She reached the end, braced herself, and looked up.
Mr. Brown was grinning. “I love it.”
She felt her lips part. “You do?” Don’t sound so shocked, Hastings!
“I do! Brilliant.” Another broad grin. “The way your characters work together, there’s an undeniable chemistry. Everybody loves a good love story. They also love vigilantes. While the biggest demographic in gaming may be thirty-year-old males, there are not many games that cater to the quickly growing female demographic. This game is going to be a success.”
I must be dreaming.
Mr. Brown leaned back and gripped both arms of his chair. “I’m getting back into the gaming business. I love investing, but I want to be more hands-on. I’ve got a new company in the works. All the management has been hired, but now it’s time to start hiring the people who really make the magic happen: the game writers. I’d like to offer you a job.”
Now her jaw slackened. “A job?”
“Oh!” He snapped his fingers as though he’d just remembered something he forgot. “And a signing bonus under the condition that you sell us your game and it becomes the first one we produce.”
“A signing bonus?” Do something other than repeat him, Hastings!
“Yes. Fifteen thousand dollars. And, of course, a percentage of the proceeds, as you are the creator.”
“Holy shit!”
Mr. Brown blinked several times.
Cassidy closed her eyes. Maybe you should have stuck to repeating what he said.
His abrupt chuckle made her eyes shoot open again. “I take it that’s a yes?”
She nodded emphatically. “That’s a yes. Sir.”
“Wonderful.” He patted the arms of his chair once with open palms then shoved to his feet. “I’ll have my secretary draw up the documents. Can we meet again on Monday? You’d be able to meet the managers and get a timeline started. I’d like to see this game on the shelves in two years, which means we need to hit the ground running.”
“Yes, sir.” Cassidy got to her feet, too. “That would be great.”
Mr. Brown held out his hand, and she shook it. “I look forward to working with you, Ms. Hastings. Let me show you out.”
Thirty minutes later, Cassidy was finished filling in new employment information. She was walking out the door, a grin on her face, when she reached for her phone to text Gage.
She stared at the phone lying in the palm of her hand and swiped her thumb across the cold, hard glass.
God, she missed him. Wanted him.
She jumped at her ringtone. Her phone leapt into the air, and she snatched at it with both hands, missing several times before she caught it just inches above the pavement.
She glanced at the caller ID, and her gut plummeted even more. Not Gage. Like he would ever call her. But it was someone else she adored. She hit the green button. “Tori.” Her voice cracked on her sister-in-law’s name.
There was a beat of silence on the other line. “What’s wrong?” Victoria asked, urgency in her tone.
She closed her eyes. “I fucked up. Big time.” Funny how, with everything good that had just happened, the first thing that came out of her mouth had something to do with losing Gage. Again, why did people do relationships?
“Where are you? I’ll be there in five minutes.”
She laughed, but it came out as more like a sob. “That’s impossible in Vegas, and you know it.”
“Okay, so meet me at Sally’s. I can be there in twenty minutes.”
Cassidy looked at her car. “I can, too.”
“Do you need to keep me on the phone as you’re driving?”
Cassidy rolled her eyes, but longing filled her. Which only made her try to buck up even harder. “No, I’ll be fine.”
“If I don’t see your face in twenty minutes, I’m hunting you down, Cassidy, do you hear me?”
The first hint of a smile cracked Cassidy’s lips. “Promise?”
“Always.”
“See you soon, sis,” Cassidy whispered then ended the call.
She huffed a sigh as she straightened her laptop bag over her shoulder and walked to her car. Traffic cooperated much better than she’d expected, and she pulled up to Sally’s—a dingy diner she and Victoria loved—only fifteen minutes later. She noticed Tori’s Mercedes already in the parking lot. How many lives had her sister endangered to get here so quickly?
When she walked in, she immediately found Tori sitting in their usual corner booth, two chocolate shakes already on the table.
“Have I told you lately that I adore you?” Cassidy asked as she sank into the cracked vinyl seat.
