Stiff Competition

by Micah Persell

  She tiptoed out into the hall, silently cursing the fact that she already felt cold without Gage wrapped around her.

  She stared at her computer bag for a long second where it was propped up by the door, swallowing hard before scooping it up in her arms and carrying it to the kitchen counter. Releasing a breath, she slid her laptop from the case, a slew of papers and notepads sliding out with it to scatter across the countertop. For the moment, she left those notepads where they fell. She needed to do this right away or she’d lose her nerve.

  When she opened the laptop, it chimed loudly in the silent apartment, and she cringed, darting a glance over her shoulder and holding her breath for several seconds to see if Gage would wake.

  He didn’t. She turned back to the laptop. Already pulled up to the screen was the full plot summary of her game. The one she intended to turn into Mr. Callahan tomorrow at the all-staff meeting, during which she and Chris would pitch both games in contention for “the one.”

  As she blinked at the pages she’d poured her heart out on, maneuvering the cursor to Select All was simpler than beating the first world in Super Mario Brothers 3. A simple double tap on the mouse pad set her up for a surprisingly easy decision.

  Without another second’s thought, she clicked delete. The screen flickered, and she squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t see it disappear.

  With her eyes still tightly closed, she waited for the remorse. The panic.

  It never came.

  Releasing a pent-up breath, she turned from her laptop, opened her eyes, and smiled.

  It’s going to be okay now. She’d figure something out. A better game. One that didn’t hurt or use anyone else in the same way she abhorred women being hurt and used in the majority of games the industry released.

  You can’t resolve a wrong by committing the same one.

  That truth echoed through her mind from a point of origin she couldn’t locate, but it packed a wallop.

  She stumbled forward a couple of steps. Oh, God. She couldn’t believe she’d nearly submitted a game that was so hypocritical of everything she stood for.

  She owed Gage. For so much.

  “Cassidy?”

  She stiffened as his sleepy voice traveled down the hall. But she didn’t have anything to be ashamed of anymore. Her lips curled as she padded toward him. When she stepped into her bedroom, Gage was sprawled in all his naked glory in the center of her bed, and her heart thumped extra hard at the sight. “Yeah?” she asked, her voice husky.

  “Where’d you go?” he murmured, his eyes still closed as he rubbed an open palm between his pecs.

  Does his heart beat harder, too? The thought made her toes curl. “Couldn’t sleep,” she whispered back.

  He opened his arms to her, a gentle smile curving his lips. “Come back to bed, Gamer Girl.”

  She tingled all over as her skin slid against his and he covered them with the sheet, tucking their bodies together just as they had been before she’d left the bed.

  “Much better.” His words ruffled her hair, and his possessive hold on her ass caused goose bumps to spread all over her body.

  “Definitely.”

  In seconds, his breathing had evened out again. Shockingly, Cassidy felt her own eyelids drooping, and soon, deep sleep—like the kind she hadn’t had in weeks—overtook her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gage was smiling even before he opened his eyes. The sound of Cassidy’s off-key humming—the theme to the original Mario Bros., of course—filtered in from the en-suite bathroom, and he couldn’t remember a time he’d enjoyed waking up in more amenable circumstances.

  He spread out his arms, stretching until his back popped, then turned over and huddled in the spot that was still warm from her body. Her scent filled his senses, and in a move that would have embarrassed him completely just twenty-four hours ago, he gathered her pillow close, wrapping it in both arms and burying his face in it.

  After a few moments, he started thinking about coffee, and the idea of starting the pot and having a cup ready for Cassidy when she got out of the shower was attractive enough to get him to leave the cocoon of warmth that had such a hold on him.

  He tossed the covers aside and planted his feet on the floor, his toes cringing from the cool tile.

  Definitely need coffee.

  And his clothes. Damn, it was cold in here. He pulled his jeans and T-shirt on with quick jerks, then walked into the kitchen with a smile on his face, grabbed the coffee grounds from the freezer, and got their coffee started.

  As the soothing sounds of percolating java filled the kitchen, he turned with a satisfied sigh and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms across his chest.

  All those obstacles between him and Cassidy that he’d talked about with Ryker yesterday, throwing them like darts aimed at the balloon of his own happiness, well, they still existed this morning. Why, then, didn’t they seem as insurmountable as they had been over beers and a brisket sandwich? Why did the very thought of never again having to walk into a hotel room containing a stranger make his cheeks sting from grinning?

  A blinking caught his eye.

  He cocked his head as he noticed Cassidy’s laptop open on the counter. She must have tried to work last night when she couldn’t sleep.

  It looked like there had been some sort of error. Shit. That would ruin her morning.

  Shoving away from the cabinets, he strode across the kitchen and leaned down to read the screen.

  Are you sure you’d like to exit without saving?

  “Oh, fuck,” he muttered. With a quick jab, he clicked on No. When the screen stopped blinking, it revealed a blank word document.

  “Double fuck.” She’d been working on this for weeks! All of it appeared to be gone. His gaze roved the screen until he found the tiny back arrow in the top, left-hand corner. Undo. He clicked beside it and saw that she’d somehow managed to delete the entire document. He exhaled. Easy fix. He undid the last command and the document suddenly filled with words. He closed his eyes for a moment. Thank God.

