At Any Turn (Gaming The System) (16 page)

Fuck
. I combed my hand through my hair, struggling for something to say. But what I should
not
have said is exactly what came out of my mouth at that moment. “You’re going over the top with this, don’t you think? Projecting anything you can because you don’t want to feel guilty over leaving me to go through with plans you had before you even met me.”

Her jaw dropped. “Oh my God. Oh. My. God. Really, Adam, you are the most brilliant person I’ve ever met, but sometimes you just don’t get it. You are this massive force of nature that blows in and overwhelms me, yanking me around like a helpless ragdoll. And I
let
you.”

“That’s the problem—you see me as the storm. The storm is
life
. The storm is the bullshit you find yourself in and I’m the anchor that holds you down and keeps you safe, from getting blown away.”’

She started to shake, her eyes filling again with tears. Her fists balled at her sides. I took a step toward her, my hand outstretched, but she backed away. “I
wish
I could trust you enough to be my anchor when I need you. But I can’t. You
can’t
be in control of everything.” Then the most stunning thing happened—she erupted into tears. A loud, messy sort of sobbing that I’d only seen from her one other time—also brought about because of me in a very similar circumstance.

I froze. I wanted to go to her, pull her into my arms, but she was unbelievably pissed at me and I knew that was a bad idea. So in my panic I did the lamest thing possible. I grabbed a nearby box of tissues and held it out to her.

Without a word, she grabbed handfuls of the stuff and buried her face in it.

“Come here. Sit down, please?”

She let me steer her back to the couch while she continued to sob. I sat next to her, stupidly handing her more tissues as she made her way through the box at hand.

“Emilia. Talk to me,” I finally said when it looked like she was getting control of herself. “I’m sorry I fucked up. But I want to be here for you.”

She shook her head, wiping her face repeatedly. “You did fuck up. Big. Big time.”

I said nothing for a long time and she turned to me, as if waiting for some slick explanation to come out of my mouth, but I couldn’t give it to her. Instead my heart was pounding like I’d just run sprints and there was a chunk of ice at the pit of my stomach. I wanted to tell her how afraid I was. I was losing her and the more I sensed that she was slipping away the more I reflexively tightened my grip. She was right. I
needed
that control. Not having it froze my entrails with terror.

“What can I do to make it up to you?” I finally asked in a quiet voice.

She thought about that for a long time. “You need to back off.”

I did not tear my eyes from hers; they were attached, as if we were fused together, some invisible soul-tether holding us locked in each other’s gaze. “I can’t do that.”

Her jaw set. “You have to.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because you need to prove to me that you can deal and not be a complete nut job stalker when you don’t have the control.” She hesitated and looked away. “We need time away from each other. Time for you to give me space and show me that you don’t need to control or manipulate me. Because if you can’t prove that to me, I will never trust you and this will never work.”

We said nothing for long minutes. I rubbed my forehead. I hated this and wanted to rail against it. Already there were clever replies in my head, responses I could design to try and get a certain reaction from her. Now that she was pointing this out to me, it was almost scary how automatic that way of thinking was for me. I was always thinking my way around every situation, like it was a puzzle to solve, a challenge to overcome. Even with her.

But if I couldn’t stop this—if I
didn’t
stop it—I’d lose her forever. I tried to envision my life without her. I’d be lost, adrift. Free-falling through space. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“I just want to take care of you.”

Her voice was quiet but firm beside me. “Your idea of taking care means dominating every situation.”

Of course it did. Why was that a bad thing?
Be the driver, not the driven
. But I couldn’t drive
her
.

“How do I know you’ll be all right? That you’ll be safe?”

She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’ll take care of myself.”

My hands clenched into fists. “So we’re broken up then?”

“For now.”

My stomach dropped. “What does that mean?”

“It means we have to learn to trust each other. You have to trust me enough that you can back off and let me handle my life and I have to trust that you won’t be breathing down my neck and watching everything I do.”

I stayed silent. She watched me closely. I didn’t bat an eye—didn’t look at her. I had no idea what to say.

“Also, um. We need to draw a clear line. I can’t work at Draco—”

“
What?
Why?”

