Worth Any Cost

by Brenna Aubrey

  Nothing made me happy. Or everything made me miserable. I hadn't decided which.

  By the end of the second week, when I was beginning to feel slightly better, I was surprised to get a visit from Heath, of all people. I assumed he was here to talk about his role as dude of honor to the bride. Strangely, he arrived at a time when he knew damn well that Emilia was in class.

  By this time, I was able to sit up. So we sat out on the deck outside my office and sipped lemonade--I'd been forbidden alcohol by the doc. This lady was number one on my shit list these days. Okay, number two after Jordan. Or maybe further down if I counted the rest of the bastards on the BOD.

  I tried not to think of that while I made awkward small talk with a sullen Heath. Emilia hadn't been kidding about how depressed he was over Connor staying in Ireland. Ten minutes in the guy's presence and I needed to return to bed--badly.

  We talked about random shit, the game, whatever. In truth, I hardly ever spent time alone with Heath, and that was sad because he was my friend--for the same length of time that I'd been friends with Emilia. I was this close to suggesting we bust out the laptops and game instead of sit here and stretch a conversation between us.

  "Mia says you had no idea who implemented Lord Sisyphus's Wedding Quest or even what it does," Heath said as he squinted out over the balcony, looking down onto the boats puttering in the back bay.

  "Yeah...I'm surprised you found that," I replied. "A few people have talked about it on social media. They are calling it the new hidden quest, but the hype hasn't quite picked up yet."

  "Word on the street is that the quest chain is broken. People can't get past the initial dialogue with the quest giver."

  I scratched my jaw. "Huh. That's weird. My guy in play testing says it's working perfectly. He tested it himself."

  Heath shrugged and took another sip of lemonade. His shoulders sagged more with each passing minute. "Maybe you should delve into it, since you appear to have more time than you know what to do with."

  I rubbed at my swollen neck, still sore as hell. But since I wasn't shaving, my neck was itchy. It was a conundrum that was bugging the hell out of me--like everything else.

  "Yeah, maybe I will."

  A few more minutes passed, and Heath got squirmy, so I gave him an out by telling him I was feeling tired again--not a lie. I was always tired these days. He stood up and fumbled in his pocket for his keys. But instead of following me off the balcony so I could at least walk him to the top of the stairs, he fiddled with his key ring. Then he set two keys down on the outdoor table before turning to follow me.

  I recognized the keys immediately. They had a distinctive shape to them--a lopsided oval head with big letters spelling Porsche engraved across them. I paused, not moving to let him by when he asked me to.

  "What's that?" I nodded toward the table. "Why are you leaving your car keys here?"

  "They're your car keys. I'm giving back the Porsche. She's parked in a safe spot right on this end of Edgewater Street. You won't be able to miss her. I'm sure Mia can move her into the parking structure later."

  I blinked. "That car is yours. I signed the pink slip over to you. You've been driving it around for over a year."

  His head drooped when he realized I wasn't going to let him by until he explained himself. "I'm giving her back. Thanks, man, but...I can't take care of her like she deserves to be taken care of. And I get twitchy whenever I park her. I'm always afraid some asshole is going to scratch her or some bird is going to shit all over her. I can't enjoy myself when I take her out anywhere. She's made me a nervous wreck. Isn't that like a woman?" He shrugged. "No wonder I'm into guys."

  I was puzzled as I tried to follow what he was saying. He loved that car about as much as I did. He'd nearly peed himself when I'd given it to him. And he called it her. He was attached. Definitely attached.

  "I'm not taking it back." I folded my arms across my chest. "It's yours. Once I've given something away, that's it--it's final. You should know that by now."

  "Please take her, Adam. I can't. I just... I can't right now." His voice shook when he said it. I averted my eyes to afford him some dignity, recognizing that he was in a vulnerable state these days. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other.

  "I'll take it under one condition." I met his gaze again. "That we agree that it's still yours and I'm only holding on to it for a while. I'll drive it around and get it serviced like I did before. But it's yours. And you'll come get it when you're ready."