“You haven’t told me anything lately, stranger.” Victoria raised her eyebrows. “I’ve heard nothing other than a couple simple texts from you for weeks.”
Cassidy winced. Had it really been that long? She looked down at the tabletop, tracing a scratch in its surface with her thumb. “I’m sorry.” A phrase she apparently needed to practice.
Tori’s hand covered hers, stilling her fingers. “Cassidy, what’s happened?”
She felt her chin wobble. “I . . . fell for someone,” she moaned in a low voice.
Victoria’s fingers spasmed. “I’m sorry.” She laughed. “I seriously thought I heard you say you fell for someone.” Another laugh.
She raised her chin and met Victoria’s gaze.
Her sister-in-law’s face blanched. “Oh, shit.”
Cassidy sighed. “That about sums it up.”
A sudden, vivid smile spread Victoria’s lips. “Cassidy, this is great!” She shook her head in apparent disbelief. “It finally happened for you! When do we get to meet—”
Cassidy withdrew her hand. “He left me,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Oh, no.” Victoria scooted closer to her in the booth. “Oh, honey, when?”
She shivered. Would she ever shake her glimpse of the lost boy look in Gage’s eyes before he’d turned his back on her? “This morning.”
“Wait, this morning?” She ducked down and tried to peer into Cassidy’s eyes. “As in mere hours ago?”
Cassidy nodded.
“Sweetie, are you sure you didn’t just have a fight? You don’t do the relationship thing, so you might not realize fights happen. A lot.”
Cassidy raised her head. “I got him to reveal his deepest, darkest secrets, then created a video game that exploited him as a person, which he discovered when he read it this morning.”
“Okay, that’s bad.”
Cassidy flopped back into the booth, reaching for her milkshake. “You think?”
“Cassidy, why would you do something like that?”
Despite knowing she deserved such a question, Cassidy felt her hackles rise. “He assured me he didn’t care about anything! That I could never hurt him!”
“Oh, baby girl, the men who say that are the most vulnerable. Come on, you should know this.”
Cassidy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Well, I do now. Too late.”
Victoria scoffed. “It’s not too late.”
Seriously? “Did you not hear what I did to him?”
Her sister-in-law gave her a patronizing look. “Did he fall for you, too?”
Fresh pain filled her at the thought of the way he’d cupped her face and whispered, “Hi,” when they’d made love last night. “Before this morning . . . I think, maybe, he could have.”
“Then it’s not too late. This is just going to take some major groveling. Of the on-your-knees variety.”
Her gaze jerked to her sister, who gave her a lascivious wink. “Jesus, Tori.”
“Hey, if I told you how many scrapes a good BJ got me out of with Kip, you’d be astounded.”
She wrapped her fingers around her shake. “And scarred for life.” But Cassidy felt her lips curve. In-love Tori was a brand new beast. Cassidy couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her sister-in-law so happy. It certainly hadn’t been any time in the years leading up to Jeremy’s suicide.
>
Victoria wrapped her arm around Cassidy’s shoulders. “Honey, relationships are so, so scary. I know that. And I know Jeremy and I didn’t give you a rose-colored-glasses example of a relationship.” Cassidy flinched, but Victoria just plowed ahead. “But trust me when I say Jeremy and I loved each other very much and I wouldn’t undo any part of investing my heart in your brother, even if I had the chance.”
Cassidy’s brows drew together. Victoria looked serious, which was something she couldn’t believe. Jeremy had killed himself, that final year or so in their marriage torture for them both.
Victoria pinched Cassidy’s chin between her fingers. “It’s the hard parts of a relationship that make the easy parts even better. What’s a masterpiece without some dark colors?” With a final affectionate squeeze, Victoria dropped her hand. “But I’m not even sure Jeremy is the reason you’ve been avoiding relationships.”
Cassidy’s lips parted.