  When he opened his eyes again, a slow grin began to spread his lips. If he’d thought Cassidy would be impressed by coffee, what reward would saving her work yield?

  He chuckled as his imagination began to run wild, and he was just turning to grab a cup of the coffee that had finished brewing when a particular word on the screen caught his attention.

  He paused. Frowned. Turned back toward the computer.

  Narrowing his eyes, he looked for the word he thought he’d seen. And he found it right away. Several times.

  Gigolo.

  “What the fuck?” Before he realized what he was doing, he scrolled to the top of the document, his eyes quickly scanning through the text.

  After the first paragraph, his eyes shot wide. His stomach lurched as he returned to the top of the page and started reading again. This time, he dwelled on every word.

  When he reached the bottom of the document, everything within him sank. That balloon of happiness he’d pictured moments ago: ripped to shreds, and he hadn’t even had to throw the darts this time.

  She’d hurled those darts like machine gun fire and hit the bull’s eye every time.

  No. She wouldn’t do this.

  There was no way she’d created an entire game using every single thing he’d told her in confidence. Yet everything was here. The cat lady. The tickling. Everything.

  And this guy, the character, was pathetic. Completely content to be used and betrayed over and over.

  Gage planted his fist on the countertop, and his knuckles encountered a sharp edge. Drawing his hand back with a hiss, he glared down only to find a sketchpad partially sticking out of Cassidy’s laptop bag.

  It was open to a page, and he could clearly see a sleeping form that looked very much like him curled up in a bed.

  With a growl, he ripped the sketchpad from the bag. Immediately, his gut plummeted to the floor.

  It wasn’t him. And yet . . . it was.


  The person in the bed was clearly Gage, yet the surroundings were a perfect depiction of the setting he’d just read in the synopsis for Cassidy’s game.

  She . . .

  He swallowed hard.

  She’d modeled her pathetic gigolo character after him. Gage was him!

  “Hey, do I smell coffee?”

  Anger surged along with bile in the back of his throat. Biting into his tongue, Gage turned slowly.

  Cassidy slipped by him with a fond pat to his arm, reaching for the coffee with a soft smile curving her lips.

  The very sight of that small, pleased smile made him clench his teeth.

  The carafe clicked against her mug as she began to pour. She looked up at his face, jolted, and then froze. The coffee continued to pour without her noticing, and damn it, as the hot liquid neared the top, he couldn’t remain silent. “Watch it,” he bit out.

  She jumped again, and the action sent the coffee splashing over her hand—the very thing he’d tried to warn her against.

  “Shit,” she hissed. She practically dropped the coffeepot and mug on the countertop and shook out her noticeably red hand. But she seemed to forget the pain immediately, turning back to him. “What’s wrong?” Her voice wavered, and he caught her flicking a quick glance at the laptop behind him.

  Her eyes widened.

  And that was when he realized he’d been harboring some hope that this was all some sort of horrid mistake or coincidence. Because the feeling of that hope dying nearly sent him to his knees.

  “What the—” She stepped toward the laptop.

  Gage slid between her and it, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your new game makes for some interesting reading,” he muttered in a bitter voice he hadn’t heard himself use in . . . fuck, in probably a decade. Back before he’d stopped caring about everything.

  “You read it?” She blanched beneath her freckles, and it was completely unfair that the sight made something ping in his chest. She tried to peer around him. “What? How—”

  So she was going to deny it? “What the fuck, Cassidy!” His sudden shout seemed to shock them both. His skin tingled, like live electricity cruised along its entire surface.

  She blinked up at him as though he’d slapped her, her lips parted. She felt slapped? What about him? What about how she’d betrayed him!

  Calm down, Gage—He could feel his mind trying to grasp at an explanation. Anything but the truth. He shoved those thoughts aside forcefully. He needed to focus on the anger, or he’d—

  He shoved that line of thought aside, too, fixing her with a glare. “You used me.” His previous words were shouted, but these limped out of his lips in a soft, humiliating whisper that betrayed the depth of his riotous emotions.

  He closed his eyes—this vulnerability was an unacceptable emotion he’d banished from his life long ago.

  An emotion she’d made him feel.

  When he opened his eyes again, he finally had himself in check. No more of this pussy shit. He ground his teeth together and gave her a look he knew would send her running out of his space before he lost his control again and did something unforgiveable. Like cry the way he had when he was a kid.

  He watched her absorb his ominous look, but she took a step toward him instead, which sent him scuttling away like she was about to touch him with fire. Or, just touch him. Something he wouldn’t be able to bear right now.

  Cassidy lowered her chin and held her hands out, palms down. “Gage, I swear to you—”

  He held up a hand between them in something that was close to a flinch but which he tried to play off as intentional. “Stop. Just stop.”

  She did.

  He gritted his teeth. “As if I’d ever believe whatever you’re getting ready to say. You’ve been lying to me this entire time.”

  “Lying?” She shook her head and—damn it—reached toward him again. “No, Gage, I—”

  He stepped out of touching range. “You fucking snake. God, you make me sick.” He’d never spoken to a woman like that before.

