Graphically Novel (Love Hashtagged #3) (16 page)

Rae pressed her forehead to her sister’s apartment door. The coffee she’d grabbed before she caught her connecting flight two hours ago was a distant memory, and the exhaustion of spending half her day traveling filled her bones.

But she was here now and looking forward to spending some time with Chloe, catching up with the rest of her family, and friends. Just being back in her hometown.

She pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed.

“Sis, hey. I’m so sorry; I meant to call.” Chloe’s greeting was cheerful despite the fatigue in her voice. “Did you land?”

Poor kid must be working late
. Though
kid
wasn’t really appropriate anymore. Chloe was only five years younger than her twenty-eight. Rae pushed sympathy into her tone. “About an hour ago. You sound swamped.”

“A little. We’re trying to get a demo together for E3, and QA found a bunch of last minute crap.”

Chloe’s tendency to slide into industry lingo was difficult to follow. Fortunately, this time Rae kept up. E3 was a huge annual video game expo, and QA was quality assurance—the group responsible for testing the games Chloe and her colleagues created. “It’s no big deal. I’ll grab dinner and meet you back here. How long do you think you’ll be?”

Visiting any other city, Rae would have found an apartment, or at least an extended stay motel. That was for work though, and this was a vacation combined with looking for her next contract. Chloe offered her guest bedroom for Rae’s use while she was in town, and it sounded a lot more comfortable than a generic room with no personality.

“I don’t know how late we’ll be here.” Chloe’s sigh echoed off the mic. “Stop by and grab a key from me, so you can at least get settled.”

“Umm…” Rae didn’t want to hesitate. She shouldn’t care who else may or may not be in the office. The sliver of doubt lingered in her head, mingling with the memory of steel-blue eyes. Hungry kisses stolen in the front seat of his car, parked in front of her parent’s house late at night. Hours spent talking about everything under the sun. More kisses. She pushed the images aside.

“You can’t avoid him forever,” Chloe said.

But they were going on ten years, and that was a decent run. Chloe was right. A decade was a bit ridiculous. “I’m not avoiding anyone.”

“Glad to hear it.” Some of the weariness in Chloe’s tone vanished. “Stop by, grab my keys.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” At least it was a gorgeous evening. After Rae made her way back to her rental car, she headed downtown. She’d visited Chloe’s workplace a few times in the past. The drive would be pleasant. It was after five on a Friday afternoon, so traffic would be heading in the other direction, and if she was going to be downtown anyway, she could pick up dinner. See what was new.

A jolt of longing sped through her. At times, it felt like it was all new. With more time between each trip home, the city had a chance to remake itself over and over. That wasn’t really the case, but it felt like it.

She loved her job, and the fact she got to see the country, a new city every six months to a year. However, watching a place change, and coming back to it already grown were two different experiences. Sometimes she had the desire to find a place to call home base, and not have to pick up and go again just as she got comfortable. That urge usually hit right about the time she spent too long out of work, which meant she needed to remember this was a vacation, not a place to grow roots.

The buildings grew taller and closer together as she traveled nearer to the center of Salt Lake City. Nothing comparable to the large skyscrapers on the East Coast, but the older architecture here was gorgeous. Granite three- and four-story buildings sprawled with arched windows, and columns holding everything together.

Rae parked near a cluster of the century-old structures and made her way to one in the middle. She skipped the elevator—classic or not, the jerky ride scared her—and took the narrow stairs to the second floor. The etched glass on the only door in the hallway proclaimed
Cord, Incorporated
.

She cringed at the brown paper taped to the glass hiding something. A chemical scent singed her sinuses. Was it being updated to add
A Digital Media Company
? She pushed inside and paused at the empty reception desk. No one was going to mind if she wandered back to Chloe’s workstation. She knew the way.

Her earlier hesitation fluttered again, bringing her to a standstill. If Zach was here… She shoved against the thought with all her might. Chloe was right. It wasn’t as if they could avoid each other forever, and there was no way he still cared what happened all those years ago. Hell, when Rae thought about it, she didn’t care. The realization flipped a switch in her head. What had started as all those years ago as irritation and a feeling of betrayal for the way they left things, became habit as time passed. An instinct to keep him out of her life, because that was just what she did.

“Rae?” A familiar voice tickled her ears.

She grinned as she spun toward the sound. She hadn’t kept in touch with many people from high school, but Scott was one of her best friends. The person she could geek out with. Her confidant and anchor to sanity. He was also CTO—Chief Technology Officer—and co-founder of Cord.

True, last time they’d seen each other in person, almost three years ago, things were awkward. Their conversations since, chatting online and texting had grown shorter and farther apart. But he was still Scott.

When he wrapped her in a friendly hug, her trepidation faded. “Hey.” She threw her arms around his neck.

He squeezed tight, lifting her off her feet, before letting go. “You look good. I wish I’d known you were going to be in town.”

“Last minute plans. My next contract fell through, so I thought
impromptu vacation
.” She took a few steps back, so she didn't have to tilt her head quite as much to see him. He looked good too. Then again, he always did. Almost a foot taller than her five feet four, with broad shoulders and a flat stomach, he defied everything about the geek stereotype… Until he talked tech. He designed Cord’s graphics engine and so many other bits of underlying code for their games. When he got going on a brainstorming tangent, his ideas flew over a lot of heads.

“If you're here for Chloe, I'm sorry, but I need her working tonight. No exceptions, even for you.”

The stilted transition from friendly to business both relieved and disappointed her. She missed the friendly banter with Scott, but what if the last time they got together was her warning they couldn’t get that level of closeness back?

