At Any Moment (Gaming The System Book 3) (30 page)

I sank into a chair between Jenna and Kat and looked across at William, who was meticulously packing up the gaming pieces and ignoring everyone else around him. “Hey, William. You okay?”

He shrugged.

Jenna leaned into me. “I’ve pissed him off, apparently.”

“Don’t be mean, Jenna.”

“She’s not mean,” William said without looking up.

I scratched my head through my scarf.

“Just take it off and let me read your bumps.”

I sighed. “Jeez, Alex.”

“Come on. I can tell you your future.”

“She already knows her future,” Heath said. “Her hair’s going to grow back. She’s going to go to med school in the fall. In four years she’s going to be Dr. Mia Strong.”

“Not Dr. Mia Drake?” Alex said.

I frowned. “Um guys, you don’t need to talk about me like I’m not here.”

“Hmm. What about Dr. Strong-Drake?” Heath said.

Alex and Kat laughed. “That sounds ridiculous.”

“You guys are all idiots,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just go by my first name, like Beyoncé or Adele. I’ll just be that awesome.”

“Dr. Mia,” Alex said. “Let me read your bumps.”

“Promise you’ll stop bugging me if I take this scarf off?”

She nodded ferociously. “Yes. Yes. I promise not to be a pain in the ass.”

“Too late,” said Heath.

Alex flipped him her middle finger. Jenna’s eyes widened. “Holy crap, do
not
irritate the Latina. You’ll regret it, Heath.”

Heath shrugged and everyone sat again as, with a long-suffering sigh, I slipped my scarf off my head and let Alex look at it.

“Oooh, how cute, you have little fuzzy hair coming in. It’s like baby chick feathers.”

“Just read the bumps for chrissakes.”

“Okay, okay. I need to touch your head. Can I do that?”

“Whatever. Just tell me my fortune.”

“Hmmm.” Her fingers flitted over my scalp and it tickled a little bit. I giggled when she placed a thumb on either side of my temple, then spread her fingers across my naked pate. Then she stroked me as if she was petting a dog. Heath started to chuckle under his breath and Kat shushed him.

“This part of your head here at the crown talks about your academic and career success. Yours rises very sharply, which says you will have a very long and prosperous career. You will be very dedicated to your profession.”

“Wow, sounds like hard science to me,” Heath cracked and now it was me who shushed him because I didn’t want Alex’s feelings to get hurt.

“And this part, the widest part of the front of your skull, in between your temples, is about your love life. You will have a long-lasting pairing with the love of your life. Hmm. One marriage.”

“We already know all this stuff,” said Kat. “We get it. She and Adam are mated for life. Now tell us something useful, like how many kids they will have or something.”

My throat closed at Kat’s words. “That’s not—”

“Oh! That’s right here at the base of the skull.” She ran her fingers along the top of my neck at the part of my head that formed the edge of my cranium. “Hmm. Two? Nope…one. Only one baby.”

I jerked away from her, unexpected emotion suddenly slamming me against my chest. It was hard to breathe.

“Okay, all done,” I said in a trembling voice.

“But I haven’t—”

“She’s done, Alex,” Heath said, watching me with concerned eyes.

“I—uh—I gotta go find the bathroom,” I said, stumbling to my feet. I turned toward the doorway and saw Adam standing there, leaning up against the frame, watching me with his dark, serious eyes.

Tears prickled the backs of mine and I swallowed fiercely. “Excuse me,” I whispered as I squeezed by him. Instead of making all the way to the nearest bathroom, I jumped up the stairs and turned into one of the cabins, tucking in as the tears suddenly breached my eyes. I closed the door and sank onto the bed.

Only one baby
. I bent over, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes. I would not cry. I could not cry. I had to get over this. But how could I, when I’d vowed never to forgive myself? Long-suppressed grief clamped down on me. Grief I’d stuffed down so deep, hidden like bits of dust and grunge tucked so far under the furniture it never was cleaned out, never saw the light of day. But it was there, self-hatred, self-judgment. I could have done things differently. I could have…

Now I had no idea if I would ever be a mother. Ever hold a child. But Alex, with her drummed-up fortune, seemed to confirm those doubts. That my chance—
our
chance—had come and gone.

