At Any Price (Gaming The System) (35 page)

Every time I looked at the empty seat next to me on the way home, something twisted in my heart. Already the space where he’d occupied my thoughts and musings felt like an empty, echoing room.

And then there was the annoying fact that every time I shifted in my seat, the twinge I felt was a reminder of all that had gone on between us and I relived every touch, every heated whisper, every kiss. I ached from the inside out.

***

Under normal circumstances, I would have gone to Heath’s house, probably by way of a supermarket, fetching myself a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream, and commiserated with him. But I was still angry with him about the e-mail he’d sent to Adam—the one that had sent us spiraling down this crazy path in the first place.

Instead, when I got home, I showered, closed all the curtains and slept the remainder of the day and into the next day. I didn’t bother to turn the phone on until I woke up at noon.

And of course, there was a message from my mom instructing me to call her as soon as the weekend was over. As it was Monday morning, I complied, riddled with guilt that I’d been ignoring her so much since the whole thing with this auction had begun.

I tried to ignore that hollow, aching feeling in my chest whenever I thought about Adam. I tried not to think about him as much as possible. I didn’t succeed very often. My mind seemed drawn to him, like white blood cells swarming on an infection. I laughed at that simile. How very appropriate. My obsession with Adam, this persistent soreness, was not unlike an infection.

“How was your study retreat?” my mom asked when I finally got around to calling her back.

“Oh, it was good. Got a lot done.” Too bad none of it was actual studying, but it had been a lot more fun.

“Am I bringing you back home with me after graduation?”

I sighed. Shit. Graduation was at the end of the week. I’d had the semester off but I was walking with my class and I had done next to nothing to prepare for commencement. “I’d rather follow you up. I want my own car while I’m there.” I tried to figure out how I could get out of staying the full week. I’d already taken off way too much time from my job and was in danger of losing it.

“I’ve got some surprises for you when you get home. I can’t wait.”

I gritted my teeth, but the thought of fleeing all this for a few days and retreating to the comfort of my quiet high desert hometown was oddly comforting.

After the phone call was over, I boxed up everything that Adam had “loaned” or gifted to me. The four dresses and accessories, the smart phone and the laptop. I trashed the underwear, not wanting the reminder that it served.

And with every jerky movement, I could hear the voice at the back of my mind.
Sick. Sick. Sick.
Despite my reluctance to admit it, Heath was right. The whole thing between Adam and me had been sick. Nothing good could have come from our beginnings. The entire interaction between us had been forever tainted by the now-notorious auction.

I was numb when I went to work early the next morning. My supervisor called me into her office, berating me for missing so much work and putting me on formal warning. In different circumstances, I would have cared a great deal. To lose that job would mean I could no longer afford to live on my own, to say nothing of its value on my résumé. But I was frozen inside. Dead. And nothing seemed to get through but that distant, constant pain. That feeling that something vital was missing.

When I got home from work, Heath was parked at the curb of my apartment complex, playing a game on his iPad. I walked right by his car, pretending not to see him, my grip tightening on my backpack strap.

I continued on when I heard the car door open and slam, when I heard his hurried footsteps behind me. I climbed the stairs and didn’t turn until I’d fished out my key to unlock the door.

“Hey Mia,” Heath said. His tone sounded like he was forcing himself to be casual. I turned and glanced up at him before snapping the door open and walking inside, not bothering to close it behind me.

“Mia…” he began and I dropped my backpack on the kitchen chair and turned to him, arms folded. “I guess this means he told you about the e-mail, huh?”

I tilted my head at him. “What do you want, Heath?”

He blinked at my abrupt manner. “I—I wanted to see if you were okay.”

“You mean you wanted to see if I survived the blast of that bombshell you decided to drop right in the middle of our trip?”

His face crumpled with concern. “Mia…I’m sorry, okay? I thought I was acting for the best.”

“For whose best? Mine? Or your conscience?”

He paused and changed stance from one leg to the other. “I take it he was pissed. He never replied to me.”

