“Yeah, that’s it.” I whispered encouragement that made him redouble his efforts. He was pretty darn intuitive at combining mouth and hand in ways that had me moaning. Eyes falling shut, my body seemed to narrow in on just this, everything tensing and coiling. But for all that laser focus, my heart expanded, the emotions I’d tried so hard not to label all day flooding back with new urgency—joy at being here with him, mingling with something deeper, a level of connection I’d never felt before. And it was that connection that ultimately was my undoing, tipping me over the edge.
I tried to shove at his shoulder, give him warning, but he stayed right with me as my whole body shuddered and soared. The twinkling lights of Vegas had nothing on the stars I saw behind my eyes as my knees finally gave out. Eventually, though, the stars receded, and I opened my eyes to find myself slumped on the floor next to Alden.
“Holy hell. That was…” I scrubbed at my hair. “You were… Damn. Can’t talk.”
“If I robbed you of the power of speech, I suppose I’ll consider that a win.” His tone was light, but something about the way he said win reminded me of all my concerns before he’d stolen all my brain power.
“Not that I’m complaining—at all—but what got into you? That was…unexpected.”
“But good unexpected, right?” The uncertainty in his smile made my chest pinch.
“The best. Wasn’t it obvious?” Arm wrapping around his torso, I pulled him close to me. “But, seriously, Alden, what’s wrong?”
“We probably shouldn’t roll around on this carpet.” He gave me a hand up, but I wasn’t letting him escape, instead tumbling us both onto the closest bed and holding him tight.
“Tell me. Now.”
He took a deep breath and looked away, out at the glittering city beneath us. “I saw the brackets. For tomorrow. I wasn’t supposed to see them, but I did.”
“Oh.” My hand fell away from his stomach, my mouth going slack. “We both made the cut, right?”
“Yeah.” His voice was pained. “But we’re on the same side of the bracket. We’re on track to meet in the semifinals if either of us gets there. And if we do get there, only one of us can go to the finals. We’ll have to go through each other if we want in the championship round.”
“Fuck.” I knew he didn’t care for that word, but nothing else fit. Trying to settle us both down, I went for a pragmatic tone. “But it was inevitable, right? If we keep winning, it’s bound to happen sometime.”
“I wanted it to be the championship round,” he whispered, voice still tight. “If at all. I don’t want either of us to knock the other out.”
“You’d prefer a stranger dismembering me to having to do it yourself?” I sounded far lighter than I felt. Sacks of wet cement bore down on my chest, replacing all the earlier good feelings with nothing other than dread. “And hey, no guarantee either of us will make it to the semifinals. Maybe you’ll get your wish, and someone will take me out first.”
“You could have to face Bart in the quarterfinals.” Misery etched fine lines around his mouth. “And I want you to beat him. I don’t want you to lose. I don’t.”
I got it then, why he was so upset, so desperate. I tugged him back into my arms. “If it helps, I don’t want you to lose either.”
“But you need this. We both do.”
“Yup. I wish that weren’t true, but it is. Trust me, I’ve spent a lot of the last year trying to wish reality away.”
“Me too,” he sighed.
“So you get it. This is just what we have to deal with. No sense in wishing it away. It doesn’t have to change anything between us.”
“But it will.” His voice was small and faint, but it hit me like a slap. He wasn’t being cruel, just logical, as always. Because it would. We’d known all along that only one of us could win, but now that we were here, it felt almost insurmountable. Things were going to change. We were going to change. There was no denying it, and like I’d said, we couldn’t run from reality.
But I could kiss him, follow the same impulse he’d had earlier to drown myself in his body until we were both gasping for air.
“Promise me,” I panted, cupping his face, the one that had come to mean so much to me, with my hands. “Promise me, you won’t throw the match. No matter what.”
“I promise.” His eyes were wide, pupils large, and hair all messed up. He looked every bit as out of control as I felt. “But you have to promise too. No lying like in Utah.”