  He hesitated. "I'm only saying yes because I don't have the energy to argue with you right now."

  "Good. I don't have the energy to argue, either. Now...how are you getting home?"

  He held up his phone. "I just requested an Uber." He stopped me when I went to follow him. "I'm good. I can see myself out. You need to go to bed. You look like shit."

  I grimaced. "Thanks. I'm afraid that, in my weakened condition, I could take a nasty spill down the stairs and subject myself to further school absences," I quoted.

  He grinned, half his mouth drooping, as if, in his depression, he couldn't allow himself to show full amusement. "Save Ferris," he replied quietly.

  He followed me until we reached the top of the stairs. When I turned and stopped, I put my hand on his shoulder. "If you ever need me for anything, man, I'm here. And, of course, Emilia is never too busy for you. You know that." It was awkward and stilted, but I thought he understood the sentiment.

  He nodded and avoided my eyes. "Thanks, man. Appreciate it."

  And he was gone. I watched him go and puzzled at it. I'd have a talk with Emilia later when she got home to keep her apprised of the situation. I had a feeling that Heath had a long road ahead, and I knew enough of depression, having seen it in family members while still at a young age, to know that he was about to drown in his own.

  He needed a support network, and that was what we had to be for him. If we could only figure out how.

  I crashed for a long nap, astonished that the thirty-minute conversation with Heath had taken so much out of me. I woke up around dinnertime. A text message from my chef advised she'd left dinner on the warmer. Another message from Emilia awaited, informing me of her late night tonight. She'd rushed home to check on me between obligations, but hadn't wanted to wake me up because I was fast asleep.

  After dinner, I took Heath's advice and grabbed my laptop--since Emilia wasn't around to pry it from my hands--and started the quest by opening up a dialogue with the new Town Crier, who stood beside General SylvenWood.

  FallenOne says, "Hail, Town Crier."

  Town Crier says, "The high lord of all the land is about to be wed. His lucky bride? The princess Emma."

  Town Crier has offered FallenOne: Lord Sisyphus's Wedding Quest.

  You have accepted the quest - Lord Sisyphus's Wedding Quest.

  Your first task: Go to the place his lordship first met his princess and lay a bouquet of roses on that spot.

  I scowled at the screen, puzzling over that. How the hell was I, or any other player, supposed to know where this fictional persona--that I sometimes played for official in-game events--had met a completely nonexistent--except for the purposes of this quest--princess? What the hell kind of quest was this? Quality assurance, my ass.

  It seemed...personal, though. Like, applicable to things only I knew. And she knew. Could Emilia have been the one to have it implemented?

  I shook my head, dismissing that possibility almost immediately. There was no way in hell that she was that good an actress.

  "Hey." Emilia entered the darkened bedroom. I hadn't even heard her come in or seen her flip the light switch in the hallway. In here, sprawled on my side of the bed, only the glow of the computer screen served as a light source.

  "Are you working?" she asked without preamble, her voice tinged with unspoken accusation.

  "No, your majesty. I'm playing DE."

  Her mouth opened. "Hah. I didn't realize you played anymore...I thought you'd quit when we stoppe
d getting together as a group."

  "I haven't played in months, since our group last ran around together. But I wanted to get to the bottom of this Lord Sisyphus mystery."

  She flipped on the light, and I squinted. She entered the room, apologizing as she pulled off her hoodie. "It's a mystery? You still don't know why it's there or who put it there?"

  "Nope."

  "You're the CEO of the company. They can't hide that from you, can they? You should demand answers. You're the boss of them."

  I avoided looking up at her--shame, anger, and embarrassment burned in my chest. If she only knew...

  The news of the BOD's ultimatum was still like an anchor weighing me down. Not an hour went by where I didn't think about it or how to rail against it.

  Sighing, I closed the laptop, mid-game, knowing it would log me off automatically.

  "You feeling okay?" she asked. "Do you need me to refill your water bottle?"

  "I need you to come over here and talk to me for a little while."

  She smiled. "Okay."

