Leveling The Field (Gamers #4) (11 page)

“Lissa?”

Ethan nodded.

“Really?” Grant said. “Wow. How did that happen?”

Ethan kept it simple. “The wedding.”

“Oh, right, she took photos there, too.” Grant leaned his chin on his hand. “Huh. Good for you. Didn’t see that one coming. But sounds like she’s great for you, man. Have you told Chloe?”

Ethan shook his head. “I’ll come over one night this week or over the weekend, all right?”

“Yeah, sure, she’d like that. She just wants you to be happy.”

For once, Ethan could answer that with something positive. “I’m getting there.”

Grant rubbed his hands together. “So, no more soul-deadening talent search? You’re really going to do this?”

“Okay, don’t get that evil glint in your eye, Scorsese. I told you—my terms. My way. You want me behind that camera, I call the shots. And I think it’s worth it, since I’m really the most experienced and high profile candidate we’ve found.”

Grant laughed. “You know, normally I’d tell you to shut up, but I kind of love this confidence in you. Damn right, you’re the best choice. Why do you think I was such an asshole about it?”

Ethan resumed tapping his pen. “I thought at first that it might have been Chloe’s voice in your ear. But you seemed so adamant about it, and you care so much about this magazine, I know you want what is best for it.”

Grant nodded with a jerk of his head. “I do, and you’re the best for it. You have been since you’ve been involved here.”

“I, uh, did watch some of my old videos.” Ethan cringed.

“Oh yeah?” Grant asked.

“I said some dumb shit.”

Grant scoffed. “You were young. Cut yourself a break.”

“Grant, I nominated a game as my Top Dawg. Spelled D-A-W-G on the screen.”

His friend whistled. “Oh, that’s bad.”

“So bad.”

“That’s like, as nineties bad as the name E-Rad.”

Ethan groaned. “I will not go by that name again. I’m over thirty. That’s just embarrassing.”

“How about E-Rogaine?”

“Shut up.”

“E-AARP”

“I’m not
that
old.”

“E—”

“Shut. Up. Grant.”

His friend walked out of his office, whistling and pumping his fist in the air.

Ethan shook his head and tamped down the nerves that crawled over his skin like ants. He could do this. He had Grant and Chloe and Lissa at his back. With that support system, what could go wrong?

Chapter Fourteen

Ethan knocked on the door to Lissa’s studio and gripped the paper bag holding their dinner tighter. He was surprising her with panini and soup from the deli down the street. She’d mentioned a couple of times how much she liked the food there. And really, it was an excuse to see her. The last tim
e he’d seen her was when she’d stopped by his house Monday night to watch his old videos with him. And make fun of him. So now that it was Friday, he had every intention of seeing her.

A young man opened the door, and Ethan assumed he was her assistant. He wore a coat, his book bag was hitched over his shoulder, and he seemed to be on his way out. His gaze settled on Ethan’s face, and then his expression brightened. “Oh, are you here for Lissa’s project?”

He blinked. “The project?”

“Oh.” The man’s cheeks colored. “I saw the”—He waved a hand at his throat and jaw, in the same position where Ethan’s scars lay on his own skin—“and thought she was taking pictures of you for her project.”

Ethan didn’t say a word, and the man ducked his head. “Shit, I mean. Uh, never mind.”

“I’m here to see Lissa,” he said, still unsure what this conversation was about, because he seemed to be missing a large piece.

“Oh, okay. She’s in the studio finishing up with a client, so you can wait in her office.”

Ethan nodded and murmured a “thanks.” The man brushed past Ethan, and he turned to watch him as he hurried down the street, hunched against the cold. Then he turned back to the open door of the studio, his mind racing. Why would he see Ethan’s scars and assume he was part of some project?

Ethan stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him, then strode down the hallway. To the left, he glimpsed Lissa in the studio taking pictures of a young woman sitting on a stool. She glanced up at him, surprise in her eyes, and he held up the bag. “Take your time, I’ll be in your office.” She waved him off, taking a glance at the LCD screen on the back of her camera before resuming snapping photos.

