by Jenn Hughes
But finally, she smiled at him. “This place is very you. I like it. And I guess you’re wondering why I’m here.”
Relieved by her compliment, Sam headed for the dining table he’d left covered with office work, mail, and a growing pile of beer caps. He grabbed an empty cardboard box, the one his new controllers had arrived in the day before. Then he extended his arm across the table and bulldozed everything into it.
“Well, I know how you tracked me down, thanks to Cedric. But I’m not exactly sure what you meant about me missing a toad,” he said, carefully placing the boxes of takeout on the tabletop.
“Mistletoad. You weren’t there tonight.”
Sam held a box of salt and pepper squid in his hand and tried to think of a good reason other than the truth for not seeing the movie. “Oh, yeah. Forgot.”
Forgot? That’s it? Smooth.
He glanced over his shoulder at Lillian. She was staring at the radiant flames of Firespawn on his curved sixty-five-inch ultra-high-definition TV. “Forgot, hmmm? Or maybe you had far more important things to do,” she quietly commented.
A wave of dizziness hit him, and it had nothing to do with the past four straight hours of gaming. No way did Lillian show up because he’d missed a movie he never said he’d see. Something was up.
He finished with the food and then walked over to her, stopping so close his chest bumped against her back. Sam saw the contours of flinching muscles in her perfectly pale neck as she tensed beneath her coat. But she didn’t step away from him. And she didn’t say a word. Sam wondered what she wanted and why she waited.
Then he decided she had to be waiting for him to make a move.
Never one to miss an opportunity, he put his hands on her shoulders and gently massaged them. He felt her relax, heard the slow exhale urging him onward. And so he kept going, sliding his hands from her shoulders to inside the collar of the coat, his fingers brushing the soft skin of her neck.
She shuddered. So did Sam. He wanted more . . . but knew he had to stop.
“Let me have your coat, Lillian,” he said softly. “Like I said, we need to talk.”
Lillian wriggled out of her coat and . . . So much for stopping. When Sam finally got a good look at her, talking was the last thing on his mind.
The shirt she wore, a purplish-red color with buttons up the front, looked great, but the plunging neckline stole the show. With the top button undone, her creamy white cleavage peeked out. Soft, plump flesh begging to be touched. Sam got hot, a coil of energy humming inside him and desperate for discharge. His soul suddenly seemed a small price to pay for the chance to unbutton a few more of Lillian’s pesky buttons.
A stunning woman had arrived at his apartment in the middle of the night showing enough skin to make any man beg for mercy. Nope. No two ways around it. Lillian wanted him. He definitely wanted her. Nothing stood in the way of him finishing what she’d started. He’d sign in blood on the dotted line. Unbutton the rest of that shirt before taking her into the bedroom . . .
Then he started thinking with the head on his shoulders. Damn.
“Rik.”
That thing that stood in the way. Sam remembered a stupid promise he’d made about backing off.
Lillian’s eyes widened. “What about him?”
“Dinner go okay last night?”
She sighed. “I don’t want to talk about Richard. Or dinner. I came here to check on you.” She glanced over at the TV screen then back at him, her gaze softening. “What is that? I mean, I know it’s a game, but what’s with all the flames?”
“Firespawn. It’s a MMORPG.”
“A morp-guh?”
Sam laughed. “Yeah. Massive multiplayer online role-playing game.” He pointed at the sofa. “Have a seat. I’ll explain the game while we eat.”
A few minutes later, they sat side-by-side on the sofa with a buffet of takeout in front of them on the coffee table. Lillian picked through a box of lo mein noodles while Sam navigated through the Blacklands raid and fought off another legion of hell trolls. His stomach growled again, but he ignored the hunger and focused on explaining the storyline.
“So, after Nicholai succumbed to Grimbane, he was transformed into Firespawn. Once you’ve created your avatar, the entire purpose of the game is to retrieve his human form from the City of Lost Souls, but it will take some time to get there because I have to fight the Morlock on level seven and it’s incredibly difficult . . . ”
He glanced over at Lillian, taking his eyes away from the TV for only a second. When he did, a hell troll grabbed him from behind and tossed him over a cliff into a pool of black fire.
“Damn it!”
That bullshit usually dictated a fist slam on the coffee table but, with Lillian’s eyes on him, he pretended to be a calm, rational adult. He looked over again, and she grinned back.
“Play it again, Sam.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
Lillian shook her head. “No, I’m not. I want to see you beat this level. I’m invested now.”
The sting of getting killed by a second-rate hell troll evaporated, but Sam’s growling stomach put the rematch on hold. He pointed at the open box of egg rolls on the coffee table. “Hey, could you stick one of those in my mouth? Don’t wanna get grease on the controller. It’ll foul up the buttons.”
“The whole thing?”
“I’ll bite it in half. Ignore me while I chomp like a cow on turf for a few minutes.”
Lillian plucked an egg roll from the box and brought it to Sam’s mouth. He opened up just enough for her to slide it inside, and when he bit the egg roll in two, he growled like a bear. She laughed. He loved that sound.
