The foyer of Dina’s apartment was barely large enough for Ellie and her suitcase. To her right was a cozy living room with just enough room to walk in front of the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table. To her left was the smallest—and maybe the messiest—kitchen she’d ever seen, and just beyond, a full bathroom. The door to the bedroom was off the living room and it was closed, with no light snaking out from under the crack and no signs of life behind it.
“Do you think she’s here?” Dex asked.
Ellie shrugged. Now facing the reality that she didn’t really know Dina at all, the nerves in her neck tightened. She reached up and rubbed the ache. What had she been thinking when she called Dina? They’d hung out with the same group of friends, having shared the same floor in the dorms. She’d seemed nice enough, and they’d often talked in the middle of the night, when Ellie couldn’t sleep and would hunker down on the couch in the recreation room. She knew then that Dina came out of her room those nights as a hint for the guys she’d picked up for one-night stands to take off, but she’d never carried that thought through to her decision about calling her for a place to stay. She’d been so damn desperate to leave Maryland that, in lieu of Dex, Dina had seemed to be her only option.
“I don’t know. It’s awfully quiet. Maybe they went to his apartment after all.” Ellie set her suitcase on the coffee table, then flopped on the couch. “I’m sorry, Dex. I didn’t mean to make a scene in front of your friends. It’s been a long day, and I’m just a little frustrated.”
Dex smiled and shrugged. “No worries. You kinda took me by surprise, El. I still can’t believe you’re here. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”
“That makes two of us, and I have an interview tomorrow at ten.” She covered her face. “Please apologize to your friends. I never drink, so you can blame it on that.” She peeked out from between her fingers and saw Dex arch his brow. She sighed and threw her head back against the cushions. “Okay, fine. It’s me. It’s always me. I still haven’t learned how to gracefully extricate myself from uncomfortable situations. Whatever.”
“They’re cool, Ellie. They won’t care. Listen, give me your number, and I want to give you mine, and my address, so you have it.”
“Okay, but you don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine.” Liar, liar pants on fire.
He handed her his phone. “It’s not you I’m worried about. Put your info in here.”
She handed him her phone. “You too.” She watched him inputting his information. His kindness was being smothered by the elephant in the room—and making her feel like she was going to suffocate. She had to get it out in the open. “Dex, don’t you hate me for the way I left…after that weekend…?” It hurt so much to say it out loud. To acknowledge what she’d done, how she’d cast his love—their love—aside. Say it. You owe him that. “When I left four years ago.” She held her breath.
He looked at her for a long time. Just when she was ready to apologize, he said, “I thought I never wanted to see you again. But I could never hate you, Ellie. You’re like the puzzle I could never solve. The game I could never win.”
He shrugged, but she recognized the hurt that lingered in his eyes, and it pierced her heart. She wanted to apologize, but words would never be enough. Somewhere deep in her soul, she’d known back then that sneaking out was unforgivable, and yet she’d been too scared to stay.
He reached for her hand, and this time, she took it willingly. He pulled her into a hug.
This is dangerous.
Her body remembered the curves of him, the feel of him against her the last night they’d been together four years earlier, when she’d come back needing the security of him and had found so much more. She’d lain in his arms. He was reading, planning in that crazy smart brain of his, and she’d been…memorizing him. Longing to make love to him. It was that longing that had sent her hightailing it out of New York while he slept that night. Now, remembering the ache of knowing that night might have been the last time they’d ever see each other, she drank him in, allowed her body to fall weightless into the safety of him, and Dex tightened his embrace.
She felt it again, the desire to kiss him. The desire to have something more with him, and it scared the shit out of her.
“Thank you, Dexy.” She drew back from him, and in his eyes she saw the same longing she felt in her heart. She pried herself away. “You have to meet your friends.”
She watched his jaw clench, and at first she thought it might be hurt that she saw in his dark eyes. Then she recognized it for what it was. He stepped back and ran his hand through his hair, then tore his eyes from hers and walked to the door. He was steeling himself against her. She’d hurt him and he wasn’t going to be hurt again. She couldn’t blame him really. Even she didn’t know what she was doing these days. Or maybe ever.
“El…”
“Thanks for everything. I’m glad we ran into each other.” Christ, she was torn. She wanted him to stay and hold her and she wanted him to leave in equal measure. I’m a mess, and I’m not gonna drag you down with me.
“Me too. I’ve got a huge release in three weeks and almost no time to breathe.” He looked down.
Her heart broke just a little. I’ve ruined us.
“But I’d like to see you and catch up. Can I call you?” he asked.
Ellie bit back the lump in her throat and grabbed hold of the security of him. “I’d like that.”
Dex opened the door and hesitated, sending Ellie’s heart into another flutter of confusion. Stay. Go. Take me with you. Somewhere over the last four years she’d buried the truth of how much she’d needed him. How much she’d wanted him. She’d had to in order to survive. As he closed the door behind him, she felt the same sinking feeling in her gut as the last night she’d crawled back out his window as a teenager and the same heart-shattering desperation she’d felt four years earlier, when she’d come back full of need and empty promises and then left when her need for him was too immense and the fear of hurting him—and herself—became all consuming. She’d sucked away his strength to use as her own and then snuck away like a thief in the night. Now, the same gut-wrenching, inescapable pain that had followed her back to Maryland four years earlier returned, and it was, without a doubt, the worst pain in her life.