“I promise. We’ll let the universe decide. Like a slot machine. We each give it our best shot.”
“Okay.” He nodded solemnly. My heart desperately wanted to believe him, but my head wasn’t so sure. He was right. Everything was about to change, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. Nothing except kiss again and cling to each other, mouths and bodies saying what our voices couldn’t. As our lips met again and again, I tried to tell him that I wasn’t giving him up without a fight, that we’d have the return trip together no matter what…but I was having a hard time believing myself, or trusting that this special thing we’d found would survive the next day, let alone a return to Gracehaven.
* * *
In the morning, Alden and I were tense, back to too polite and formal, eating our oatmeal and drinking our coffee. One would never have guessed that we’d spent most of the night avoiding talking about the tournament, lost in each other’s bodies, barely even taking a break for dinner, falling asleep curled together. But when the alarm went off, it was back to the real world—no more magical place we made together, no more avoiding reality.
We dressed and collected our stuff, heading to the door together, but also oh-so-separate. Unable to stand the silence another second, I grabbed his hand right as he reached for the doorknob.
“Wait. I want to tell you good luck.” I pulled him in for a hard, fast kiss. “Forget dreading this. I want to meet you in the semifinals tomorrow morning. I want you to kick ass today.”
He gave me a nervous-looking half smile, eyes darting away from mine. “I don’t want you to lose either. Kick butt. Especially Bart’s.”
“Alden?” I still wasn’t ready to release him.
“Yeah?”
“Tell me we’ll deal. No matter what happens.”
He took a moment, breathing hard. “I want to believe we can get through this and still be…friends.”
We were so very much more than friends, but it was a start.
“We’ll find a way,” I promised, no more sure than I’d been the night before, but needing to say the words aloud, needing to will them into existence. One more quick kiss, and we were on our way over to the convention center.
Once there, a large leader board outside the tournament revealed Alden had been right. We were on the same half of the bracket, him the number three seed for his quarter, and me an eye-popping number one for mine.
“Guess that win over Arresting Aaron really helped your point total. You were his only defeat. He still squeaked into the elimination rounds.” Alden’s tone was his usual pragmatism, but his expression was harder to read. No one would have predicted me coming out with a higher seed than him. I wasn’t concerned about jealousy as much as the seeding shaking his confidence in his playing.
“Well, look at this. Representing well.” Payton came striding up in a unicorn hoodie with rainbow mane and purple skinny jeans. Messy hair and sunglasses said that they probably hadn’t slept much and had probably been out partying late. I didn’t have even a momentary pang that I hadn’t been with them. I’d been exactly where I most wanted to be, and I wasn’t regretting any time I spent with Alden. “And my grand plan to not advance didn’t fare as well.”
“Oh?” I studied the board again. “Well, crap. You’re playing Alden in Round One this morning.”
“May God have mercy on my soul.” Payton gave Alden a lopsided grin he didn’t return. �
��Dude, please go easy on me. Pretend I’m a newbie or something. I was out till four a.m. at this club… Don’t even remember the name. You should have come, Con. So many pretty people.”
“Eh. I had a pretty good evening.” I winked at Alden, trying to remind him of everything wonderful between us.
“So you guys are like seriously a thing now? An exclusive thing?” Mouth twisting like the word exclusive was physically painful, Payton studied us before pointing at the board. “How’s that going to work tonight if you’re both in the top four heading into tomorrow’s finals? Or only one of you? Someone’s not getting any.”
“We’ll deal.” My promise to Alden was still fresh on my lips, but I was no closer to believing it. And I didn’t get a further chance to consider it because the PA system announced the start of the first round, sending Payton and Alden off to battle with Payton still complaining about their hangover and Alden looking like he’d rather have an appendectomy.
Most of the elimination rounds would be streamed, and they were spaced further apart than the qualifying rounds, so I wasn’t too surprised when my first match was picked to be one of the ones up on the raised stage. Just make it to tomorrow. One more turn. My mantra of the last year came back to me. I didn’t want to get too ahead of myself. I’d worry about playing Alden when it was time. What I needed to focus on was making it that far, one turn at a time, trusting my cards.