“So, are you going to explain the table?” she asked, pointing with a chopstick at his two-by-six and cinder block coffee table. “I know you have the money to buy one, so why do you have a table that looks better suited to a dorm room?”
“When I moved to Port Bristol this was my first apartment. It was furnished and had a nice glass coffee table. Two days after I moved in, I was playing a really intense battle on ShieldQuest, and I lost and . . . Well, I’m embarrassed to admit it but I threw my controller, and it shattered the table.”
“So why not buy a new one?”
“Because if my landlord caught me bringing in a new coffee table, he’d know I destroyed the old one and probably have me evicted, and I love this place. But more importantly, the two-by-sixes and blocks are a lot sturdier and can take a tantrum better than some cheap piece of junk.”
“Smart thinking.” She pointed at the screen. “Are you going to try again?”
Sam restarted the level, and managed to wipe out most of the attacking hell trolls with ease.
“Since you’re in the mood for explanations, I have another question,” Lillian suddenly announced.
“Shoot,” Sam said, biting his lip as he disintegrated some more trolls with his oblivion cannon.
“Why do you have two different apartments?”
The trolls went out of focus and then killed him. He heard the despondent thunder of a lost level, but it didn’t matter. Lillian Walker had asked him a question. A big one. If he gave her a truthful answer, he’d open himself up to her. Be completely vulnerable . . .
“Because I’m two different people.”
Chapter 13
Big Bad Backstory
Sam glanced up at the portable-toilet-shaped Time Doctor wall clock above the TV. Minutes after midnight and he’d opened up a can of ninja worms. Tiny wiggling things capable of cutting him down to size. His mind raced. He had to come up with something to say, and he needed to sound like an intelligent adult when it came tumbling out.
So how do I make it sound like Preston Lavery didn’t make me the guy I am today, even though he kinda did?
&nb
sp; But Sam came up with nothing. Nada. The usual tidal wave of brilliant BS that popped up in sticky situations turned out to be a no-show, and no way would Lillian let his stupid ‘two different people’ comment slide—
“I already knew that, Sam. I just didn’t understand why you needed two apartments,” Lillian commented casually, poking her chopsticks into the box of lo mein.
“I’ve admitted my deepest, darkest secret to you, and your response is to tell me you already knew that?” he huffed.
Lillian got a grip on a carrot, popped it into her mouth, and then looked at him like he’d given a bad audition for a soap opera.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Okay. Maybe it’s not a super-dark, antihero secret. But it is my biggest secret.”
“I met you at Old Henry’s, and you were exactly the way I thought you were: cool, intelligent, interesting, and perfect—” Sam smiled right before Lillian zinged, “—ly cocky. But when I met you at The Electric, you were different. You were the boy in the LifeLink photo. Imperfect. Awkward. You made mistakes. I understand you have two sides. What I don’t understand is why you need them, or why you want to hide the video game-loving, fashion-backward one.”
“It’s complicated, and it’s late. The amount of explaining could take—”
“It’s twelve thirty in the morning, and I have nowhere else to be right now. Go for it.”
Sam hadn’t ever really talked about how he went from point nerd to point cool. Never getting close meant never tipping anyone off about his past. Aside from his parents, his brother, Ravi, and a few friends, no one remembered Sam as being anything other than six-foot-two of grade-A, blue-eyed, prime-cut CEO.
That had been the point of burying the easily forgettable nobody he’d been before age twenty-two. But next to him sat the first woman to ever see that the cool facade he maintained barely hid a crippling insecurity planted by Preston Lavery. Lillian wanted to know why. And, God help him, he wanted to tell her . . .
But Sam hesitated at coming clean. He wondered if, once she heard what happened between him and Preston, she’d ever look at him the same. And he liked the way she looked at him. It made him feel like maybe he was a superhero, at least to Lillian. If he opened his mouth, that might disappear. He’d be a loser again . . .
Ah, screw it. You’re in a Koowiee robe and look like a big furry dog. No longer cool in Lillian’s eyes. Sam let out a deep breath and dove in.
“MIT was weird for me. I went from being the smartest guy at my high school to being an average student among math and science gods. I had a couple of ugly duckling, loner years, but in my junior year I got involved in some clubs and made some friends. Ravi Ganesh was one of them.”
“Your business partner? Isn’t he the man who wowed everyone at the symposium with his procedurally programmed workflow design . . . and then fell ass-first into a ficus planter during cocktails?”
“Yeah, that’s him. He said he saw a wasp.”
“A wasp?”
“He thinks they’re alien drones. Anyway, when we were at MIT that impressive spectacle of a man you’ve read about in the Inventors section of Century magazine was the fourteen-year-old wunderkind whose mom walked him to and from class every day. I was pretty shy, and Ravi has this strange, innocent way of getting people to talk to him. Or argue with him. That’s how we kind of hit it off, arguing over ShieldQuest. Anyway, one argument led to another and another until we decided we could do it better, so we developed our own game. Thrones of the Guild Planets. It was fucking amazing . . . Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Get the fuck on with your story.”
