A long pause while he looked at me. He released my hands but did not move. I slowly lowered them. “I guess we’ll see.” And then he waited, running a hand through his hair, taking a step back.
As usual, he had completely flipped the dynamic between us. I’d walked into that confrontation thinking I had the all the power. And I did. Until he had decided it was enough and wrested it from me as if I was a toddler with a toy she shouldn’t have been holding.
We watched each other for long moments. “You can’t keep doing this,” I said.
“Actually, I can. Say you’ll come, Emilia.”
Oh, I knew Heath would freak when he heard this—if I agreed to go, be gone practically a week. My mom…what would I tell her? She’d call and want to know why I wasn’t getting back to her. And the blog. And my hospital job.
But this would be our last time together. He couldn’t drag it out any longer. And the feelings he was stirring inside me, quite frankly, terrified me. The sooner we were through with this and I was back to my safe, normal life, the better.
My answer came out in a breathy sigh. “I’ll go.”
“Now tell me you are going to move in here,” he said in a deadpan voice.
“No fucking way,” I breathed.
The right corner of his mouth tugged up in a smile. “I figured I’d give it a shot.”
I stuck out my tongue and he laughed.
He checked his watch and backed away suddenly. “We gotta go grab some lunch downstairs. You like Cuban?”
“Floriano’s? Sure.” Heath treated me to Floriano Café when he had the urge for Cuban. I didn’t know whether it had anything to do with his ongoing crush on one of the waiters or his constant craving for a plate of Pork al Habañera.
I followed Adam down the narrow antique stairway, through the glass door and into the alley. He held the door for me and, walking beside me, placed a hand at the small of my back. Every muscle there pulled taut in response to his touch.
We shuffled down the narrow alleyway and past the cigar shop, where old men sat outside blowing sickly sweet smoke into the Plaza, and settled in to one of the metal tables on the sidewalk.
“So tell me, whose idea was it to dress the female characters in Dragon Epoch in armored lingerie?” I said, finally broaching a subject I’d avoided until now—my teasing commentary of his game on my blog.
He glanced at me sidelong from his study of the menu. “I came up with the story concept and the game architecture. I didn’t design the women’s clothes.”
“But you had final approval. Why not throw the poor things in something that will cover up their bare midriffs? How would that armor even help them, anyway?”
“I bow to the overwhelming research provided by my marketing people and the game devs who push the issue constantly. Were it up to me, those poor elf maidens would be covered from head to toe.”
I smirked. “And would they be as busty as they are now? Who makes bras in Yondareth, anyway?” I said, referring to the fictional world in which Dragon Epoch was situated.
He suppressed a laugh. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Suddenly the flash of a memory popped up in my mind. All those figurines that William had been painting—most of them had been women! “Shut up—not your cousin!” My mouth dropped in shock.
“Yep. Blame Liam. I’m totally innocent.”
I peered at him. “I could call you many things but ‘innocent’ is not one of them.”
As we talked, a group of people came out of the nearby Starbucks on the corner and one of them stopped when she saw us at our small table.
“Adam?” she said. We looked up. It was Lindsay, of all people, and when her eyes landed on me, they widened.
“Linds,” he said mildly. “How’s the coffee break?”
Without being invited to do so, she grabbed a chair from another table and plunked down in front of us. I glanced at Adam, who looked uncomfortable—probably because I knew their history now. Oh, I could turn this into a thing of beauty. Make Adam suffer a little bit and stick it to this lady with her sneers at my faded jeans and T-shirt.
I scooted my chair closer to Adam’s until they were flush up against each other. Adam cleared his throat. “Lindsay, you remember my friend Emilia?”
“Everyone calls me Mia, actually,” I said, leaning forward to shake her hand with the fakest damn smile I’d ever faked. “Adam was just talking to me about you!” I said sweetly.
Lindsay turned to Adam with a small smile. “All good, I hope.”