A minute later the door opened and I knew who it was, so I didn’t bother to look up. Adam sank down on the bed beside me and hooked an arm around my shoulders.

He didn’t speak, just pulled me against him. I wouldn’t weep. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t allow it. I’d stifle it, refuse to let it out. I could be strong. I couldn’t let him see this.

I would ignore the fact that I absolutely loathed myself in this moment—and probably always would.

Chapter Thirty-Four
Adam

“Do you want to talk?” I whispered.

She shook her head. She was shaking in my arms but she didn’t cry. That was a good sign, at least. Wasn’t it?

“Tighter,” she whispered.

I lowered my arms around her waist and tightened my hold around her torso.

“Talk to me,” I urged quietly.

She shook her head. “I’ll be okay. She just caught me by surprise.”

“Emilia…”

“I’m fine,” she countered. “See?” She pulled out of my arms and, running the backs of her hands over her eyes—and in the process smearing her mascara—she leaned back and looked into my eyes. She wasn’t crying. But the pain was there, deep and lurking behind the fake smile hovering on her mouth.

I rubbed my hand along her back. “Have you thought about…finding someone to talk with about all this? Like your oncologist suggested?”

She stiffened, staring at the ground and I saw the color wash out of her face. “No.”

I swallowed, suddenly clueless and afraid of how to proceed. “But it might help—”

“Do you think I’m screwed up?”

My jaw tensed and then I relaxed it with a deep breath. “I think you’ve been through a lot in a very short amount of time.”

She turned and looked at me. “I can handle it. I’m tough. I’ve been through shit before. I’ll bounce back.”

Something dark and heavy weighed down on my chest. I wished I could be as optimistic. But I had no reply for her. I couldn’t force her to get help. I hoped, rather than knew, that she was right. She didn’t remember it, but I did—that firm declaration that she deserved to die because of what she’d done.

Every single time I thought about that moment, it gutted me, rendered me powerless. I watched her carefully.

She was dabbing at her eyes again. “I just need a little time.”

“Okay.” I swallowed. It was easy to see that she had herself tied up in knots emotionally and I had no idea whatsoever how to help her. This didn’t bode well. She was physically healthy again, but in all the time we had concentrated on her healing from the cancer, had we neglected some other important components along the way?

“It will be okay. We’ll be okay,” she said in such a way that it sounded as if she was convincing herself as well as me.

I smoothed my hand along her cold cheek. Deep down this felt wrong, shoving this aside again, as we had for months and months.

This was wrong.

“Mia, at least talk to me. Tell me what you are feeling.”

She shook her head again. “I’m okay. I promise…it was just a brief thing that I wasn’t prepared for. Next time…” Her voice died out as if she realized how ridiculous her words sounded.

“There will be a next time, and one after that. This won’t go away if we just ignore it.”

She nodded, avoiding my eyes. “You’re right. We shouldn’t do that. But let’s just give it a little…time?” And abruptly she stood and went into the cabin’s bathroom. She spent a few minutes tidying her face, wiping off her smeared mascara from the suppressed tears. Because that’s what she was doing—suppressing her pain. Burying it under a brave face.

I was one hundred percent certain that this was going to bite us in the ass. And I had no fucking idea how to deal with it. Or even if there
was
a way to deal with it.

When she came out, she was looking a little paler than normal but otherwise fine and acting like nothing had happened. This did
not
reassure me.

“I’m so pissed I left my scarf behind.”

I pulled it out of my jacket pocket. “I grabbed it for you.”

She grinned a grin that didn’t reach her eyes, bending to kiss me on the cheek. “Now I know why I keep you around, boy genius.”

She tied her scarf back on and stuck by my side for the rest of the party. At the end of the event, we stood at the end of the footbridge with the other homeowners, bidding everyone goodbye as they went off to the charity dinner. It was getting dark when we walked back to the house together. She held my hand, firmly lacing her fingers between mine.

I remembered that she’d intimated that she wanted us to be together tonight and I stole a glance at her bowed head as she picked her way back in the dim light. I was feeling tired, as usual, but if I put her off, she’d get insecure about it and take it as a personal rejection.

