“I think it’s fucking hilarious.” Jemma wrapped an arm around me. “The best-selling fantasy romance author who can’t seem to write the romance part of her books now needs to find someone to fuck her for inspiration.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed her away.
“I just need to find one person. That’s it, nothing more than a hookup.”
“You think a hookup is going to help with inspiration?” Jemma questioned me. I looked up; her hands were on her hips, and her foot was tapping.
“I have no idea what’s going to help, but that’s what I’m willing to start with. I haven’t been on a date in months for a reason. Dating sucks.”
“Well,” Jemma grabbed my shoulders and spun me toward the stairs. “Why don’t we start with that masked prince walking this way?”
My eyes trailed to the person Jemma was speaking about.
The man caught my attention right away.
He looked fucking tall, had a bun on top of his head, and looked like he was built like a fucking lumberjack. He was clad in both black dress pants and a shirt. His dark green vest matched my dress and mask. He had a black, long coat, white sneakers, and a white mask to finish his outfit.
His mask, though, wasn’t like those I’d seen the other men wearing. He covered his entire face and left everything to the imagination.
He looked like everything except a prince.
“This is the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” Beckett was inspecting every small detail of this ball.
“Yeah, it is.” I ran my hand over the black roses on the stairs we were at. We’d practically stepped into the Meridin Forest in the middle of New York City. It was a gamer’s dream. I’d spent so much of my time playing this game that seeing it come to life was unimaginable.
“Don’t sound so enthusiastic now,” Beckett shot me a look.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t enthusiastic about what was happening around us. My mind was on other things. Had been all day.
“Mom called this morning,” I started as I made my way up the first step. I needed to get out of the surrounding crowd.
“Anything wrong?”
“They will be closing on the sale of the café next month.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” I took a few more steps up. The scenery was allowing me to step outside of the real world, even if only a moment.
“You’re thinking more about whether you want to keep things the way they are.”
I looked up, lights hanging from the branches like falling stars.
“I don’t know what I want to do, but I just have this feeling that something needs to change.”
“I’m here with whatever decision you make, dude.” Beckett placed a hand on my back.
“Tha—
“Except for right now, because that man over there has food.”
And then he was gone.
I rolled my eyes as I made my way further up the stairs. We’d come here tonight with one agenda item—to see Odette—but the longer we were here and the more my mind pondered about my future, the less I wanted to be here.
I had no idea what I was going to do. If I wanted to stay as an anonymous gamer, or out myself. I didn’t know how the public would take me if they knew who I was, but there was no honest reason for me to keep myself a secret if my family was no longer tied to the Blackbird.
I took another step and glanced up, almost having reached the top.