  She plopped down on the bed and took my hand. I told her about the weird visit from Heath, and she asked me questions. She resolved to check in with him and also speak to Kat. But she said that he'd gone into a similar depression when he broke up with his previous boyfriend, years ago.

  We were quiet for a long stretch, each lost in our own thoughts. She stared up at ceiling, her fingers fiddling with mine. But she seemed to be very careful about not touching me in any other way.

  I didn't feel much like it these days.

  I didn't feel much like anything. It was too exhausting to even feel.

  "You okay?" Her soft question broke the silence.

  I gave a slight shrug.

  "You seem down. I know that getting sick and incapacitated can be extremely hard on a person like you, so...just checking."

  "A person like me?"

  She smiled. "Yeah, the ones that are always going constantly and never resting. The ones with too much purpose and not enough time."

  "'Too much purpose'? Is that my problem?"

  "I'm starting to come to the conclusion that your addiction isn't to work. It's to achievement--you're addicted to accomplishing the next big thing."

  I didn't like that word--addiction. It had too many painful associations for me. But she wasn't wrong, either. Problem was I had no idea what that next big accomplishment would be, and with all this struggles with the company, I was beginning to question my direction there, as well.

  "Sometimes I feel like...I'm standing at a crossroads. Like something big is about to change what I need to focus on."

  She turned and looked at me for a long time. My eyelids began to feel weighted down. "I've been wondering when you'd get the itch to start finding the next big thing to work on."

  My eyebrow twitched. She wasn't even surprised by this news. Why did I get the feeling that, in so many ways, Emilia knew me better than I knew myself? I gently brought her hand to my lips and kissed it.

  She got ready for bed soon after that and fell asleep in minutes. And even though I was practically smothered in a layer of exhaustion myself, I couldn't sleep. I lay in the darkness staring up at the ceiling, feeling more helplessly enraged over the powerlessness of my health, my company, my future. I was hanging on a precipice, all right. In more ways than one. And that only brought on another headache.

  Fuck. My. Life.

  Chapter 12

  Mia

  In a stroke of the worst luck ever, Adam's waltz with the Epstein-Barr virus led to me showing up alone at a neighborhood dinner party. The good news? I only had to walk a few hundred yards to the other side of Bay Island in my heels in order to attend. The bad news? The company. They were nice people, our neighbors, but...so not my crowd.

  There's fish out of water and then there's...human visiting an alien planet. I was Spock, the only Vulcan in Starfleet. Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here.

  I would have loved to cancel--citing Adam's illness as the excuse, of course. But Adam and I had already backed out of previous dinners three times. I feared that our chance of offending the neighbors was reasonably high--even with the very legitimate excuse of his health. So here I was, taking one for the team. Hopefully, my teammate would be duly appreciative.

  These things were bad enough when I had Adam at my side. Then I had a captive audience to rain down all of my snark on--usually in the form of muttered comments only he could hear. He at least pretended to find them amusing.

  Here I was, in Newport Beach's most exclusive neighborhood, where I now lived. And I was their neighbor, the future wife and future co-owner of a neighborhood home, of that "tech genius kid," as I sometimes heard them refer to Adam. Indeed, Adam was, at the very least, a decade younger than any of them. And while some, like him, were self-made, most were from second-and third-generation wealth.

  "Mia, so good to see you," Sonya, my hostess, greeted me at the door. She was one half of a power political couple. She touched her cheek to mine and kissed the air. "How is the sick fiance? Probably playing it up, like men always do."

  "Sonya, so glad to see you," I said, handing her the bottle of wine along with some of Chef's fresh gourmet butter, packaged in a fancy stoneware crock. Sonya remarked on it, saying she couldn't wait to try some. I was relieved, almost letting out the breath I was holding. Hostess gifts were a source of half a week of stress for me. It was almost by accident--or the good fortune of having fantastic advisors like Adam's chef or his assistant--that I made any of the right moves.

  I moved on to shake the hand of Sonya's husband, Congressional Representative Alan Thurston, an attractive man at least a decade and a half older than her. "Thanks for the invitation, and Adam is so sorry he has to miss out."