He continued toward her office, where he closed the door behind him and sank down onto her chair. He placed the bag on a table near her desk. The unease that creeped into his veins at what Lissa’s assistant said was steadily growing.

He had no intention of going through her things, but when he placed the food down, it jolted her mouse and the screensaver shut off. And what he saw on the screen froze his breath in his lungs.

It was a picture of him.

He’d been sleeping, his face in profile in his bed. She had to have taken it the morning she’d spent the night, but he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told him.

He turned away quickly, his breathing turning into gasping pants as he sought to puzzle out in his head why the hell she’d taken pictures of him. And that was when his gaze landed on the white board behind her desk. There were pictures of people—all showing some sort of scars—taped to the whiteboard with a notecard next to their name. One woman had burn scars on her back and her card said, “Cindy Mathewson, 29, house fire.”

If Ethan hadn’t been sitting, his legs would have collapsed. His vision blurred and his head spun, because the white board was huge, taking up half of the wall and everywhere he looked. There was a note on the whiteboard:
Website launch for Rona’s Scars. Monday.

Scarred people, his picture on her computer. This mysterious project… Everything was adding up to something that made him want to throw up.

He gripped the chair, his mind fuzzy. He should leave. That’s right. He should get up and walk out and then go home and…do something that made him forget about everyone, everything.

“Ethan?”

He spun the chair to see Lissa standing in the doorway. Her brows were furrowed as she took in his face, then her gaze traveled to the whiteboard behind his head, and the pictures on her computer. She sucked in a breath and her face paled, and all of that sent Ethan’s stomach plummeting into his shoes.

She held out a hand. “Let me explain.”

He shook his head and opened his mouth, but no sound came out, because the woman who’d pushed him to change his life, who made him happy, who got him out of this funk had been…using him? He thought she was brutally honest, but had this all been a lie? “I need to go.”

“Ethan, please,” Lissa pleaded. “You have to hear me out.”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I think that board explains it all. And your assistant thought I was here for your
project.
” He knew his lips were curling, that his words were coming out harshly. He stood up, straightening his back to his full height, hoping it intimidated her, hoping she stepped aside so he could walk out the door. “I was always a project, wasn’t I? What, help the poor scarred man come out of his shell?

But Lissa didn’t back down. She never did. She spread her arms and gripped each side of the doorway so he couldn’t leave. “You
will
hear me out.”

He didn’t want to, though. He knew himself enough to know she might as well talk to the wall, because he wasn’t going to be receptive. Not while those pictures of him sleeping were right in front of his face on the computer. He didn’t say a word, just glared at her.

“Originally,” she said steadily, “I was going to ask you to be a part of my project, Rona’s Scars. I told you about my sister. I’ve spent a year interviewing people with scars to share their stories, so others can read their stories and feel less alone. I’ll be collecting donations for a scholarship in my sister’s name. So yes, I wanted you to be a part of it. But then we got involved, and I changed my mind.”

He didn’t believe her anymore. So he stood like a statue as her voice began to waver. “I took those pictures of you when you were sleeping. And I’m sorry for that. Maybe it was creepy, but I wanted you to see yourself how I see you. I know those scars are more than skin deep. I know it’s more than vanity, but that’s not all I see when I look at you. I see—”

“A man you could use,” he said bitterly. “You saw me as vulnerable.”

She flinched and stepped forward, holding out her hands toward him. “Ethan, no. Please. You can’t believe that. I had planned to tell you about my project before it went live. I wanted to find the right time so this, right here, didn’t happen. And I guess I waited too long—”

“You waited weeks too long,” he said through gritted teeth. “And who do you think you are?” His voice was rising and he knew it. He hated it, but the fury was building and building in his gut, and he felt like he was going to burst out of his skin. “We fucked a couple of times. We spent one night together, and that gives you the right to be my therapist? Fuck you, Lissa.”

He took a step forward, hoping to step past her to the door, but again she blocked it with her body. He stood there, towering over her, breathing through his nostrils so he didn’t take this entire office apart with his bare hands.

Hell hath no fury like a scarred man scorned.

…

This had been what she’d wanted to avoid. Right now. A furious Ethan who was on the brink of a complete meltdown.