She looked away. “I shouldn’t work for you…”

I stiffened. But when the hell would I see her, then? We had some friends in common, but that was it. If she didn’t work for me, I wouldn’t know where she was all day. My fist closed. I couldn’t allow that, control issues or no. At least during the work hours of the day, Monday through Friday for the next three months, I’d know exactly where she’d be. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

“What about your commitments? The Con. I—
we
need you.”

She hesitated, so I pushed it. “What about Liam? How do you think he’d handle it if you just stopped working?”

She rubbed her brow. “That’s not fair.”

“Please, at least promise me you’ll stay until after the New Year.” And hopefully by then we’d have this figured out. God, I hoped so.

“I need some time to think about it. Give me a week.”

I took a breath and released it slowly. I
really
wanted that commitment from her now, but if I pushed it, then I was that much more of an idiot for not having learned my lesson. “Okay. Take as long as you need, but—Please come back.”

She rocked in her seat, appearing deep in thought. Tears started to leak from her eyes again, streaking her pale cheeks. My throat tightened and God if I didn’t feel the tears prickling my own eyes. Fuck. This
hurt.
This hurt so goddamned badly. I sniffed and looked away, blinking. No, I wouldn’t shed tears, not here, not in front of her. I hadn’t cried since—God, I couldn’t even remember. When I found out Bree had died—months after the fact? Not even then.

I wanted to pull her into my arms. I wanted to forbid her to leave me. I wanted to stand my ground and not give an inch. All my first instincts. All terrible mistakes.

I enfolded one of her cold hands with mine. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”

We were quiet again for a long, tense moment. Then she cleared her throat. “Adam, I still—”

“Don’t say it,” I choked out before she could finish, before the knife could sink deeper into my heart. “I don’t want to hear you say it again until you are in my arms, your lips an inch from mine ready to kiss me, ready to be mine again. Because, Emilia, if you can’t trust me to come back to me for forever, then don’t come back. I won’t be able to stand this again.”

She left minutes later. I walked her across Bay Island to her car and when I would have bent to kiss her good-bye, instead I opened her door for her. She looked up at me through the window for a long moment before she started the car. I stepped back and walked away, refusing to watch her drive away, drive out of my life.

My life was careening out of control. I was no longer steering. And I was losing everything.

Chapter Ten

The next day, Wednesday, I was at work again, this time spending the entire day on insurance and lawsuit business. I tried not to be pissed at Jordan every time he showed up in my office to work on stuff. It wasn’t his fault, after all, that I’d followed his shitty advice.

My cousin, Liam, made a rare appearance in my office just before lunch. When Maggie buzzed him in, I looked up in surprise, finishing typing out the e-mail I was working on. He went over to the window and stared out at the atrium.

“Hey guy, how are you doing?” I said, closing my computer.

He gave an agitated shrug and said nothing. Uh-oh. He was in one of his moods.

He didn’t turn to look at me, which was unsurprising as he rarely made eye contact with anyone. We, his family, were used to it, but most other people found it oddly unsettling. “Neurotypicals,” as Liam referred to us, had the disturbing habit of needing people to look them in the eye—a need that he lacked.

He reached up and fiddled with the edge of the window.

“What’s wrong?”

“Family dinner,” he mumbled.

“Sorry I had to bail early on that—”

He huffed and started pacing the room, his hands stuffed into his pants pockets. “Mia didn’t come.”

Chalk him up with the rest of my family who were more concerned about her not being there than me. Jeez. Did I smell bad or something?

So Liam was blaming her absence on me. Well, one thing could be said about my cousin. At least he was consistent.
Very
consistent.

“She wasn’t feeling well that day.”

Liam glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes.

“Everything’s messed up now. Everything. She’s not working here anymore. Why can’t you just apologize to her? Why can’t things be the way they were?”

I blinked. “I wish it were that easy.”

“It could be that easy. If you just stopped being an idiot.”

I took no shit from anyone, but I allowed a lot of leeway to my cousin. Nevertheless, he was now on my last goddamn nerve. “Watch yourself, Liam. I’m not in the mood and I don’t have my usual brand of patience, so if you are in here to bellyache about the fact that Emilia wasn’t at the family dinner you can—”

“Mia,” he said.