  In truth, Adam was at home playing DE in his pajamas, the fucker. He had cried exactly zero bitter tears that I was going without him. For the sake of his health, he'd refrained from teasing me about having to go alone. But I could tell that he'd been tempted to skirt dangerously close to that edge.

  There were six couples in all--correction, five couples and me and my phantom date who was cruel enough to update me every so often via text message about his progress on the wedding quest. He was probably snickering each time he hit send, goddamn it.

  If he wasn't so sick, Adam Drake's ass would be Alderaan and I'd be the Death Star. He'd be feeling a great disturbance in the Force, all right...

  Nevertheless, dinner was pleasant. The house, of course, was gorgeous, with a complete glass-encased dining room displaying an impressive view. I made small talk, and people asked about wedding plans and made the usual jokes about "entering into holy matrimony." And I pretended to be amused, laughing my fake laugh.

  After dinner, however, shit got real. The men all sat at the table talking business and current events while the wives moved to the couch to sip coffee and gossip. Oh, the willpower I had to summon to keep from rolling my eyes at how little things had changed since the days of Downton Abbey.

  All the men needed were their cigars and smoking jackets to complete the image. Ladies, have we not come further in the past century? We'd gained the right to vote, to own land, and have our own bank accounts. Yet here we were, separating by gender and talking shop.

  "Mia, you are looking wonderful. You've got that pre-wedding, blushing-bride thing going on with your skin." Sonya, our hostess, smiled as she raised her coffee cup--with more Baileys than coffee in it--to her lips.

  I raised a self-conscious hand to my warm cheek. "Oh, thank you."

  "Maybe it's her joy over not having to go to school anymore," Susanna, the neighbor who lived in the house to our right, added cheerfully.

  I frowned at her. Not go to school? What on earth was she talking about? My obvious confusion brought her up short, and she did an almost comical double take.

  "Aren't you quitting medical school? I'm sorry. I assumed you wouldn't need attend to anymore."

  Wouldn't need to? Wh
at the hell? Why would she assume that? Was I only attending school and dedicating all that time, energy, and brainpower to pass the time until I snagged a wealthy husband? Perhaps her whole "career plan" was designed around catching a rich man. But mine wasn't.

  Adam would be my ideal mate if he only had twenty dollars in his bank account. I was certain of it.

  When I replied, it was through lightly clenched teeth. "I've got almost a year and a half down...no reason to quit now."

  Her smile stilled in her flawless face, her skin glowing bronze from a fake tan. "But it's not only the four years of schooling, though. After all the school, there's an internship and residency. And beyond that, a fellowship."

  I kept forgetting that Susanna's dad was a retired doctor--a renowned cosmetic surgeon. But she rarely let anyone forget it for long. She was still talking. "I can't imagine doing all that while trying to set up household, maintain a marriage, and, of course, having babies." She patted her own recently announced baby bump.

  I fought to keep my face from showing what I was thinking. Naturally, the subject of babies would come up when any woman was about to get married, but it was still a sore subject with me. And because of that, of course, I was reminded that Adam and I hadn't even discussed it yet. I groaned inwardly. Yet another tense conversation to have on top of the issues with his working and the problems he was having with Jordan.

  So many conversations to have. And yet we hadn't had them. We danced around them like pros instead.

  I took a deep breath and let it go. "Yes, I'm aware it's a big life commitment, but I'm still really excited to be a doctor someday."

  "And Adam is on board with that plan?" asked Trish, a flawless blonde who, for most of the night, had been quiet. Trish was the closest to me in age, and yet she'd grown up a socialite and was now on her second husband, wealthy media magnate James Sinclair.

  "Of course," I replied, sipping at my coffee and looking around for something--anything--to catch my eye so that I could change the subject. "Oh, that painting above the mantel is gorgeous. Is that Corona del Mar?"

  I knew it wasn't. I didn't give a shit. Sonya quickly corrected me. Subject changed.

  Things diverted to a safe subject for a few minutes then circled back around to me. And this time, it was marital advice. Just great.