“She told me. I'm just borrowing a house key.” Rae wasn't surprised Chloe hadn't mentioned the trip to her coworkers. When Chloe landed the head writer job a few years back, she and Scott left any conversation about Rae off the table, especially at work. Chloe earned the position on her own merits and wanted people to know it, instead of thinking her older sister pulled strings with the boss. Rae agreed with the decision. Even though Chloe's talent was no longer in question, some habits died hard.

Scott rested a hand at the small of her back and pointed her toward the conference and meeting areas. “They’re all in the war room.”

Concern brought back the foul taste the new glass etching had left in her mouth. Almost a year ago, Cord had been subject to what Chloe referred to as a no-lube violation. Rae interpreted that to mean a hostile takeover by Digital Media. As Rae understood it, things had been all hands off from the new parent company until just a few months ago when they started to sink their claws in. “Is it that bad?” Rae asked.

“I’m stealing my people’s Friday night. What do you think?”

“Chloe’s version is the world is going to explode in the fiery death hate of DM. Give me some substance.”

Scott raked his fingers through his hair. “One of their top executives is going to be in the office
interviewing
everyone to see who’s vital to the group, and they’ve upped our E3 delivery from a video to a fifteen-minute playable demo.”

In other words, staff cuts on top of extra work, plus babysitting upper management.
“Ouch.”

“Yup.” Scott steered her toward an open door emanating an eerie atmosphere. Not even whispered conversations, interrupted the clack of fingers on keyboards. Tension filled the room and no one looked up from their computers.

Seven people sat at a round table that almost filled the room. Cords and laptops ran to every outlet, and empty pizza boxes were piled in the corner, with one still sitting in the middle of the group. She suspected the building cleaning staff had been by recently, or the trash would have overflowed with Mountain Dew cans.

Despite the almost tangible stress and the mess, the setting energized Rae. She loved what she did for a living, but if she could spin her skills into landing something like a director of finance position for a video game company, she’d take it in an instant. Too bad jobs like that were few and far between.

Rae recognized some of the bowed heads, worshiping the gods of overtime. Jordan—Chloe’s boyfriend and Cord’s head of art and character design—sat at the far side of room, the largest screen almost blocking him from view. Chloe was next to him, pen in her mouth, brow furrowed. The fact Rae and Chloe were sisters would have been more obvious, but Chloe dyed her hair black and loved her heavy eyeliner, which made her fair skin appear even paler. Unlike Rae who didn’t work to hide her dirty-blond hair or avoid the sun at all costs.

Rae’s traveling gaze skittered to a stop when she saw
him
. Butterflies whirred to life in her chest, and her heart skipped a beat. Zach, bent at the waist, arm on the back of a developer’s chair, pointed at something.

The cover of
Forbes
hadn’t done Zach justice. Blond hair pulled into a ponytail that hung just past his collar and perfectly pressed slacks and a button-down shirt covered a slender, sturdy frame. He looked better than he should. Not that she should care. Their shared past was just that—in the past. Except seeing him again, even after so long, summoned more fond memories. The way they could spend hours, and weekends, and holidays together, and still never get tired of each other. She resisted the urge to shake her head to rid herself of the memories. That was then.

“Look who I found.” Scott’s announcement sounded unnaturally loud. Several people jumped, and everyone turned toward them. Except Jordan, headphones on, volume apparently cranked up.

Zach’s gaze met Rae’s for the briefest second, and her breath caught in her throat. Something unreadable flashed across his face—surprise? Hope? Irritation? Just as quickly, a neutral smile appeared, and he turned back to the developer.

“You made it.” Chloe bounded from her chair and crossed the room. She hugged Rae then pressed a key into her palm. “I’m really sorry. Make yourself at home. Keep in mind there’s probably nothing but Dew in the fridge, and with any luck, the head slave drivers won’t keep us here too late.” She turned to Scott. “Kidding, of course.”

“Of course.” He sounded more amused than annoyed.

Chloe returned to her seat and nudged Jordan, who looked up long enough to wave. Rae exchanged a few more hellos, including a polite hi directed at Zach. With a promise to Scott they’d catch up when he was only neck-deep in work instead of in over his head, she turned away.

She only made it a few steps, when Scott’s call made her pause.

“Rae, wait up.”

She whirled back to face him, and her gaze landed on Zach. He watched them, curiosity in his eyes. Rae pulled her attention away first, not wanting to read too much into his expression. “What’s up?” she asked Scott.

“How have you been?”

The question was polite enough. Friendly conversation, a kind inquiry. But it was such a benign greeting compared to the bear hug, and a sharp contrast to the business demeanor, that it made her frown. “I’ve been okay. Working, living, seeing the world.” She would have turned it back on him, but she had a pretty good idea, at least on the surface, how he was.

“Are you going to be in town long enough we can actually catch up, instead of this superficial bullshit?”

Her smile returned full-force. That was the Scott she knew. The man she missed. “I have a feeling my schedule is more open than yours. What’d you have in mind?”

“We do breakfast Sunday mornings. Brunch, more like it. We’re thinking Silver Lake up in Park City this weekend. Join us.”

“Us.” She wasn’t asking, she already knew he meant Zach.

“Not an answer.” Scott reached for her hand, and squeezed her fingers. “Does it even matter anymore?”

Why did people keep asking her that today? No one cared before now. Or maybe everyone always had, and it was time for her to grow up a little and move on. “I don’t want to interrupt your plans, but if you’re both okay with it, it sounds great.”

“Excuse me.” A male voice interrupted from behind.

She turned, and found herself face to face with a FedEx delivery guy. She jumped in surprise. Her hand flew to her hammering heart, and she choked on a nervous laugh.

The man glanced up from his clipboard, and handed Scott an envelope. “This one’s for you specifically.”

Scott took the letter, jaw clenched.