Sam chuckled. “Okay, so, we took the concept and some of the early playable levels to a software developer and pitched the idea. Keep in mind the photo from LifeLink because that’s one half of the duo I’m talking about here—a dork and a baby walking into this massive company with high hopes and no clues. Well, the CEO came in, took one look at us, and laughed. Not a giggle, either, but a big belly laugh right in our faces. He told us we were pathetic losers who stole other people’s ideas and tried to pawn them off as our own, that we’d never make it out of our parents’ basements—”
“Wait, why would he say you stole other people’s ideas?”
“Because my roommate was one of the other guys in the ShieldQuest group. Smart guy, but didn’t really have a knack for programming. The three of us were tight, so we showed him some of our ideas . . . ideas he took straight to the same CEO and claimed for himself. Pretty easy to get an appointment when the guy’s your dad. And from there they took the basis of Thrones of the Guild Planets, changed the name, and then developed a game that made them millions.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t want to ask because I think I know the answer but . . . What was it called?”
“Kingdoms of the Fading Sun.”
“Damn it,” she whispered. “Preston Lavery’s first game, the game that built Mythos, was yours.”
“Yeah. Preston let us walk right into his dad’s office and make complete fools out of ourselves. I might have let it go if we hadn’t been friends. Chalked it up to the stupidity and self-centeredness of youth. But Preston Lavery called me a friend and then stole a piece of my imagination. Ravi’s, too. I will never forget or forgive that.”
Lillian shook her head. “You didn’t sue him?”
“No copyright. No patent. No proof. We could have used you back then,” Sam said with a smile.
“Please tell me you didn’t just walk away and let him have it without a fight.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t just walk away. That’s why Preston hates me as much as I hate him. After Ravi and I found out about the theft, I went straight to Preston. He was in the middle of class, one of those big amphitheater rooms, and I let him have it. Both barrels. In front of everyone. But what hit him hardest was the one thing we all knew, but no one wanted to say. His dad had a reputation on campus. Big-time donor and former student genius done well for himself. No one messed with him, and by extension Preston.”
“So what did you say?”
Sam smiled again. It still felt right to say it. “I told him he was a cardboard cutout of his dad. No substance. No talent. And no matter what he stole or how elaborately he lied, he’d never be anything other than a disappointment to Morgan Lavery. I humiliated him in front of some of the smartest people in the world.”
Lillian let out a slow whistle. “No wonder you two have been at war all these years. I’m no psychologist, but even I know an inferiority complex when I see one and Preston’s is as big as Mythos.”
“Yeah. We changed one another, Preston and I. A few months later, I graduated from MIT and entered the MBA program at Harvard. I worked out, cut my hair, got a better wardrobe. I looked the part of a CEO, and I’ve learned you can’t play the part without looking it.”
Lillian closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I can’t believe this. He can’t get away with it. I mean, I know he can, and he has, but it’s so . . . What Preston has done to you is so wrong.”
“I like to think I give as good as I get. We still fight our battles, those legal bruisings you and Rik inflict on one another. But, honestly, now it’s a matter of self-preservation. I keep any and all proof of my dork backstory under lock and key so Preston can’t prove I’ve ever been anything other than a cover boy, as you like to put it. It grates on him, and that makes me happy. At least it did until I found out Preston bans his employees from fraternizing with the enemy—me.”
A tiny little hope sprang up inside of him. A silly thing. How it would be really, really great if Lillian decided working for a bastard like Preston Lavery wasn’t as important as being with Sam. Or at least considered taking a chance on him and telling Preston where to stick it.
But Lillian only shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Ah, don’t wo
rry about it. I’m doing fine. Obviously. Ravi and I developed Origin, and we’re successful in our own right. Sure, we don’t create games like we wanted. But business productivity software and technology is a lucrative field, and we’ve been beyond successful in it.”
“Successful enough to have two apartments. One for the real you,” Lillian said, pointing directly at him, “and one for . . . ”
She didn’t finish and Sam was relieved, as though years of playing the field hadn’t counted because he’d never admitted to being kind of a jerk. And never had he regretted it more than with Lillian’s eyes on him.
“I know what you’re getting at. You’re right. I have an overinflated reputation for dating a lot of different women. Certain types of women. The types who enjoy a glitzy apartment on Charlotte Street, but wouldn’t exactly be impressed with this place. It’s an image, Lillian. It isn’t who I am, or who I necessarily want to be, but it benefits Origin. Any publicity is good publicity.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“That you, this you, isn’t enough. I mean, I personally know several women who are very attractive, successful, and are really into gaming. Half of the female staff at Mythos fits that bill, so they exist,” she said. Then she shook her head. “No, I think you keep an apartment on Charlotte Street and see ‘certain types of women’ because those women have nothing in common with you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing they prefer discussing their tiny dog’s latest bedazzled outfit or how much they’re looking forward to going to that trendy concert in the desert. They don’t share your interests. And you want it that way. It’s easy to walk away.”