by K. Bromberg
“Congratulations!” I say. “That’s incredible and awesome and oh God, that means he’s going to make us do more of these stunts isn’t he?”
“I’m afraid so.” Zane’s chuckle rumbles around the stainless steel filled kitchen and echoes back to me. “Just think, that also means you’re over halfway done with having to put up with me. You’ll get to be home in your own bed with Lula and back to your life.”
“Yay,” I say, my voice chock-full of enthusiasm to mask the sudden flicker of panic his words have brought me.
Over halfway done.
It hits me right there in the middle of a kitchen in a culinary school with Zane rubbing my feet, cupcakes on the counter ready to be eaten and my own doubts spinning in a constant circle in my head—but none of it seems to matter.
I’m falling for Zane Phillips.
I’m falling for him and our time left is limited.
The countdown is on.
THE COACH STOPS, THEN STARTS.
A jake-brake sounds down the road.
The headlights glare in the windows at times. And at others, the world beyond seems like a pitch-black maze of nothingness that goes on forever.
It’s the most I’ve ever travelled in my life and unfortunately all I’m seeing of it are ballrooms and hotels and endless stretches of highway at night.
Zane plays absently with my hair as we relax on the couch. He’s sitting, watching the news, and I’m lying down with my head on his thigh, eyes closed, trying to process how this is currently my life.
“I can’t believe how many people showed up tonight,” I say.
“I was surprised, but shouldn’t be. The subscription numbers reflect a buzz from the first wave of people we allowed to start using the platform this week. Robert’s suggestion to do it so they post on social media was the right one.”
“I heard you on the phone with him earlier. Everything sounded like good news from what I could understand.”
“Very good news.”
His hand in my hair is soothing, so much so I froze when he first began doing it because it’s such an oddly intimate gesture.
“That lady from tonight . . .the one in the front row with the black polka dotted shirt on—”
“The one who monopolized your time? I felt bad for you but I couldn’t exactly extricate you without looking like a dick.”
“It was okay,” I murmur as his fingers begin to massage my scalp. “She seemed so lost, so desperate to find someone to love . . . it broke my heart.”
And here we’re pretending to have the perfect . . . well, not so perfect love if you watch the videos Robert has had made showing us arguing on the trust course, flinging flour at each other during cooking, and possibly cursing at each other as we fell with our legs tied together.
“You can’t save everyone, Cinder.”
“I know.” I sigh. “I just hope she finds what she’s looking for on SoulM8 whether it be companionship . . . a boyfriend. Her prince.”
“Life’s not a fairytale.”
“For some people like my mom it is. For others . . . they have to write their own.” When I open my eyes, his attention is diverted from the news and he’s looking down at me. Green eyes and a soft smile. And I hate that every part of me sighs knowing how normal this feels. How much this feels like a boyfriend and girlfriend late on a Thursday night as they unwind.
How much I have to remind myself that it isn’t.
“You look tired,” he says softly and brings his thumb to brush gently beneath my eyes.
Don’t be sweet, Zane. Please don’t be sweet because that’s only detrimental to my heart.
“I’m okay.” I’m exhausted, tired beyond words, but this is a rare moment when Zane is not working and I’m going to enjoy it while I can.
“Mmm.” He leans his head back against the couch and falls silent. “If you could have one thing right now, what would it be?”
I turn my face into his hand cupping the side of my cheek and just close my eyes for a beat and think. “A night off.”
“A night off?” His eyes are back on me, his thumb rubbing back and forth on my cheek. “I do know your boss, you know.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m serious. If you needed a night off, you should have told me. I’ll tell Robert to back off and cancel whatever it is.”
“Don’t you ever need a night off?” I ask.
He rocks his head from side to side as if he’s figuring how to answer. “Typically Smudge is the only one who cares where I am—or rather, I should say he’s the only one I care about who cares where I am . . . so no, working doesn’t bug me. It keeps me sane.”
“Everybody needs down time.”
A brush of hair off of my face. A tuck of it behind my ear. “Maybe I haven’t found the right person yet to make me care.”
Silence falls between us because I damn well know he said that wasn’t something he felt or believed in.
So why is he saying it now?
I hate that a little sliver of hope opens up before I have a chance to shut it down. A little sliver just like that lady tonight was so desperate for.
“So a night off?” he prompts.
It takes me a minute to find my thoughts again—off of him and onto what we were talking about before he made that statement. “I don’t know. It’s not that I need a night off . . . maybe it’s more that I want to go do something without being watched constantly. When we do the shows we have an audience. We do interviews and we’re being scrutinized by those asking the questions and those watching. Now we do adventures to be filmed and there’s another audience.” I shake my head as I try to put my feelings into words. “I just want to go somewhere—out—where I can be myself and not care who’s watching if I slurp through my straw—”
“You slurp through your straw?” he asks with a laugh. “I can’t imagine the always well-mannered Harlow Nicks slurping anything.”
“Exactly!” I say and throw my hands up to emphasize my point. “You won’t know if I did or didn’t because I’m always on my best behavior because I’m being watched.”