I clenched my teeth and walked over to the box I’d packed up earlier. Grabbing a roll of packing tape out of my backpack, I began to seal it up. “Yep. He was pissed. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s over.”

Heath watched me for a long moment and I grabbed a marker and wrote Adam’s name on the side of the box.

“I’m sorry, Mia,” he repeated, folding his hands over his chest.

I shook my head. “Don’t be. It’s how I’d planned it all along.”

“What happened over there?”

I clenched my teeth. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” He shot a wary look at me before nodding to the package. “You want me to drop that off for you?”

“He’s still out of town. You won’t get your tour of the place.”

His face clouded. “He sent you home alone?”

I shrugged. “He still had business in the Caribbean. I had to get back to work.”

“I don’t give a shit about a tour. You aren’t all right, Mia.”

I jerked a hand at him and his eyes widened. “I’m.
Fine.
”

He held up a hand in surrender. “Okay. Okay. You’re fine. But I’d still like to drop that off for you, or at least drive you over?”

I sighed. I could use the moral support to go into the building, even if I knew Adam wasn’t there. I hadn’t even had the courage to log on to the game since I’d been home.

Heath told me I should unseal the box or it would never make it past security, so I grabbed a kitchen knife and slit it open again. It was early afternoon when we hit the road, our truce unspoken. I hadn’t accepted his apology but ultimately I knew—even if he didn’t—that the differences between Adam and me had not been Heath’s doing.

Heath asked me about the details of the commencement ceremony, and told me he’d make plans to be there and sit with my mom. As we drove, my frosted heart that wanted to cling to the resentment began to thaw.

Fifteen minutes later, we exited the 405 freeway and drove down one of the broad, perfectly planned streets that the city of Irvine was known for. Heath turned in to an industrial park that housed the campus of Draco Multimedia Entertainment.

We approached the central building in the complex. It was designed like a modern day castle with intricate turrets of mirrored glass lined in steel. The mirrors caught the early afternoon sunlight and the entire building gleamed as if it were the fabled seat of Camelot. So, the knight protector spent his brooding days inside a castle. Why did that not surprise me?

We entered a huge lobby with a circular information desk. Everything inside was chrome and granite and bright as the daylight outside, thanks to all the windows. Heath and I gaped in awe. There were displays and artwork from the various games produced by the company everywhere and I couldn’t decide where to look first.

In fact, I was so gap-jawed looking at an exact one-quarter replica of “The Mistress’s Lair”—a three-dimensional model of an ice palace—that I forgot to address the guy at security.

“Oh! I’m dropping off a package for Mr. Drake.” The security dude looked unimpressed.

I opened the flap and he made a quick search of the contents, then wrote my name on a temporary badge and instructed me to drop the package off at his assistant’s desk. Then he called back to the desk to let the assistant know that I was coming.

I nodded and shrugged. “Okay.”

Heath was still gazing out over the mezzanine at even more elaborate game displays downstairs. “Oh for God’s sake, go down and look, then. I’m sorry you didn’t get your tour.”

“You okay to walk back there?”

I shrugged. “It’s not that far away and it’s just one of his assistants. He’s still out of the country. I’ll just dump it and be right back.”

Heath wasn’t looking at me. A certain display had caught his eye.

I cleared my throat. “Wow, is that an alien coming up behind you to assault you with an anal probe?”

No reaction.

I laughed and he walked off with a wave of his hand. With my box in hand, I followed the security officer’s directions through a big set of double doors, past glassed-in offices that consisted of open desk configurations—no cubicles, it seemed, at Draco Multimedia. People were working on sleek desktop computers, collaborating over tablets and generally focused on work. It was a hive of organized chaos. Down the central hallway, I continued past a glassed-in atrium and patio with grass and planters and artfully arranged tables, now empty because it was just after lunchtime.

I finally made it into Adam’s neck of the woods. The security officer had made it seem much closer in his directions than it actually was. Adam’s office—and that of the other company officers, for their names were all on the doors—was preceded by a large atrium complete with receptionist and several busy-looking assistants.