Maybe the encounter with our friends had changed her mind? She’d seemed quieter than normal since it had happened.

We came upstairs and there was an awkward moment at the top when we hesitated near the doorway to her room. She turned and looked at it and then looked back at me. She swallowed. “How much longer are we going to do this, do you think?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“The separate bedrooms.”

I ran a hand over my jaw. “You want me to come sleep with you tonight?”

She turned and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I want to do more than sleep…”

I almost made up an excuse. I was still so worried about her, but then she was kissing me on the neck and it felt so damn good. And for God’s sake it was five months since we’d had sex. My starved body was responding instantly. I’d probably have to have been half dead not to respond to her.

She stepped back from me and said, “Meet me back here in ten minutes? I want to change into something.”

“Come find me in my room, then.” I said. “I’m going to take a shower.”

She smiled. “Okay.”

My mind raced the entire time in the shower. Certainly most of it was dedicated to the happy thoughts that I was going to get sex again after such a long dry spell, but the small minority part of my brain that could still think rationally was worried. Was she ready? She’d insisted over and over again that she was. Physically, maybe. But what about emotionally?

And she still felt so frail in my arms, the thought of being on top of her scared the shit out of me, like I’d break her in half or something. I was desperate to find a way to make this work. Because I knew when I got out of that shower, she was going to be there and I had to think fast.

I came out of the bathroom with my towel around my hips. The lights in the bedroom had been dimmed—her doing, because they had been perfectly normal when I’d gone into the bathroom. She was on the bed, laying crossways with her elbows on the mattress, her head in her hands, watching me.

She had on a silky blue nightshirt edged with lace. It completely covered her on the top but ended right below her hip, showing every delicious inch of her long, lithe legs. And she had a matching beret on her head to cover the baldness—not that she needed to. She usually didn’t bother to cover her head when it was just us at home, but if it made her feel sexier, then I guess whatever worked.

“Hey, gorgeous,” she said, her eyes running down across my chest with open admiration. “You come here often?”

I stopped in front of her and smiled. Those long, silky legs, bent at the knee with her feet up, that beautiful smile and that open look of lust in her eyes as she watched me was enough to get me turned on. Hell, a stiff breeze would probably turn me on these days.

“Hey, beautiful, I’ll come here often—with you.”

She wrinkled her nose at me and laughed. “That was baaaaaad.”

I sat down on the bed beside her and ran a hand over the silky material on her back. “I know.”

She angled her head around and started kissing me on the chest. My heart started to race. I closed my eyes. Her touch burned me and it felt so damn good. She sat up, her face even with mine. “I picked this out myself. Your favorite color.”

Our gazes locked. “Yes, I noticed. Very, very nice.”

She leaned forward and kissed me and I reached out, holding her mouth to mine. Soon my cock was straining against the towel with a painfully aching hard-on. My body was one hundred percent on board with the idea of sex tonight but as I held her to me, I couldn’t help but continue to worry about how this would work. I feared hurting her again like I had in Paris, not even realizing that in my desperation to have her, I was holding her too tight, or crushing her.

In the shower, I’d thought of a solution for tonight but I didn’t know what she’d think of the idea. I pulled back from her and she looked up at me, an expectant smile on her luscious mouth.

“I was thinking of maybe trying something a little different tonight…” I began.

She raised her thin eyebrows. “Oh? Our first sex in almost half a year and you want to do something different?”

I had to do this carefully, so she wouldn’t get self-conscious. “That night in Paris, I hurt you completely unintentionally—”

She put a hand on my cheek. “You need to stop worrying about that.”

“I’m not going to stop worrying about it. You’re lighter than you were. I’m just… I don’t want to get rough with you. I think it might be best—and even fun—if you are on top.”

She laughed. “That sounds great but it’s not like that’s new for us.”

“Well, what’s new is I was thinking you could tie me up.”

She paused. “Say what?”

“You could tie my hands to the headboard.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Why do you want me to do that?”

“You don’t think it might be fun?”

“I’m not saying I don’t think it will be fun, but…”