“What?”

“She prefers to be called Mia.”

Not by me.

“So you think she didn’t go to dinner because I don’t call her Mia?”

He kept pacing and pulled his hands out of his pockets and worked them furiously like he did when he got agitated. It was a stim—a soothing mechanism where he rubbed his palms with his fingers. “Shut up, Adam. You know that’s not the reason. Just apologize to her. Tell her you want her to come back.”

I stood up. This could be a good opportunity to reinforce that pressure that I’d wanted to lay on her to stay at the job. “Why don’t you call Mia? Let her know how much you miss her at the dinners and at work.”

He stopped his pacing so suddenly I thought he might fall over. He looked down at the floor, fiddling with his palm. “I did.”

Oh? Well, that was interesting. “What did she say?” God, was I so desperate to hear about her that I was interrogating my hostile cousin to give up anything he knew? I was pathetic.

He cleared his throat. “She said it wasn’t because of you that she wasn’t coming. But I know she’s lying.”

Liam finally shuffled over to the chair in front of me and slumped into it. “She just seemed so sad lately and tired. You’re her boyfriend. You’re supposed to make her happy.”

My jaw tightened as I fought off the bitter reply that jumped to the fore. I
would
make her happy, if she’d let me.

“I think going to medical school is what’s going to make her happy at this point,” I said, the words surprising even myself. My chest tightened and it was hard to breathe at that thought. I was almost certain that she was using our breakup as the excuse to accept the spot at Hopkins.

And my hands were completely tied when it came to finding a way to manipulate her to keep her here. I studied Liam’s bowed head for a moment. But…I wasn’t the
only
one who cared about her staying here. Her friends were all here. Liam, Alex, Jenna, Heath. And so was her mom. If I alone wasn’t a strong enough reason, maybe all of us combined
would
be.

I rubbed at the stubble on my jaw with the back of my fingers, mulling this over. It wasn’t like the intellectual puzzles I used to spend hours on when I was a kid. This was life. It was messy and it wasn’t logical. And since I was—most of the time—a very logical thinker, I knew this was far beyond my scope. The wheels started turning.

I turned back to Liam. “Hey, remember how you keep bugging me to start my D and D campaign up again?”

He blinked at me, clearly annoyed. Liam hated when anyone changed subjects without any warning. Even when it was a subject he would like. “What—what?” he asked.

“Sorry. I was just thinking that maybe we could all get together for a game. Mia’s friend Jenna has been wanting to get people together for a Dungeons and Dragons game for a while. I figure she might not mind if I run the game as DM and she could play a character. So could you and the others.”

He shook his head. “What does this have to do with Mia?”

“Well, they could invite her, too.” And it would be a great excuse to see her now that there was no other avenue for me to do it.

“But she’s never played. She likes computer games.”

I shrugged. “We’ll invite Heath, too, and they can all browbeat her into going.”

“Beat her?”

“Idiom,” I said, giving the usual cue that he was used to. My cousin was a bright guy and incredibly talented, but he had trouble with figurative language. And sarcasm. He didn’t do sarcasm at all.

“Okay. I don’t want to beat her. I was going to say if you beat her maybe that’s why she doesn’t want to be around you.”

I grimaced. “Thanks, Liam.” She didn’t want to be around me. The words stung, but they were true. And right now she had a pretty good reason for that. I just hoped it wasn’t so strong a reason that she’d want to avoid all her other friends in order to avoid me.

***

Jenna was thrilled when I proposed to run a dungeon for her and her friends. She invited us over to her and Alex’s apartment in Fullerton. I might have offered my house, but figured it more likely that Emilia would show up at Alex’s place. We crowded into the typical college pad—me, Liam, Alex, Jenna. Heath texted saying he was going to be late.

Not long after arriving, Jenna informed me that Emilia had sent her a brief text the day before indicating that she wouldn’t be able to come. I tried to curb my visible disappointment at this news. I’d worked extra hard to design a fun adventure that, I thought, would be an enjoyable introduction for her to tabletop gaming. Was she really so pissed off that she’d blow off all of her friends just to avoid me?