“Look.” I show her the next page, which is empty. “When Mom passed, I told myself I’d fill the second half of this book with my own life. But then, well, life got in the way.”
“Life getting in the way of life,” she murmurs. “I know the feeling.”
“Maybe we can fill it,” I say.
“Yeah…” She turns away. “Maybe.”
I repress a sigh. I’m not going to push her. I can’t do that. Ever.
“Let’s see the little hero, then,” I say.
She brightens immediately. “Noah?”
“The legend who brought DakkyDuck into the streaming world.”
“I didn’t even say, did I?” she says enthusiastically. “He gave me that name too. When he was little, before we even started playing Empire—before Empire was out, I think—he said I laughed like Daphne Duck. But he saidDakky, and it stuck.”
I chuckle. “That’s great.”
She stands, walking toward her bedroom. I swallow as I stare at the thick width of her perfect ass.Calm down, bro. But I can’t. Not ever. Not with her. But wanting to jump her bones every single second doesn’t mean I’ll turn full animal. Notallthe time, anyway.
“Not as fancy as yours,” she says, laughing as she waves her phone at me.
She spots my gaze going to her breasts, her nipples poking through the T as they bounce. She flushes, a secretive, seductive smile touching her lips.
“You’re easily distracted, goblin.”
“You’re very distracting.”
She sits beside me, opening her photos app. “I want to show you a video. I think you’ll appreciate it.”
I wrap my arm around her again, kissing the top of her head. “Let’s see it.”
She swipes through the favorites folder, finds it, then clicks play. A dark-haired, freckly teenage boy is sitting cross-legged on a living room floor, surrounded by Empire’s Fall figurines. They’re from the early days of our twenty-year-old game. Nostalgia hits me hard.
“Hello,” he says, enunciating his words carefully, clearly taking it seriously. My heart swells. “My name is Noah Mercer. I play a Paladin in the very gripping and enjoyable computer game, Empire’s Fall. I play with my cousin, Mara, and our best friend in the whole wide world, DakkyDuck!”
She sniffles from beside me, cuddling closer.
“This is a message to Halcyon,” he goes on, and I let out a shuddering breath. My eyes go misty again. “Thank you to everyone at Halcyon for making this interesting and challenging game. Thank you for making a whole world for me and my friends to play in. Thank you, Halcyon!”
“He loved it, Jack,” she murmurs, looking up at me with glistening eyes. Then she swipes through photos.
Noah, with one arm thrown around a woman I don’t recognize—Mara, I assume—and another around a younger, shyer version of Dakota. Then they’re at the fairground together, Noah biting into a giant ball of cotton candy. Photo after photo, showing their love, their closeness.
Then Dakota puts her phone down. “The next ones are of him in the hospital. I don’t want to look at those.”
“I understand,” I say. “I wish I could’ve met him. I wish I could’ve shown him what his favorite game became. Did he…” I pause, almost not wanting to ask it. “Did he send that video to us?”
“I’m sure you got thousands and thousands of messages back then,” she replies. “The game was just blowing up.”
And we had a tiny team for the scale of the project. Some days involved twenty-hour shifts, and sometimes it was twenty-four leading into another twenty-four, running on caffeine and vision.
“Dakota,” I say softly.
“Yeah,” she replies. “But that’s life. Not everything is clean. Or easy.”
“We know that better than most.” I hug her tighter. “How did he pass, if you don’t mind me asking? I know he was ill, but…”