I moved to the nearest one. “I’m leaving a package for Mr. Drake. Security said to bring it here?”

The receptionist pointed to an assistant at a desk a little further back. The assistant, a bespectacled college-age looking kid in dress shirt and tie, glanced our way, standing up as I approached. “Ms. Strong?”

“Yes. They told you about this package I was bringing up?”

He shot a curious glance at me and then to the box. “Yes. I’ll need to inspect the contents before I can take it off your hands.”

“Yes, of course. There are just some…personal effects.”

He nodded. “He asked me to tell you he’ll be out in just a moment.”

I frowned, looking up from his work. “Who?”

The assistant looked puzzled. “Mr. Drake.”

“
What?
But—but he’s still out of town.”

The assistant shot me a concerned look. “No, he came back yesterday. He’s here.”

My eyes rose from his inspection to a set of heavy double doors that led toward the inner sanctum—likely the offices—all lined in glitzy chrome. At that moment, they swung open.

I jumped back from the assistant. “I have to go,” I choked. But I was nailed to my spot when I saw a man and a woman emerge. The man was dressed in an impeccable suit, deadly handsome. My chest tightened as if caught in a constricting band. Adam.

If there had been any chance of my seeing him here, I would never, ever have come. He bent to speak to a woman at the desk nearest to the doors—giving her some instructions, it looked like. The woman said something to Adam and then, horrifyingly, glanced in my direction.

Before I could step back, before I could turn and bolt like a coward, my eyes flew to his companion. I knew her too. Her platinum blond hair was artfully arranged around a gorgeous, glamorous face. Lindsay. They stood so close together, they looked like a couple.

I was so dumbstruck that I couldn’t move, even when Adam straightened and his eyes immediately flew straight to mine. Every muscle in my body turned to jelly and I could hardly breathe. The assistant continued digging around in the box, oblivious to my distress. He extracted the laptop and laid it on the table in front of him. Adam saw it and his features hardened.

He looked away then, and, to my increased astonishment (was that even possible?), he slipped an arm around Lindsay’s waist, bent and whispered something in her ear. Something that made her laugh and sway against him.

I didn’t stay to watch any more. I ran. The assistant called after me but I didn’t stop. I ran as fast and as far as I could. Because now the tears were coming at last. They blinded me. And I could hear his voice in my head. It was all I could hear.
I’ve decided I wanted a woman in my life. You’re just a sad, scared little girl.

A sad. Scared. Little. Girl. And compared to me Lindsay was all woman…successful, mature, sexually experienced, and very much into Adam.

I dashed through hallways and out into parking lot, gasping for breath. And then I ran some more. I ran until I couldn’t breathe any more. Then I leaned up against the nearest car, doubled over.

Five minutes later, someone stood beside me. I almost jumped out of my skin until he spoke. “Mia, what the—?” Heath said. “You shot out of that door like a bat out of hell. What the fuck? Are you
crying?
”

By this time, I’d been gulping for air, tears and snot all over my face and, what’s worse, I had the hiccups.

“Heath, just get me the fuck out of here, please.”

Without another word, he slipped an arm around my shoulders and guided me toward the car. I kept my eyes away from the building. I didn’t want to chance seeing them again. Every time I thought about that hard look on his face, new tears seeped out and by the time we made it off the complex property I was a bubbling, oozing mess.

Heath’s face was grim. “I take it you saw him in there? What about staying on for business for another week?”

My face was in my hands, and thus my voice was muffled. “He must have been lying.” He just hadn’t wanted to fly home beside me.

Heath was very worried about me. I could tell. He insisted on ordering takeout after we got home and he sat across from me at my broken down little table while I picked at my mandarin chicken.

“Maybe it might do you some good to get away for a bit.”

“I just got back.”

“No, I mean spend a little longer with your mom. Maybe stay with her for the summer. She could use the help, now that she’s getting the place ready for guests again. I could pack up your place here and throw the stuff in storage. Other than your miserable little orderly job, you really don’t have a reason to be out here for the next year or so. Why not save the money you’d be spending on rent and expenses?”