When she was finally able to force her legs to move again, she went to the bathroom to wash her face. She had to stand beside the toilet to close the door. The tile floor was made of one-inch-by-two-inch blue and white squares, circa 1965. The mirror had a warped haze going on, morphing Ellie’s face into even more of a mess. To her left was a small shower. The shower curtain hung lopsided, missing two rings at the top, and the bottom was peppered with specks of mildew. She wondered how Dina managed to live with such filth. Ellie swallowed her distaste. Some of the foster families she’d stayed with had beautiful bathrooms on the main floors of the house, but the bathroom she and the other foster children were forced to use looked much like this one. She washed her face and brushed her teeth. She’d have to shower in the morning, but the idea of climbing into the filthy thing now gave her a headache. Or maybe that was the rum. She wasn’t sure. With a shower out of the question, she cast off her bra and slipped into a pair of sweats and a clean T-shirt, then checked the alarm on her cell phone. She climbed onto the couch and pulled a throw blanket over herself. She was asleep in seconds.
Chapter Six
DEX HEARD REGINA and Mitch’s voices before he opened the door to his apartment at the Dakota. Prior to opening Thrive’s formal offices, they’d worked from his old apartment. When he moved into the Dakota soon after he'd seen Ellie four years ago, he'd converted the third bedroom into a workspace. Both Regina and Mitch still had keys. Dex stood with his hand on the doorknob thinking about Ellie. When he’d hugged her goodbye, finally feeling the comfort of her body against him after all these years, he hadn’t wanted to let go. The last time he’d been with her, he’d awoken to an empty bed and a broken heart. That’s when he’d
forced himself into the numb state his father had unknowingly helped him nurture. His father wasn’t one to allow any of his children to wallow. It didn’t take many harsh stares or demanding comments—You’re a man; get over it—for Dex to learn how to turn off his emotions. He’d dulled the pain of missing her. Until now.
The release date pressed in on him, edging thoughts of Ellie to the side. He took a deep breath and went inside. The foyer was as large as the entire living room where Ellie was staying. Jesus. Stop it.
“Finally. Did you deliver your damsel in distress okay?” Regina asked as she and Mitch carried fresh cups of coffee toward the office.
Dex rolled his eyes.
Regina set her cup down beside her computer. Her black tank top clung to her ribs, and her hair was swept to one side, exposing the sharp line of her jaw.
Mitch sat in a swiveling office chair and propped his feet up on the desk beside an empty bag of chips. He ran his hand through his disheveled hair. “Wanna spill before we get started?”
“No,” Dex said.
“Come on, Dex. You’ve been on some kind of dry streak with women for what seems like forever; then this chick shows up and steals your ability to function. Spill, or you know we’ll get nothing done.” Regina settled into a chair and looked at her watch. “Three minutes. Ready? Go.”
In an effort to shut them up, he admitted, “She’s a friend from when I was younger. She’s in town looking for a job.” Or running from something.
“Old girlfriend?” Regina asked.
Only in my dreams.
“First fuck?” Mitch added.
Ellie would never be just a fuck. “No and no.” Dex spun a chair around and straddled it. “What’s the final date?”
Mitch and Regina exchanged a glance that sent a pain through his gut.
“Shit. Same day?” Just another thing to add to his perfectly fucked-up state of mind.
“Looks like it,” Regina said.
Dex pushed from the chair and sent it spinning across the hardwood. “Why the hell would they do that? They have just as much to lose as we do.” He fisted his hands. “The same day?”
“We can delay. Go out a month later so we’re the next big thing,” Mitch suggested. In the gaming world, there was always another game on the horizon, which gamers referred to as the next big thing.
“Or a few days early to capture the audience first,” Regina added.
“If we go late, we piss off our fan base. If we go early, we run the risk of losing out because if anything happens—an error code that everyone is slammed with, or any fucking thing—then they’re the next big thing. We need ample time to test the game to ensure it has no glitches. We’re nearly there, but nearly isn’t good enough.” He paced the room. Things were so much easier when he was developing smaller games without so many people relying on him. He’d developed three games to date, none of which had failed, but Dex didn’t believe in luck, and he knew that in a world of graphics and codes, anything could go wrong. Fully testing games before releasing them was vital. Thrive had a three-tiered testing process. World of Thieves II had gone through two tiers already, which meant it was probably fine, but releasing without completing the testing was risky.
“Preorders are off the charts.” Mitch set his feet on the floor. “If we have issues with our product, we’re busted.” His eyes searched Dex’s. “Listen, Dex, there’s no chance of that. We’ve gone through two beta test runs already, and we’re testing right through delivery. The glitch they uncovered sixty days ago was fixed in twenty-four hours.”
“You’re smarter than that, Mitch.” Dex glared at him.
“Listen, we could be screwed either way, so let’s just make a decision and go with it.” Regina chewed on the end of her pen.
