At Any Moment (Gaming The System Book 3) (41 page)

He laughed for a moment, not understanding, and then his laughter died out when I looked up into his eyes and, squeezing his hands, I asked, “Adam Drake…I love you more than anything. Let me be by your side until the very end, whenever that may be. Will you make me your wife?”

He froze, his features sobering. I held my breath. I couldn’t tell what was going on in his mind. And I guess that was what this question was all about. I trembled, cold fear seizing me, frightened beyond all thought that his answer would be no.

Chapter Forty-Six
Adam

Emilia had pressed something into my hand. I tore my eyes away from hers to open it and look inside. In the dim moonlight, it shone like a tiny star itself and without getting a really close look at it, I knew exactly what it was. I’d tried to slip a ring like this on her finger last fall.

My jaw tightened. “Stand up, Emilia.”

She didn’t stay anything, but her eyes skittered away from mine, her features clouding. I tugged on her arms and with a frown she slowly got to her feet, squaring her shoulders. We stood face to face and I stared into her beautiful brown eyes. She was biting her lip, convinced that I’d rejected her.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you thinking of marriage now?”

Her brows drew together. “Because I know what I want and I don’t want to wait and if I’ve learned anything this year it’s that I’m not going to defer my own happiness.”

I nodded, relieved that she wasn’t doing this out of a sense of obligation to make things up to me for last year. I took the ring out of the palm of my hand took her left hand in mine and then I dropped to my knee. She gasped and I had to hold on to her hand or she would have pulled it away in shock.

“No, keep it there,” I said, finding the correct finger, I slipped the ring on, pushing it past her knuckle. It was a perfect fit. It was, indeed, the exact same ring that I’d bought for her. She’d told me she’d sold it but here it was, shining at me from the third finger on her left hand.

“Emilia Kimberly Strong, will you do me the honor of allowing me to become your husband?”

She stood absolutely still and I realized I’d been too scared to look into her face as I asked it. And, God, wouldn’t it just be extra humiliating to have done this twice and get the same silence for an answer both times?

I raised my eyes to hers and saw that she was crying, shining tears trailing down her cheeks. She sank onto the sand before me and we were now at eye level. I wiped her tears away with my hand and she smiled, watching me. “I’ve never been more sure of anything before, ever. I love you. One thing I’ve learned in this last year is that this life can really be tough. It can throw such utter shit at a person. It can take you for an utter fool. And I’ve tried to be strong but the thing I’ve learned above all else is that I can’t do this alone. And I can’t do it with anyone else…but you…Please…”

But I only laughed at her. “I asked you, silly. But I’ll take that as a yes?”

She laughed and pressed her forehead to mine. “Yes. That’s a big, big yes.”

I pulled her into my arms and kissed her, holding her tight against me. Her heart thrummed against my chest and her arms locked around my neck. A surge of love washed over me and though she had instigated this, I was completely certain that she was my future. I wanted this amazing, strong, beautiful woman beside me for the rest of my life.

When our lips parted, I took her left hand in mine again, turning it over I looked at the ring. “I thought you said you sold it off to pay for your medical bills.”

She nodded. “I pawned it. Fortunately it was still at the shop last week when I bought it back.”

I raised my brows and looked at her. “This is probably an indelicate question but—”

She straightened. “I sold the blog, Adam. That’s how I got the money.”

I frowned, unable to find the words. I was more irked about her selling the blog than about her having sold the ring in the first place.

She saw. She laid a hand on my cheek. “Please don’t be mad. It’s something I had to do. I put a lot of myself in that blog and
Girl Geek
will always be a part of me…but there was a point where I wouldn’t have been able to continue a lot of the features. You and I being together meant that there would have been a lot of conflict of interest on what I wrote about. I would have had to change the angle of what I was doing anyway, so…I saw selling the blog as a way of making that final, ultimate commitment to growing up and leaving my old life behind.”

“I would never have asked for you to do that.”

She nodded. “I know. I asked it of myself. It’s something I needed to do. Plus, with medical school, I wasn’t going to have the time I used to before.”