Her heart ached, because every bit of warmth that had been in his eyes when he looked at her was gone. So completely gone that she wondered if she’d imagined it in the first place.

“You have to believe me.” She was faking bravado
now. Deep down, she knew Ethan wouldn’t hurt her, but his entire body was a coiled spring, and her instinct was to flee. She ignored that instinct.

“Was that your plan?” His voice dropped eerily low. “Sleep with me, use that tight body and sweet ass of yours to convince me to be a part of this? To allow you to take my picture and then plaster it all over the internet?”

“No,” she said, her voice cracking. His words hurt her, but what hurt the most was the steel in his tone. The utter lack of…anything. “That’s not true. I tried to avoid sleeping together because of this. Because I knew you’d accuse me—”

“You certainly didn’t try hard.”

“Maybe you were hard to resist,” she shot back, getting angry now.

He scoffed. “What, do you have a scar fetish?” He pointed to a man on her board. “Did you get on your knees for him, too? Smile at him with those red lips, suck him dry, and then take his picture?”

Shit, she was shaking now, the hatred in his voice and his accusations breaking through her shield of courage. “Stop.”

“What about him?” He jabbed his finger at another man. “Did you pull up your dress for him? Did you take his cock inside of you and ride him until he agreed to be some project?”

“Ethan.” She gritted her teeth as the tears gathered in the corner of her eyes. “Stop. Please stop.”

“Did you try to tell all of them that they were actually beautiful just so they’d agree to help you?” He took another step forward. “You’re a vulture.” He spat the last word and she stumbled to the side until her back hit a wall. “Delete those pictures,” he said, pointing at her computer. “Delete them, because I’m not allowing you to pick at my bones. I’m done with you, and you’ll be lucky if I don’t find a way to shut down this project and your studio. Leave me alone.”

The doorway was clear now, so Ethan took advantage of it, striding out of it without looking back. She hadn’t expected him to glance her way one last time, but that didn’t stop the panic from rising in her chest.

For a split second, she thought about running after him. But she’d told the truth, or what little she could think to say in the moment. If he didn’t believe her, then nothing she said would do any good.

The click of his dress shoes echoed from the hallway, and then she heard the slam of the front door. She was alone now, her client having left before her conversation with Ethan, which was a blessing.

Lissa walked to her chair and sat down numbly.

She had worked so hard on all of this for Rona, and she still believed in it, still believed in the scholarship in Rona’s name. But right now all she wanted to do was burn all the pictures on her white board and wipe it clean.

Her monitor caught her eye and she choked on a sob at the pictures of Ethan plastered all over it. Fumbling with the mouse through a haze of tears, she closed out all the pictures. She hadn’t known Ethan was stopping by. She’d put up the whiteboard this week in anticipation for the launch, to double-check all the participants and make sure she hadn’t missed anyone or confused the details. And she had been so close to choosing which pictures of Ethan to show him.

But that was ruined now. Her heart ached to think that he’d now question everything she said to him. Other than not mentioning the project, she’d been nothing less than honest. She’d been attracted to him since the moment she saw him exit his car in the
Gamers
parking lot. Before she knew who he was. Before she saw his scars. Before she knew he could light up her body with a touch of his hand and then make her laugh.

Before all of this, she’d wanted him. And she’d never meant to use him. Why couldn’t he understand she’d tried to do the right thing? If only she’d told him sooner about the project, or came clean about taking pictures of him.

If only she’d done all of this differently, they’d be in her office now, talking. And later, maybe dragging out the bearskin rug for a repeat.

A paper bag sat on her desk, and she reached out slowly, unrolled the top, then peaked inside. The smell of melted cheese and hot vegetable soup wafted out from the bag. She closed her eyes as a fresh wave of tears threatened. He’d brought her sandwiches and soup from her favorite deli. He’d wanted to surprise her with dinner and his presence, and he’d left feeling used.

She took the bag and threw it in the trash, then dropped her head into her hands. She couldn’t go after him now. He would still be fueled by anger. Would there be a time he’d be willing to listen to her? She wasn’t so sure. And that was the worst thought of all.