West
“You ready to admit defeat, soldier?” Cam’s laugh carries over the speakers, and I pull a couple of advanced combo skills out of my bag of tricks, sending her avatar tumbling off the edge of the spinningsatellite.
“Never.” Her character respawns, and as we wait for the game to take us back to the save point, I trace a finger through the condensation gathering on my water glass. “You’ve been quiet tonight, angel. Bad dayatwork?”
Her sigh carries over the line. “The client moved up the schedule, and we’re all scrambling. Royce assigned Lucas to cabling, so all of the code’s on me now. I can handle it, but I know Lucas isupset.”
“How’d you two meet?” For six weeks, we’ve talked and laughed and joked every day, but Cam’s often danced around her past. Now that we’re…more…I want to know everything about her, tell her everything about me—even the dark, painful pieces that haunt mynightmares.
She snorts, such a delicate and irreverent sound, and I’m so mesmerized that I don’t realize her character’s taken off running. “When I first moved to Seattle, I lived in this tiny studio apartment on Capitol Hill. I’d left rehab—well before they wanted me to—and I was oncrutches.”
Her voice softens, a bit of nostalgia creeping in, and I pause the game. “Angel, turn on yourwebcam.”
After a long minute, her picture pops up on the screen, and she smiles shyly at me. “I’mamess.”
“You’re gorgeous. So, you’re oncrutches…”
She runs a hand through her hair, and I wish I could feel the silky strands over my own fingers. “I was going stir crazy stuck in my apartment. The Egyptian Theater had a showing ofEnemy of the State—remember that one?—and I trekked through the rain, four blocks, on crutches, to get there. I’m soaked to the bone, everything hurts, and I probably looked like a drowned rat. A few seats away, this big guy starts shaking his head and muttering at the screen whenever they get the tech wrong inthefilm.”
I raise a brow. “And you didn’t poke him with one of your crutches so he’dshutup?”
She laughs. “I thought about it, but he was right about every scene. As the credits rolled, I leaned over and said, ‘Don’t you hate it when bad tech ruins a goodmovie?’”
“You should never watch reruns ofCSI:Cyber.”
“I saw the first episode and almost lost my voice yelling at the television.” Cam shakes her head. “Lucas and I criticized the movie’s computer scenes the whole way out of the theater and down the block. We probably would have gone our separate ways, but then it started to hail. We ducked into a pizza place and ended up talking for two hours. I admit I was a little disappointed to learn hewasgay.
“The storm passed, and he walked me back to my apartment building. I stopped at the door, stared at him, and said, ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’” Cam jams her hand on her hip in an exaggerated motion. “’Say something about what, hon?’ he asked. When I gestured towards my crutches, he just looked baffled. ‘Your terrible taste in rain coats? Because, damn. You need something better than that to survive in this town.’” She looks down and whispers the next words with so much emotion that I ache to wrap my arms around her. “I hated myself back then. Hated what I looked like, hated that my injuries were the first thing everyone saw. Everyone but Lucas.” When she looks up again, she’s almost beaming. “After that day, we saw a movie every Sunday afternoon for almostayear.”
“He sounds like agoodguy.”
“He is. You’lllikehim.”
Knowing she wants me to meet her friends soothes the raw frustration of spending half the day with my accountant, and as we launch another campaign, I can’t help but wonder how I’ll make it to Friday without kissing heragain.
* * *
Cam
Back in the office the next day, I try to ignore Royce’s closed door in favor of working out some of Oversight’s bugs. The longer I sit at my desk, though, the harder this becomes. When Royce stalks out of his office and heads for the lounge, I roll my eyes at Orion, our mobiledeveloper.
“Say something,” Orion whispers. “He’ll listentoyou.”
I’m not so sure about that, but I have to try, for all of our sakes. This gruff, pissy Royce isn’t helping anyone, and with ZoomWare coming up, and the Coana job on such a tight schedule, despite Lucas's excellent job finishing the second floor in a single day, we need our “fearlessleader.”
Off I go, and I can’t help hearing “The Imperial March” as I shuffle into the lounge to find Royce slumped in the bean bag chair, playingGrand Theft Autowith thesounddown.
We’re all geeks. Even Royce—sort of. Gaming is the one thing everyone in the office canagreeon.
“Youokay?”
He looks up, swears under his breath, and pauses the game. “Can’t a guy decompress inpeace?”
“Whoa. You want to be alone, you be alone.” I wish I could stalk, but all I can manage is a slow lope back to my desk. Nothing I do today is working, from Oversight’s cataloging module to talking to the man who used to be my surrogate big brother. It’s a damn good thing I’m not planning on seeing West tonight, or I’d find some way to screw thatup,too.
I wrestle with the code for another two hours, unable to figure out why every time I compile, the whole system crashes. The software has been stable for months. All I’m doing now is making the tweaks we’ll need to make for every customer: file storage locations, employee accounts, and some of the optional bits, like HVAC controls and emergency lighting overrides. Around me, the office stills as one person, and then another, and another heads home. Soon, Royce and I are the only two left, and he’s back in his office with the doorclosed.
As I’m packing up, he pokes his head out. “Can I talktoyou?”