I didn’t even need the headphones to find my zone that round, as I tuned everything out—all the clutter in my brain and the noise in the room, and even my opponent, an older man with graying dreadlocks and a methodical playing style. Ordinarily, that sort of well-organized player was the hardest for me to beat, but I’d both played against and watched Alden play enough that I quickly caught on to his strategy and was able to disrupt it, throw him off his flow, and come in for the win. Damn. That was a fun one.
“Good game.” The guy had a hearty handshake for me as we packed up. “You’re going to win it all.”
“You think?” I grinned at him.
“You play the right way.” He nodded at my deck. “Reminds me of how I’d play as a kid. Haven’t played against someone with your kind of spirit in years. Good luck, young man. Keep playing your game.”
My game. I just needed to play the way I relished playing, quit worrying about the semifinals, and enjoy the fact that I was actually here, in this place, playing in the elimination rounds. I kept that advice as the field kept shrinking. Watched it get whittled down to sixty-four. Then thirty-two. I didn’t connect with Alden at lunch. One of his rounds went long, so no lunchtime cuddling that day. But it was okay. I watched the tail end of his match on the monitors while eating a sandwich and got to see him in an epic battle against a woman cosplaying as a Reaper Bride—black wedding dress and garish makeup and all.
“And he said he can’t play against cosplayers,” I crowed to Payton, who gave me a high five. “Look at him dismantle her defenses. He’s going to win!”
“I note you have no sympathy for me. Your boy took me apart in under fifteen minutes. I think I was still on turn six.”
“Yeah. He’s good at that. And you did ask him to be nice. He probably thought he was being kind, letting you get to your coffee.”
“That or he doesn’t like to play with his food.” Payton rolled their eyes. “He actually seemed unsettled the first two turns—not like his usual cranky self. Didn’t even tell me to remove the hoodie or my shades. But then he settled in and found his ruthless gene again. Which you seem only too happy about. Do you want to play him tomorrow?”
In between rocking out at my matches and trying to remember why I loved this game so much, I’d thought about that some. “Yeah, I do,” I said, surprising myself in how firm I sounded. “I want him to go as far as he can. He needs this win.”
“And so do you.”
“As if I needed reminding.” And Payton didn’t know the half of it. They knew I wanted it, sure, but I’d never confessed the entirety of my circumstances to them.
“Dinner’s on me tonight.” Payton nodded at the screen. “Bring your dude. He just won. Can’t wait to watch you guys bicker over who’s taking the L tomorrow.”
“No one’s throwing the match.”
“Ha.” Payton’s raised eyebrow said they weren’t so sure. And honestly, a few hours later, faced with Bart from Denver in my last match of the day, I too wasn’t sure about any of this. A win against Bart and I’d be through to the semifinals. Due to a prior match going long, Bart and I were the last match of the night. Alden was already in the semifinals. I hadn’t watched, but Payton had brought me word right as I was setting up. I very purposely didn’t check my phone either. I didn’t want to know if Alden was watching, if he wished me luck or if he’d stayed radio silent all day. And I didn’t need the stress of more messages from Professor Tuttle and Jasper, who had been watching the live streams. This was going to be hard enough without added pressure.
Bart played a reaper deck, just as he had back in Colorado. And without Alden’s big expensive stuff to bail me out, I fell behind early. And maybe that was for the best. I could lose here. Go cheer for Alden tomorrow. I’d be screwed as far as life went—money, job, place to live. But I’d have him, and maybe that would be enough. Alden had beaten Bart once. He could beat him again and—
Wait.
Right as I’d talked myself into accepting defeat, I top decked my Transforming Scroll Scribe. I knew the cameras would have caught me drawing it. If he was watching, Alden would know I didn’t play the card. He’d know that I threw the game, and I’d shatter his trust in me. We’d both promised not to throw this thing. To play our best game. And so far that round? I was doing anything but my best.