“Ohhhh, now I want to know what it is that you do when no one is watching,” he teases.
“Whatever.” I roll my eyes and do my best to push against his chest from my prone position. “You know what I mean.”
“Do you pick your nose? Eww. Slurp your spaghetti noodles too? Maybe you—”
“Stop.” I laugh as I push back against his chest and he wraps his fingers around my wrists and holds them still. We playfully struggle for a minute, until I give up and just flop my head back down on his lap. “I do all of them!” I joke.
“I knew it!” Zane’s smile is wide. His eyes alive. “I have an idea.”
“What?” I ask, sitting up and looking at him.
“Just give me a second.” He holds a finger up and reaches for his phone. I sit there as he types something in and then scrolls down. “Hey Mick?” he says rising from the couch.
“Yeah, Zane?” Mick says from his driver’s seat.
“Slight detour.”
“I love detours,” he says with a chuckle. “Where to?”
Zane holds out his phone so Mick can see whatever is on his screen.
“My kind of detour,” Mick says.
“Zane?” I ask. “What are you doing?”
“I’m giving you what you asked for.”
“WHAT DID YOU DO? CALL ahead and rent this place out? It’s empty.”
“I’ve got my connections,” he jokes.
I look around the arcade on Main Street in what could literally be any small city in America. There are two teenage attendants wiping down machines and flirting with one another and an older gentleman in the front who looks like he’s going over receipts. Other than those three and the tons of blinking lights on the numerous arcade and pinball machines in here, it’s just us.
“What’s left to play?” I ask.
“Well, we said we had to play every machine in here a
t least once before we leave, so”—he motions his hand to all of the machines on my left that I’ve yet to try—“take your pick.”
“You said Galaga was your game, right?” He nods. “I bet I can beat you at it.”
“Is that so?” He quirks an eyebrow up at me and I can already tell he’s game.
“You’ll just have to play and find out.”
“And what does the winner get?”
“Hmm . . . whatever the winner wants.”
His grin is lightning fast and so are his hands as he spins around and has his hips trapping mine against a machine. Just as quickly, his lips close over mine in one of those kisses that are quick, violent with desire, and leave your lips parted and breath hitched when he steps back.
“I have a lot of wants,” he murmurs before stepping back, laughing, and swatting the side of my hip. “Be ready to lose.”
I give myself a second to recover from that unexpected kiss before following behind him.
“Ladies first,” he says before sliding a token in the machine’s slot.
“And you’re even paying for my game too?” I say and hold a hand to my chest.
“What can I say,” he says, blowing on his knuckles and rubbing them against his shirt. “I’m a big spender.”
And so we begin a little video game war. A two game duel becomes a best of five when he didn’t show complete dominance in score, then became a best of eleven when I pulled ahead by one, then moved onto a best of fifteen.
“Watch and learn, Nicks.”
“I’ve learned plenty.” I say with a smug smile when he looks my way. “I’m up one win on you. This is a do or die here.”
“I know, but uh, after this game, I will be the official Galaga champ of the Main Street Arcade.” He throws his arms up in victory and hisses like a crowd cheering its winner.
“Not so fast, Phillips. I have a few cards up my sleeve yet.”
“How is that?” He asks as he drops a coin in. “I’m about to win right now.”
He turns toward the game. Toward the little shooter spaceship and the flying alien bugs you have to zap. His hands beat frantically at the button and his feet shift as he anticipates what to do next.
When I know he’s clearly going to beat my score, I decide it’s time to bring out all the stops.
“How’re you doing?” I ask as I step up behind him and make sure my pelvis rubs against him. He freezes momentarily and then a laugh falls from his mouth and echoes around the empty place.
“Nice try, but it’s not going to work.”
“Looks like you’re score’s getting up there.” This time I pull up his shirt and scrape my fingernails over his abdomen right above the top of his button. His muscles tense beneath my fingers.
“Harlow,” he warns.
“What?” My voice is a mask of innocence while my hands make a sinner’s descent beneath his waistband. My fingernails play with the rough patch of hair there and then slowly make their way down to where his dick is already straining against the denim of his jeans.
His fingers begin to slow their pounding of the button. My hand grips around his cock as best as I can with my body flanking his from behind, and I do my best within the confines of the space to stroke him.
His body stills—hands on button, hips motionless, his head now hanging down—as my hand continues to tease and the game emits the sound of an explosion telling me he just lost. Yes. Distraction technique successful.
“Oopsie,” I say and it takes everything I have to slide my hand out of his jeans and away from his very tempting and skillful dick.
“Harlow.” It’s a low grumble of a curse.
I take a step back and then squeal when he lunges for me, pained grin on his face, and begins to chase me around the arcade. The chase only lasts a few minutes as the space is limited but when he catches me, when he wraps his arms around me and pulls my back against his still hardened cock, I feel just as tortured as he is.
His teeth scrape ever-so-softly against the skin where my shoulder meets my neck, his labored breath in my ear.
“That was dirty.”