That was the other big question hanging between us, so I was glad she brought it up. “So you’ve come to a decision about medical school?” Relief washed over me. “I’m so glad you are going to go. My realtor found some wonderful properties in Maryland—”

I cut myself off at her shaking head. “I sent Hopkins my polite rejection.”

I pulled away from her and sat back on my legs. “
What
?”

“I’m not going to Maryland.”

“But—”

“I’m staying here. I’m going to go to UC Irvine.”

My mouth hung open. She gave me a look of concern.

“Adam, are you okay? I’m kind of worried.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. UCI wasn’t even on your top five list.”

She sat down in the sand next to me. “You’re right. It wasn’t. Until I started going there every week for my chemo. Until I met the staff and some of the teaching doctors and was so impressed by how they interacted with their patients. How they concentrated on our comfort, our emotional health and on putting us at ease. To be honest, I’m not even sure about specializing in oncology anymore. I don’t know if I still have the guts for it. But if I do, I want to be taught by those doctors.”

I looked at her, still not quite able to wrap my mind around it. “Are you sure?”

She smiled and nodded. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. I had a lot of time up there in the desert to think.”

I shook my head. “You are
absolutely
sure? Because I don’t want you to regret it.”

She looked up into the sky, fingering the compass around her neck. “So here’s the deal…This last year has been, um, challenging and I tried to do a stupid thing and power through it by myself because that’s what I’d always done my entire life. For me, it was easier to do that than to get my heart broken by relying on other people who wouldn’t come through. It was an idiotic way of thinking. You and I had started something special but I was very much still in that old mindset.”

She looked down from the sky and found my gaze. I leaned back on my arms, watching her. “So I’ve learned that very hard lesson. At any moment, your life can change for the worse or for the better. And when that happens, you need your allies. My people are here. Mom, my friends…and you. Even if I moved there with you, I wouldn’t have everyone else. And I need everyone.” She leaned forward and laid her cold hand on my cheek. “Some more than others, of course. But I need Alex and Jenna and Kat and William and Britt. Mom and Peter and Connor. And of course Heath.”

“Hmmm.” I shook my head. “I was afraid you were going to mention the big ugly guy.”

She laughed and then leaned forward, looping her hands around my neck. “I need all of you. And I don’t want to leave for that long. Being sick…having been through all that happened to us. It taught me a lot. It taught me what is really important. So it’s better that that slot at JHU goes to someone who really, really wants it. As for me, I still want to be a doctor and I think I’m going to be learning from some brilliant doctors at Irvine.”

I reached out and pulled her into my lap. She came willingly and clasped my neck, pressing her head onto my shoulder. “Adam…”

“Yes?”

“I just…I want to say that even though I have no idea what’s in store for us in the future…or if we are even finished with going through these rough bits in life. I just want to say that whatever happens, the good or the bad, I’m so incredibly lucky to be sharing those days and nights with you.”

I closed my eyes, turned and kissed her face. Her lips found mine and we shared a passionate kiss—one with enough fire in it to stoke the flames for more. I ordered my libido to calm the hell down because I wasn’t going to wear her out tonight. She was still recovering, probably still weak, and we had to go easy for her…

Before I knew it, though, she had pulled me down in the sand on top of her, reaching under my shirt to touch my chest. “So about that old bucket list…” she said.

“Sex in public?” I said in a faux-shocked voice.

“The beach is public. And look—I brought some of my own.” She pulled out a condom—the wrapping of a brand I didn’t recognize. I squinted at it in the dim light.

“You can’t read it but trust me, I conducted some research into the product testing these things have to go through and this brand has by far the best record for breakage.”

I laughed. Then I stood up and when she tried to pull me down again, I swung her into my arms. “Come on—I’m going to make sweet, slow love to my fiancée in the privacy of my own cottage, thank you very much. Where there’s no danger of sand getting involved.”

And she laughed all the way back to the front door. But when I put her down, sliding her slowly down over my hard body, she wasn’t laughing anymore.