“Now, hear me out.” Victoria held up a hand. “You’re young. And the men you get to hang out with regularly at work aren’t exactly specimens of manhood. They’re still figuring out their lives, too. It’s easy to say you don’t want a relationship when all of your options for one are undesirable. Sooner or later, you were bound to meet someone who broke out of that mold. You just found your later.”
Huh. The guys Cassidy worked with . . . they were kind of struggling. This industry didn’t pay much in the early stages of a career. Some of the guys still lived at home. A few of them didn’t even shower regularly. Did Victoria have a point?
Cassidy shook her head. “Tori, none of that matters. This . . . whatever it was with Gage . . . it’s over. He’s never going to want to talk to me again.”
“And you’re willing to bet your future happiness on that supposition being accurate?”
Cassidy wrinkled her nose. “Only you would talk like that right after mentioning BJs.”
“I try.” Tori patted her hair.
Cassidy sighed. Damn it, hope was hard to keep down. “What would I even do?”
“Call him. Visit him. Bring him donuts at work.”
Cassidy hissed in a breath. “He’s kind of a gigolo.”
Victoria paused at that. “Okay, that’s a whole different conversation. Which we will be having, do you understand me?” Cassidy nodded, barely containing a smile. Tori probably had scads of good advice from Kip regarding the matter. “The point is,” Tori continued, “you dog him until he forgives you. And then you treat him like a treasure for the rest of your lives so he never has to worry about you hurting him again. Easy.”
Cassidy rolled her eyes. “Yeah. As pie.”
“Look, honey, you’re already hurting. What do you have to lose by trying?”
“More hurting?” she asked as though Tori were an idiot.
Again, with the patronizing look. “Is that even possible?”
“God, I hope not.” The current ache in her gut nearly had her hunching over as it was
“See?” Victoria’s voice was obnoxiously chipper. “Nothing to lose!”
She felt her lips twitch. “Maybe not.”
“So, go get your man.” Victoria squeezed Cassidy’s shoulder. “And then you better call me and tell me what’s going on in your life right now. I have a feeling there’s a lot you’re not telling me and that it isn’t all bad.”
Cassidy laced her fingers together and squeezed. “I sold a game today. The game, minus all the exploitation parts. For fifteen thousand dollars.” The words were soft as they left her lips, but she felt the atomic bomb impact they had on Victoria.
“Cassidy! And we’re sitting here talking about a guy?”
Cassidy shrugged. “The guy . . . matters more to me.” Holy fuck. Words she’d never thought she’d say.
Victoria’s abrupt laugh made Cassidy jump. She glared up at her sister-in-law, only to find a delighted expression on Tori’s face. “You are so into this guy.”
“I know that part already.”
Victoria playfully shoved Cassidy toward the end of the booth. “Then get out of here. Fix it. That you changed the game, I’m guessing, will go a long way toward achieving that goal.”
That’s right. She’d changed the game. After she’d tried to delete it entirely. That had to count for something, right? Her lips twitched; her mouth was trying to produce a smile. She shut that down quickly. No reason to get too hopeful.
As Cassidy climbed from the booth, Victoria handed her the laptop bag. “And I expect a phone call from you tonight, you understand? Or I’m showing up at your place.”
“If that’s a threat, you’re going to have to do better.” She didn’t want to be alone at her place. Tori was more than welcome.
“If things go well when you find him, you’re not going to want me there.”
“True.”
“Get going. Love you, sis.”
Something soft and melty happened in her chest. “Love you, too.” God, at this rate, with all this love floating around, she was never going to be the same again.
And that might be a good thing.
She formulated a plan while walking to her car. Calling Gage wasn’t going to work. He’d just ignore her calls. Same thing with texting. Nope, the best way to go about contacting him was the way they’d met in the first place. It was hard to ignore a girl staring at you through your apartment window.
It was a desperate visual. Well, she was desperate. It had to work.
She studiously followed all traffic laws on the way home, just to give herself more time to think of everything she would say and do when she saw Gage again.