Dex threw his hands up in the air and blew out a breath. “Okay. We play. Period. I believe in our product, and unless you know something I don’t, then fuck it. We stay on schedule and release on the same day so our fans remain happy and we don’t skip the last testing round. And, Mitch, I want another trailer out.”
“We just ran one,” Mitch said.
Dex let out a breath. “We need something to feed the fans and build more hype now that we’re releasing on the same day as KI.”
“Who are you gonna pull to get that done, and what am I gonna do to fill their shoes?” Regina asked.
“Review copies go out next week,” Mitch reminded him.
“We’ve got the conventions but not before the release. We’ve got a slew of interviews and podcasts coming up.” Regina pulled up the calendar on her phone. “You’ve got a few good ones this week and next.”
“The PR department’s been hot for weeks building buzz and pitching the game to the press. The forums are going ballistic with excitement, but they’re also buzzing for KI’s game.” Online gaming forums could make or break a game’s release. The more positive reviews the game received, the more gamers would seek it out, just as a forum full of negative reviews could sink sales. The next three weeks would be stressful as hell, but the benefit of Thrive was that it was no longer all on Dex’s shoulders to design, develop, and market the games. He’d had no life when it was just him shouldering the process every step of the way. Every waking moment was spent working on the games, modifying, coding, fixing glitches, and trying to hype the product at the same time. Looking back, he had no idea how any indie developer remained sane. His issues were different now, and the risks much greater, but at least he was no longer solely responsible. He had a competent staff, some of the best in the business—who had jumped on board of his rising stardom and had remained with him ever since.
Regina looked at her watch. “It’s two thirty. Let’s hammer out the backup plans again and go over the testing schedule one more time, and we’ll be out of here by four.”
Dex pinched his brows together. “We?” he teased.
“Well, by we, I mean Mitch. I’m staying here tonight.” Regina had long ago claimed the guest bedroom for the evenings when she was too tired to go home or didn’t want to brave the streets alone at night. Dex didn’t mind. After living in a house with five siblings, having Ellie sneak into his room and share his bed as a teenager, and never having a moment of silence at college, he’d never gotten used to an empty apartment. Knowing Regina was in the other room was comforting. And if he was honest with himself, it made him miss Ellie a little bit less.
Ellie.
What the hell was he going to do about Ellie?
His mind ran in circles as he and Regina hashed out the issues while Mitch played devil’s advocate, pointing out each of the worst-case scenarios. At four o’clock in the morning, Mitch pulled on his sweatshirt and headed for the door.
“Tomorrow, dude. Office?” Mitch asked.
“I’ll be there at some point.” He had an unsettling feeling in his stomach. Would Ellie be gone by morning? He had to stop worrying about that shit. She was in the city interviewing for jobs. She was a twenty-five-year-old woman who wasn’t there to see him.
Regina stretched her arms over her head and turned toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “Good night, Dex.”
“Night, Reg.”
She hesitated. “Listen, if you want to talk about the girl, I'm a good listener.” Her bony shoulders lifted in a shrug.
“I know. I’m good. She’s a friend. Nothing more.”
Regina nodded. “Okay. I’ve just never seen you go all…focused on a woman before.”
Dex walked past her toward his bedroom, ignoring her comment. What was he going to do? Lie to Regina? He’d never had a woman steal his focus before. And why he was focused on a woman as frustrating as Ellie was beyond him.
“Good night, Reg,” he said before closing his bedroom door.
He opened the window a crack, as he’d done since the very first time Ellie had come to his bedroom in the middle of the night, allowing the night air to clear his mind. He stripped down to his boxers and climbed into bed, trying like hell not to thin
k of Ellie, just a few long blocks away, on some stranger’s couch.
Chapter Seven
ELLIE AWOKE TO hot, rancid breath on her face. Her eyes sprang open, and she pushed the man hovering over her away and jumped to her feet.
“What the hell?” she yelled. Her eyes darted to the open bedroom door. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and every muscle tensed. Memories of when she was a teenager came rushing back to her. She snagged her phone from the couch and shoved it into the pocket of her sweats with one thing on her mind. Getting the hell out of there.
“Chill out.” The guy from the bar stood before her wearing nothing but a T-shirt, and he was clearly aroused.
“Dina?” she called out.
“Shh.” He stumbled backward. “She’s asleep,” the guy said. He stretched, and his erection bounced against him.
“Jesus. Why are you out here? Get some clothes on.” Ellie pushed her feet into her boots. No matter what this guy’s excuse was for standing there with his dick out, there was no way it would be a good one. She stuffed her toiletry bag into her suitcase.
“I came out to use the bathroom and saw you on the couch. Dee didn’t say anything about a roommate.” He yawned, looking entirely too comfortable with his nudity.
“Dina,” she snapped. “Her name is Dina.” She stuffed her clothes into her bag and zipped it up. This was all she needed. There was no way in hell she was staying here.
“Yeah, whatever. What are you doing?” He took a step closer to her.
“Stop.” She held her hand up. “Just…stay there. I’m going to a friend’s. Tell Dina I said thanks for everything.” She left the key on the counter and walked out the door.
“You don’t have to leave,” he said before it slammed.
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