Newly determined, I slapped down the card and prepared to use it to summon enough scrolls to create a new army of frog soldiers.
“Hold up.” Eyes narrowing, Bart held up a hand. His lips curved into a sneer as he waved a judge over. “Card legality challenge. No way is that a genuine card.”
Hell. Sweat broke out on my lower back and my hands turned clammy as I handed the card over to a judge. What if the packs from that store had been counterfeit? What if they didn’t believe the card was real? All of a sudden, I wanted to win in the worst way, wanted to wipe that sneer from Bart’s face.
The judge, a small man with big horned-rim glasses, turned the card this way and that, even took it out of my card sleeve and ran a blunt nail along the edge. Finally, he nodded and my stomach sank.
“Card is legal.”
“Thank fuck,” I muttered before I could remember not to curse where the streamers could catch it. I finished my turn with shaking hands, waiting for Bart to try another trick, maybe try to remove the card or steal it for his side of the board. But he had nothing, and I went on to win by the narrowest of margins, down to my last two lives when I wiped him out.
I didn’t get a “good game” from Bart, and I was sure he only shook my hand because cameras were rolling, but elation filled me nonetheless, making my soul float around the rafters of the cavernous space.
“Dude! Way to go!” Payton was waiting for me near the monitors when I finished packing up. “Now, where do you want to eat? You deserve whatever you want after wiping the floor with him like that.”
“Thanks. I just need to find—”
“Good game.”
I whirled around to find the thing I wanted most right there behind me. Alden. He had been watching. My insides wobbled, not sure whether this was a good thing or not, but I knew in my bones that I’d done the right thing, going for the win, not just letting Bart walk all over me.
“Thanks.” I wanted to reach for him, but the wariness in his eyes held me back.
“Proud of you. You did it.”
“Yeah.” My shoulders lifted, his pride almost better than my own. “Now, where are we going to eat? Payton’s already said
they’re paying.”
“You guys go on. I’ve got a headache after all the noise today. Think I’ll go back to the room, rest my brain. But you have fun.”
“Are you sure?” I touched his arm. “I can find you some tea or something? I don’t have to go—”
“Yes, you do. You earned it,” he said firmly. Firmer than a guy with a killer headache should be able to manage. Hell. He was usually honest to the point of bluntness, but apparently he’d added lying to his skill set. And I had no idea how to call him on it, not in public, and not without a huge argument.
“I don’t want to go without you. Especially not if you’re sick.”
“Just let me rest.” He managed a crooked smile that was at least half grimace. “Introvert, remember? I’ll be fine. I need to recharge, that’s all.”
“Okay.” I reluctantly let him go off and headed out with Payton, but I worried about him the whole time we ate. The restaurant was an upscale fusion place, and Alden would have hated it—orange chicken tacos and Greek nachos and Thai pizza. I thought about texting him a pic of the menu, but didn’t want to bother him if he really was ill and needing to rest. After, I begged off of postdinner clubbing.
“Oh, I see how it is.” Payton gave me a pointed look but didn’t try too hard to convince me to party. As a result, it wasn’t that late when I let myself back into the hotel room, but the place was dark. The light from the bathroom revealed the barest hint of an Alden-sized lump in the far bed.
“Alden?” I whispered. No response. I wanted to slide into bed next to him, pull him close, but that seemed pretty selfish if he was headachy and already asleep. Reluctantly, moving slowly with plenty of time for him to wake up and call me over, I undressed, not caring where my clothes landed.
Still nothing, not even a whisper. I crept over to the other bed. Nothing from Alden, not even the sort of tossing and turning I’d come to expect from him. I lay there, not six feet from him and still missing him terribly. Should I say something? Do something? Hell. I just didn’t know. I might have won big that day, but thoughts of all I might have lost kept me wide awake.
Conventionally Yours (True Colors) Page 25