When she parked in the garage, she still didn’t have a perfect script planned, but that was only because her mind helpfully went through each and every thing that could go wrong no matter what she tried. The worst-case scenario was always the same: she and Gage really were over.
That was something she couldn’t take.
She raced to her apartment, threw open the door, and dropped her laptop bag unceremoniously beside the entry table. The ominous thud it emitted as it hit the tile floor didn’t even cause her to pause. She just jogged over to the window, a smile already on her face. She’d grab any chance to feast her eyes on Gage again, even if he was angry with her.
As she peered through the dark to see into his apartment, her heart thudded to a stop.
“No,” she whispered. “No, this can’t be right.”
But there it was for her, in crystal clear color, because all the lights were on in Gage’s apartment. It made it perfectly easy for her to see that the apartment was completely empty. Every stick of furniture: gone. Any sign of the gigolo she had fallen for: absent.
“Gage?” she whispered, her breath fogging the glass of her own window. “No. No, please.” With numb fingers, she fumbled for her cell in her back pocket. Her hand shook as she opened her text messages and clicked the phone icon next to Gage’s number.
Okay, this was a setback. But she was calling him. He’d answer, yell at her for a bit, and then she could beg him to meet her. Beg him to forgive her.
The phone rang once, and then a harsh, three-tone alert filled her ear. “I’m sorry. This number has been disconnected. Please check the number you’re trying to reach and try again.”
Her gut bottomed out. She ended the call and pressed redial.
Same message.
He was . . . gone. Utterly, absolutely gone.
Her knees buckled, and next she knew, she was on them in front of the big picture window of her apartment. Her phone went bouncing away, and there was a clear crack as it collided with a wall.
She didn’t care. The phone didn’t matter. What use was it anyway? She couldn’t contact Gage with it.
Tears flooded her throat, as they had several times today, but not even tears could permeate the sorrow that seemed to be shutting down her system.
She curled into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest, and closed her eyes. Why? Why would anyone want a relationship!
<
br /> And that position was how Victoria found her several hours later, her eyes still dry, her heart still a massive ball of pain.
Nothing would ever make this better.
Chapter Twenty
“Okay,” Ryker said, standing at the foot of the couch with his hands on his hips. “I’ve said nothing for a month, but this is getting ridiculous.”
Gage wiped the Cheetos dust from his lips. “Go away.”
“From my own damn apartment? I don’t think so.”
Valid point. “Then . . . quit talking to me.”
Ryker rolled his eyes and shoved Gage’s feet and legs from the sofa, collapsing onto the cushion they’d vacated.
“Gage—”
Panic clawed at his throat. “Ryker, please, don’t.”
“You can’t keep going on like this.”
Gage closed his eyes. The time of reckoning had, apparently, arrived. He fished around in his nearly empty Cheetos bag, searching for any remnant large enough for him to eat. When he found nothing, he crumpled the bag—definitely more vehemently than was merited—and tossed it toward the coffee table overflowing with other junk food trash.
“What the fuck do you want me to do, Ryker?”
“Stop moping? Eat something that comes from an actual animal or plant? Hell, I’d even accept a simple shower.”
Gage winced at that. He sniffed and immediately wished he hadn’t. “I suppose I could do a shower.”
Ryker popped an eyebrow. “And the other stuff?”
“Not interested.” Gage didn’t even have to take time to think about it.
“I was afraid of that.” Ryker leaned to one hip and fished something out of his back pocket. An envelope. With a familiar scrawl across the front.
It carried an impending sense of dread.
“What is that?” He asked it in the same way he would say Why do you hate me?
Ryker sighed. “Something I probably should have shown you a week ago. When I got it.”
Oh, hell. This was going to be bad.
“What . . . is . . . it?” he asked, enunciating every word.
“I ran into someone last Wednesday. Actually, she ran into me. Said she’d been trying to track me down for weeks.”
Stiff Competition Page 18