  She gasped, placing a hand over her stomach, and he wanted to step forward. Take it back despite everything.

  “Gage, I-I . . . asked you—”

  “Asked me?” He was back to shouting. “Asked if you could steal my life and make it a spectacle the entire world could laugh at?”

  “No!” If possible, her skin blanched even more. “I asked . . . you assured me you didn’t care about anything. I . . . Shit, I know I made a mistake, but—”

  Ryker’s words back at Classic Muscle filtered through his memory. You’re so set on not giving a fuck about anyone or anything, but it’s just not true . . . Be careful . . . She’s hiding something.

  Well, Ryker had definitely been right about half of that, but there was no way Gage would allow him to be right about all of it.

  He held up a hand, and astonishingly, she stopped talking immediately. “You know what?” A sudden calm washed over him. “You’re right.” He jerked down the hem of his black T-shirt, smoothing it back into place. “I don’t care about anything.” How nice of her to remind him of that. “Least of all you.”

  The lie tasted like acid on his tongue, but he swallowed the taste down. It might not be true right now, but it would be soon enough. When he got himself back together.

  She looked as though she wasn’t grasping what he’d just said, but he saw the moment she realized she’d heard correctly. Her eyes brightened with tears. Tears she hadn’t shed when she’d been assaulted by a stranger.

  Her parted lips closed, and she swallowed hard and nodded once. “Understood,” she said in a small voice.

  They faced each other in an awkward silence that stretched on for far too long.

  Time to get out of here. He straightened, scanning the small apartment for his leather jacket and boots.

  She cleared her throat. “For what it’s worth, I’ll never forgive myself for this.”

  He spied his jacket over by the door. Turning his back on her, he began walking toward it. “Good,” he said over his shoulder.

  That makes two of us. At least he knew he’d never make a mistake like this again. It fucking hurt.

  He slipped his jacket on, zipping it up to his throat like a suit of armor, and stomped into his boots. Without pausing to tie the laces or look back, he left her apartment, shutting the door behind him for the last time.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cassidy stared at the closed door of her apartment for several minutes, the strangling feeling in her throat growing more severe until, with a gasp, she gave herself up to the tears.

  Folding her arms together, she leaned over the counter and buried her face in them, sobs bursting from her lips.

  “Fuck,” she groaned. This hurt. God, it hurt.

  Her hot breaths quickly filled the space between her arms, making her feel like she was suffocating. She jerked upright again, dashing her fists beneath her eyes, finding more tears there than she’d thought she was capable of producing.

  Her chest ached. Her stomach sloshed. Her head pounded. She wanted to crawl back into bed and never come out again.

  She struggled for control, covering her face with both hands and trying to regulate her breathing. When she was able to take two breaths in a row without sobbing, she huffed a sigh, her shoulders relaxing only minutely.

  “Why would anyone ever want a relationship?” she asked the empty room from behind her hands.

  Her gaze dropped to the counter, landing on the notepad where she’d sketched Gage laying in her bed. Tears now blotted the lines in several areas, creating little starbursts in the charcoal.

  She reached out a shaking hand and curled it around the sketchpad’s binding. Raising it up, she allowed her greedy gaze to drink in his likeness all it pleased. She traced the curve of his cheek with the tip of her finger, and her eyes immediately flooded with tears again.

  Yep. Being in a relationship was just as bad as she’d always known it would be.

  S
he lowered the sketchpad, ready to drop it back to the counter, but her fingers wouldn’t release it. With another sigh, she tucked it beneath her arm, pressed tightly against her ribs. Her heart kicked an extra beat, as though it sensed the proximity of something Gage-related, and she had to blink hard to keep more tears from joining their compatriots.

  She sniffed. Her damning words glared up at her from the computer screen. “Traitor,” she muttered to the laptop.

  With vicious jabs, she punched in the keystrokes to Select All again. She growled as she lunged for the delete button.

  But millimeters away, she paused.

  She cocked her head to the side, blinked at the computer screen for several seconds, and then slowly pulled the sketchpad from beneath her arm, looking at Gage’s character once more.

  The most asinine thought in the world entered her head: I can fix this.

  The very hope behind such a thought made her cringe and want to guard her vitals, yet it persisted.

  Plot ideas began racing through her head, and her grip on the sketchpad tightened until she felt the bite of a paper cut against her palm.

  She dashed a glance at the clock. Have to be at work in fifteen minutes. Damn, she was already going to be late.

  Slamming her laptop closed, she shoved it and the sketchpad back into her laptop bag, looping it over her shoulder before racing toward the door.

  The entire drive to work, her mind tumbled over character traits and what-if scenarios so that by the time she parked, only five minutes past report time, she was aching to sit down and get started on her ideas.

  At her desk, her fingers flew over the keyboard, deleting and replacing key elements of her plot at record speed. A smile began to spread her lips despite the ache that had not yet budged from her chest.

  This is good. Better than the original. This was the game she should have written all along.

  “Yo, Hastings!”

  With a gasp, her head whipped around. Chris was standing at the entrance to her cubicle. His raised brows indicated her gasp and reaction had been just as loud as she worried they had been.