential ingredient to that love that seemed missing now. We’d hurt each other and he hadn’t quite been able to see past it yet, despite all his earnest attempts to focus on the bigger problems in our life at the moment.

  “So…” Adam began when we were sitting side by side on my bed, each with a laptop resting on our legs. I was still a little weak from the pain but aware enough to pick up the subtleties in his behavior. “With all this going on, I didn’t get a chance to tell you that the hidden quest has been unlocked.”

  I hesitated and studied his face. He was looking at his screen and typing at his crazy-fast pace.

  “I, uh, I know,” I said.

  He stopped typing and looked at me with a faint smile. “I know you know.”

  I blinked. “How did you know it was me?”

  “You left your rig on the log-in screen the other day. I knew the name of the character that unlocked it.”

  I raised a brow. “So what does this mean? Are you going to disable my account?”

  He frowned. “Why would I do that?”

  “So I won’t blog about it.”

  He shrugged. “You can blog about it if you want. And you can blog about it how you want.”

  I looked askance at him. “You mean…you’re okay if I spill all the secrets?”

  He looked at me again. “I have no control over how you dish your scoop.”

  I frowned…there must be things he wasn’t telling me. Or maybe it was my own discomfort at the thought of spilling the secrets to his beloved project that he’d spent so long developing. “But it’s your big secret quest. You love that quest.”

  “It was meant to be enjoyed by players. It’s time. I’ll think up something new and even more frustrating for them to look for next.”

  I snorted. “More frustrating? I’m not sure that’s possible.”

  “You know me, don’t you? It’s entirely possible.”

  I nodded. “Oh yes, you’ve cornered the market on frustrating.”

  “Besides, you’ve unlocked it but you haven’t solved it. And you don’t even know what the quest is supposed to accomplish.”

  “Yes, I do… Save the poor, helpless elf princess Ally—uh—Alloreah’ala—or however the hell you pronounce it. How do you pronounce it, anyway?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea. I jumbled a bunch of vowels and apostrophes together to make it look Elvish. Do you know how to pronounce half the Elvish names in Tolkien’s books?”

  I smiled. “Nope. But I do know this quest is a standard save-the-princess type of quest.”

  His sensual mouth turned up at the corner. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “What else could it be besides that? She’s been captured and dragged away, imprisoned under the mountains by big, nasty trolls. Of course the quest is to go and save her.”

  He leaned back against the wall, watching me. “Okay. If you want to think that.”


  I narrowed my eyes at him and his smile grew. “You suck,” I said.

  That gorgeous dimple I loved so much appeared just below and to the left of his mouth. “Sometimes, yeah. And I like it.”

  I smacked him on his hard bicep with the back of my hand and went back to my blog post—a commentary on another game that I’d been beta testing. That article had been started and left unfinished due to recent chaotic events. I was almost done when Adam, who appeared to have finished whatever he’d been working on, turned to me.

  “There’s something I want to talk about…” he began. I held up a finger to finish typing my thoughts before hitting the save button and closing my computer.

  I turned to him. “You want me to move back to your house,” I said matter-of-factly.

  His dark eyebrows rose. “Umm, yeah. That’s a neat trick. Do you read minds now?”

  I smiled. I wished. I’d have loved to know what went through his mind most of the time. He hid his feelings and thoughts so well.

  “Nope. But I know you well enough to predict that you’d be angling for this soon enough.”

  “I’m not ‘angling’ for it. I wanted to know if… Well, I’d like to take care of you.”

  I hesitated. Things had not gone well between us the last time we’d lived together and I didn’t want to upset the shaky ground we seemed to be standing on now. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  His jaw tensed. “Bullshit.”

  “Maybe I’m tough enough to get myself through it okay.”

  His mouth thinned and irritation flashed in his dark eyes before he looked away. “Maybe you are. But maybe there are people here who want to help you anyway.”

  I sighed. “Let me think about it. The last time we lived together…”

  “This won’t be like last time. I’ll do everything I can to make sure of that.”

  He was tense for while and I rested my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know you want to take care of me. But I’d like to think I have my independence for a little while longer.”

  Despite what I’d just said to him, I knew that soon I’d be very sick and at the mercy of anyone willing to help me.

  ***

  On the night before my procedure to insert a port for the chemo—and to have a portion of my ovarian tissue taken out to be frozen for possible later use (since this procedure was still experimental), Adam had to work. I assumed he was clearing the deck and setting things in motion so he could take more time off later to spend with me.

  I sat on the couch and read the latest Game of Thrones novel while Heath banged about the condo. He appeared to be organizing—moving things around. After he removed his fourth box of crap to take out to the garage, I looked up. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  He shrugged and didn’t look at me. “Just making some room in here. It’s getting pretty cluttered up and my storage unit is almost full.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Heath was not the tidiest of people and he usually spent his free time playing games instead of cleaning. He paid someone to come in and clean his place every week.

  I cleared my throat. “You okay?”

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  “Just wondering. I haven’t seen Connor in the last few days. Everything okay?”

  He sighed and sat down. “Connor was getting a little…needy.”

  I leaned forward, alarmed. “What do you mean ‘was’? You didn’t break up with him, did you?”

  Heath looked at me and then away. “No…I’m not you, after all.”