Chapter Forty-Seven
Jordan

Six Weeks Later

It wasn’t easy getting my ass out of bed the first day back to work after Comic-Con and goddamn—what a week it had been…parties, women, oh yeah, and the panels. I think I managed to squeeze in some serious business in the cracks between all the fun. It’s good to be young, single and rich.

But even I had to go to work, and after a week of living as if I didn’t have a care in the world, my first day back at Draco had me dragging ass. Good thing I spent most of it alone in my office sipping my favorite hangover remedy and pushing paperwork around—even if virtually on my laptop. I really didn’t have much to complain about, in all honesty. I had a kickass job at a growing company that had made me a crapton of money at a young age. I may not actually have
been
a rock star but I was glad to live like one. The parties, the women, the dream beach house. And the open, spacious corner office that had its own view of the indoor atrium. I had a nice office. I wasn’t going to complain about that, even on a day when I was feeling like death warmed over, laying my head on the desk for much of the morning and wondering if I could wander out a little early for the day to catch up on my sleep.

Just before lunch, I was finally feeling the first hunger pangs when our jackass publicity manager, Weston, poked his head into my office—without knocking, of course.

“Fawkes—Need you in Adam’s office, asap.” He said it like a word instead of pronouncing all the letters, like that made him cool. He was a pencil neck and his habit of
only
calling me by my last name irritated the fuck out of me. He seemed to know it, too.

“Okay, Preston,” I said, hiding the smirk as I deliberately messed up his name. He rolled his eyes and spun from the doorway, leaving it ajar as he headed to the CEO’s office.

A few minutes later—long enough to make it known that I didn’t jump and follow his orders whenever he snapped his damn fingers—I sauntered over to Adam’s office, where our illustrious CEO was pacing in front of the wall of windows behind his desk, his hands shoved into his pants pockets.

He’d been on edge for the last few months. While he’d been tending to a sick girlfriend, he’d also been working on the secret project with me—a project which stood to make us all a lot more money and push him up into billionaire range if everything went down as we planned it.

And of course, he’d just gotten engaged. If nothing else could stress a man out, I’m sure the thought of marriage would. Poor fool.

I stifled a yawn and sank into the chair facing Adam’s desk. I was now hungry as hell. Checking my watch—12:30—I tried not to think about the lunch that was arriving any minute now, via my luscious new intern assistant.

“So what’s so important it couldn’t wait until after lunch?” I asked as Adam settled in the chair next to me.

Weston flipped open his laptop that was sitting on the desk facing us. “A negative PR situation—and before you open it and start going on about how this doesn’t concern you—it
does.
” He held out a hand to stave off my protest. I closed my mouth and shrugged. “It concerns
all
of us, because of the plan to take the company public.”

I sat up at that. He had my full attention now. Anything that threatened my pet project needed to be stamped out immediately. I scratched my chin. “Okay, so what is it, then?”

Weston leaned forward to toggle the video player on. “It’s from Comic-Con. The video has gone viral over the weekend.”

A
video?
Dude had his panties in a twist about a damn video? What the hell? I had a corporation to run. What could possibly be in a video to threaten our bid to go public? Weston was clearly smoking something—probably the good stuff. I eyed him for a minute until the video started streaming. Then, I was distracted by the distinctive sounds of hot sex.

My eyes jerked to the laptop screen. A girl, her back to the camera and wearing no pants. A strange tramp-stamp tattoo with a skull and crossbones was clearly visible at the small of her back. She straddled a guy sitting on a chair. His hands gripped her hips so tightly that her skin under his fingers was white. She gyrated on top of him and both of them were moaning and breathing hard.

I shifted in my seat, loosening my tie. It was more than just an ordinary sex tape, though, because both participants were in full cosplay from head to toe (except, of course, for the girl’s tight little bare ass). They were unrecognizable in masks but their cosplay was clearly intended to depict characters from Dragon Epoch. The captured princess Alloreah’ala and Falco, a famous bounty hunter that the elf king had hired to go and find her (to no avail). The princess even had sparkly purple shackles hanging from her wrists and ankles.
Christ Almighty.