“Yeah . . . well . . . it worked.” My smile is automatic. Closing my eyes, I sink into the wonderful warmth and feel of him behind me.
“I love that you’re unapologetic.” He chuckles, his lips still against my skin. “You won, Cinder. Name your prize.”
I turn in his arms and just stare. Take him in. The disheveled hair. The green eyes. The lopsided smirk. The sexiness that just exudes off of everything about him.
I’m so screwed.
Distance. Space. Time.
Those are the three things I need right now because if we head back to the coach, we’re going to end up having sex . . . but right now with our mood, with this vibe between us, with my heart blatantly worn on my sleeve where it sits right now, I won’t just be opening my legs to him. I’ll be opening my heart too.
“Umm,” I say, knowing I need to chill these thoughts of mine so I can at least pretend to myself that we can still do the casual sex thing. “I want to play another game.”
“What?” He laughs, clearly thinking we were heading back to the coach and our bed just like my body wants to be doing.
“Another game. A couple more moments where we’re not the face of SoulM8.”
He chews on the inside of his cheek as he stares at me with confusion flickering through expression. “Okay. Whatever you want.”
“Thanks.” My voice is soft. My heart constricting in my chest.
“How about you close your eyes, spin in a circle, and whatever game you point to when you stop is the one we play.”
“You want to play spin the bottle with arcade games?”
“Only if I get the other benefits of the spin when we get back on the road,” he says with a wink.
I just shake my head and go stand in the middle of the room. With my finger pointing out and my eyes closed, I spin slowly at first and then a bit faster until I’m disoriented. When I stop, Zane’s arms are there to hold me from falling over from the dizzies and my finger is pointing at a Lover’s Lane pinball machine.
“What the heck is that?” I ask and then laugh when I notice there are two identical pinball machines side by side for a couple to play.
“It all comes back to love,” he says and chuckles disbelievingly.
But as we slide our tokens in the machines and wait for the games to dispatch their pinballs for us, something about his comment bugs me. Reminds me of that first time we met. A time that now feels like forever ago when it’s only been weeks.
“Love is a bullshit emotion,” I murmur softly and hate knowing he said that when every time I’m with him lately, my insides feel like they are turning inside out.
“What?” Zane glances over to me briefly as he pulls the plunger back and lets it fly against the ball.
“If you really feel that way, why did you even buy and revamp SoulM8 in the first place?”
“It’s a long story.” He hits the flipper buttons repeatedly as the machine talks back to him with every push.
“I want to know.”
His ball slides through his flippers’ reach and he loses his first round with a sigh. “It was a bet,” he says so very casually, while my head feels like I just suffered from mental whiplash.
“What do you mean it was a bet?” My pinball machine flashes for me to play it but I suddenly have no interest.
“A bet. Some of my friends and I made a little high stakes bet. Take a million dollars, start a company, and at the end of two years, whoever has the highest profit wins a pot we all pitched in on.”
I stand there and blink at him and try to comprehend what it is he’s telling me. A bet. A pool of money.
“But for what reason?”
“Because we’re men,” he says and chuckles, and I hate that as much as that’s not an answer, it’s a perfect one. It’s not like many men back down from a challenge. “We’re all successful—very—and we needed something to
put the thrill back in business again. So . . .”
So it’s not just an ego thing . . . in reality it is, but at least it’s something that . . . God, why am I justifying it? Why do I even care?
Then something clicks. “Kostas?” I ask already knowing the answer.
“Yes.” He nods and then groans when he misses the ball with the flipper. “Son of a bitch.”
“But . . . why?”
His chuckle bugs me. It’s the first hint of condescension I’ve had from him in weeks and now all the sudden as the outside world seeps back into our little bubble, I am so very aware how different our lives are. With the luxurious coach and fancy wardrobe and first class everything, it’s been easy to forget that this isn’t playtime in a fancy dream world to him like it is in a sense to me.
The pang in my chest is so very different now than the one I felt a few minutes ago.
Why do I feel hurt that I didn’t know this?
Is it because he didn’t tell me? Is it because I feel like we’re close enough that he should have sooner?
“Part of the contest rules are that no one is supposed to know about it,” he says before I ever ask the question on my mind. “You know, the first rule about fight club and all that.”
“You could have told me.”
He glances my way, mid-battle. “I’ll refer back to fight club,” he says with a playful laugh.
“I know, but I’m the one here trying to help you sell this whole thing and . . .” My words trail off. He owes me no explanation, no anything, and yet I’m still hurt that I didn’t know this. Couldn’t he have told me after Kostas’ visit what was going on? “Never mind.”
“Does it really matter why I started the company?” Another glance my way. Another aloof statement I shouldn’t care about but do.
“No . . . but I mean . . . if it doesn’t matter why you started it, then why is it a secret?” He doesn’t respond and I know the why. “Does Robert know?”
“No and he won’t know.”
I stare at him, the authority in his posture, and see the person I met the first day. Gone is the playful, sweet guy from earlier. Present is the man I met in error who ordered me to walk his dog.