  I sat back, deflated. That had stung. “I guess I deserved that.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t say anything. Instead, I fiddled with the edges of the pages of my book and swallowed a sudden lump that had formed in my throat. Heath’s words smarted, but it was true—I’d deserved the comment. I’d broken up with Adam after one fight—albeit a huge fight. He’d done something to utterly betray my trust, but instead of giving him the opportunity to explain, or even a second chance, I’d shoved him away. I’d thought it would be easier. It was almost as if that fight had given me the excuse to spare him this whole cancer thing. I’d been like a one-woman crusade, vowing I was strong enough to overcome all by myself. But I’d leaned on Heath…far more than I should have.

  I looked up at him. Was he finally feeling bitter because of it? My throat tightened. He got up and sat next to me on the couch. We stared at each other and then he stretched out an arm. “I’m sorry. Come here, dollface.”

  I leaned forward and his arms came around me. “I hope things are okay with you and Connor,” I said, looking over his huge shoulder at nothing while he hugged me.

  He let me go and I sat back. “They’ll be okay. He’s wanting to spend more time with me and there aren’t enough hours in the day.”

  I pressed my lips together, watching him. What he wasn’t saying was that he felt obligated to be around the house to look after me and drive me to my appointments. Even though I’d told him repeatedly that he didn’t need to.

  I reached out and grabbed his hand. “Thank you for putting up with my idiocy.”

  “Hmm. Yeah, I wasn’t doing you any favors.”

  I blinked, my eyes stinging. “Thanks for being there for me even though I’m not perfect.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Heath?”

  He glanced up at me. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry. I never told you that before, during all of this. I’m so sorry. I put you in a crappy position.”

  “You were afraid. I get it.”

  “I still am.”

  His eyes narrowed as he stared at me. “Yeah…we all are. But…the difference is that most of the time we don’t let fear lead us to do stupid things. Who was it that said…something about courage not being the absence of fear but the triumph over it?”

  I sighed, rubbing my forehead. “That was Nelson Mandela or Eleanor Roosevelt or someone like that.”

  “Hard to get those two mixed up.” He laughed. “I’m trying to say that you can’t let fear rule you all the time. You’ve got to stand up to it and overcome it. Let it help you grow as a person.”

  I smiled, throwing a playful pretend-punch at him. “When did you get all wise and stuff?”

  “Wise and wiseass…there ain’t a big difference.”

  “Good point.” I smiled. “Why don’t you ask Connor to come live here?”

  He threw me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “I’ve been…thinking about it.”

  I laughed. “Is that what this unprecedented cleanup job is all about? Decluttering to make room for the boyfriend’s stuff?”

  “So you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Why would I mind? This is your place. You have the right to ask your boyfriend to live with you.”

  “You and I were roommates before Brian and I got together. Then I moved out, forced you to move to that dive studio.”

  “It wasn’t a dive!”

  “You know what I mean. I don’t want you to think that if Connor comes here that you have to leave.”

  I leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder. “Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Now ask him.”

  When he pulled me into a hug, thanking me, I couldn’t stop thinking about his words—about fear. That it was exactly what kept me from accepting Adam’s offer to move in with him again. Would fear of all that lay ahead lead me to make more poor choices?

  Chapter Eight

  Adam

  Emilia had her minor surgical procedures done and then a few days later we showed up at the hospital for her first round of chemotherapy. She would endure a total of twelve treatments, one every week for the next three months.

  And this morning, at the bright and early hour of eight a.m., we sat in a private room in the UCI Medical Center while a nurse went down a checklist and pricked Emilia’s finger to get some quick blood work done. Emilia didn’t say much. She sat in a comfortable reclin
er with a big IV stand next to it and she had that same dead stare she’d had for days. Her golden eyes hadn’t glowed for—what was it, weeks? Months? She hardly seemed like the same Mia I’d fallen in love with. It was like she was becoming a shadow of herself.

  She reached down and gripped my hand. “You didn’t have to come, you know…but thanks.”

  I didn’t have to come? What the fuck was that? I frowned. “So you wanted to do this alone, too?”

  She gave a light shrug. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “But you did specifically ask me and your mom not to tell any of your friends that you were coming in today. Was there a reason for that?”

  She took a deep breath and let it go. “This isn’t easy…”

  “Asking for help? Yeah…I’m noticing that it’s damn near impossible.”

  She grimaced, avoiding my eyes.

  “Have you considered that it’s more than just wanting to help you—it’s needing to help you? To feel that in some way we are doing something and not standing by feeling utterly helpless and shut out?”

  Emilia blinked and frowned, as if the idea hadn’t even crossed her mind. “I don’t want to shut you out…not anymore.”

  I sighed. “This is one of those things that can’t continue on between us like it has in the past. Like when I made the appointment for you without asking you. I can misinterpret your intentions just as easily as you did mine. You don’t want to show weakness by asking for help—so you’re saying that you don’t need me. Or you don’t want to need me—and your other friends.”

  She looked up and met my gaze, her brows pinched together, that tiny valley appearing in her forehead between them. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” She let out a long sigh as if it hurt her to admit it.

  Putting my hand behind my ear, I said, “What was that?”

  I smiled and she made a face and stuck her tongue out at me. “I’m only going to say it once.”

  “Seriously, though, Mia…let us be here for you? Please?”

  We stared at each other for a long, silent moment and then she let go of the breath she was holding. “I will. I’ll try my hardest.”