Sixteen
“How was it?”
Elaine blinked at Hadrian he came around the edge of the table to his usual spot across from her, the spot that left his back to the window and the wall. He looked tired, but otherwise seemed all right as he slid into his chair, setting his laptop case on the table a few inches shy of one of her teetering stacks of books.
“How was what?” she asked, dumbfounded.
Bolts on Friday and then suddenly back here on Monday like there’s nothing wrong? She canted her head to one side, studying him, seeking signs of what might have happened. His expression and stance revealed nothing—it was as if nothing happened.
Nothing as opposed to her roller coaster of a weekend.
Saturday morning she’d spent more than two hours talking to Caius in game—seeming to talk about everything and nothing all at the same time, but if she said that she hadn’t enjoyed every second of it, she’d have been lying. It had been nearly noon when she’d headed back downstairs, finding Joslyn and Jason fast asleep on the couch in the living room, Joslyn tucked against Jason’s chest, his arms around her and her arms around his.
It had been at that point when she realized that he looked familiar, that she’d recognized him.
Jason Grey, one of the founders of the game she’d been playing since it launch, was asleep on her couch with her roommate—was in a relationship with her roommate, one that was much more serious, it seemed, than she’d initially thought. Oh, she’d known that they’d been talking for a long time, that they’d gotten to be close friends, but what she’d seen over the weekend went deeper than what she’d expected—even in light of Joslyn’s confession in the car on Friday night that she was pretty sure that she was in love with him.
That had gotten her thinking—if Jason was Jason Grey of GreySoft and he played Ascalon, who did that make Caius?
She still hadn’t worked up the guts to ask, though she strongly suspected she knew exactly who he was and that scared her a little bit.
It still hadn’t stopped her from talking to him again on Saturday night, then again on Sunday—and planning on checking in on him again that night after research and seminar.
“Well, Thursday and then Friday? How was it? Did you have a good time?” Hadrian watched her as he started to unpack his work.
“Yeah,” she said, watching him. “Yeah, I did. I’m glad I went—on both counts. I think I made a new friend.” She glanced back down at her notebook, drumming her pen against it. “And then things got exciting Saturday morning.”
“Exciting?” he looked at her, pausing in the middle of logging into his laptop. “Exciting how?”
“Well, you know that guy that she’s been talking to in the game for months?”
Hadrian nodded slightly. “Yeah, I remember you talking about it. Something wrong?”
“No,” Elaine said. “No, not at all. In fact, when I left the townhouse this morning, they were still in bed.”
Hadrian froze. “What?”
“He drove all the way here from Wisconsin on Friday night,” Elaine said, watching Hadrian’s expression. “He came to see her.”
Hadrian let out a low, soft whistle. “Wow. Something changed?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. He hasn’t told me what, but Joss hinted a little bit. He was in the service and someone he knew got killed and someone else got hurt and he was feeling pretty adrift and reached out to her. I guess they both kind of reassessed and reset and made some decisions.” Elaine smiled, looking back down to her notebook again. “He’s a nice guy and I think they’ll be good together.”
“You’ve got pretty good instincts when it comes to that kind of thing,” Hadrian said softly. “I’m sure you’re right.”
“What about you?” Elaine asked, glancing up again. “You bailed out pretty quick on Friday. Everything okay?”
Hadrian winced slightly but nodded. “Yeah, yeah, stuff’s okay. Had to swing down to Chicago unexpectedly.”
“Chicago?” Elaine frowned. “Is your brother okay?”
“Yeah, Tony’s fine—next time I talk to him I’ll make sure I let him know you asked. It was something else.”
“Something connected to why you missed most of September?”
He winced again. Elaine sighed, leaning back and hoping she hadn’t hit a sore spot.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. You don’t have—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off. “No, it’s okay. You deserve to know. Friend of mine got hurt in September and we were in Chicago because Ky and her partner got tapped to help with the investigation. I came for moral support for everyone involved. It was where I needed to be and I kept up with stuff up here as best I could. Profs understood once I explained what was going on. I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner. It wasn’t fair of me to keep you in the dark.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It was your business. I shouldn’t have pressed. You didn’t have to tell me.”
“I did,” he said, then smiled faintly. “Don’t worry about it too much. You didn’t press—not too hard, anyway, and not for anything that you shouldn’t know.” He tapped a few keys on his keyboard before he spoke again. “Tony did call me on Friday and that’s why I bolted like I did, but not because anything was wrong with him or Ky or Maggie or the kids. There was some stuff with the case and with my friend who got hurt and we needed to get down there as soon as we could.”
“Is everything okay?”
“It will be,” Hadrian said. “I have faith in that.”
Elaine nodded. “All right. Good. Good. I’m glad. I—I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried when you bolted like that on Friday. I mean, I know you said it wasn’t Ky or the kids, but that still set off all kinds of alarms, you know?”
Hadrian smiled crookedly. “And you’ve got a pretty active imagination, so I’m sure you came up with all kinds of awful things.”
She choked on a laugh. “Mitigated only by the fact that you told me it wasn’t Ky or the kids and the fact that something and someone managed to distract me for a decent chunk of the weekend. Redirection is sometimes the best solution to me worrying about shit I shouldn’t.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind,” Hadrian said, grinning at her. “In any event, everything’s pretty much okay for now, but if something changes, you’ll know pretty quick since outside of my family, you’re the person I see the most.”
“Only because we staked out this corner together,” Elaine said, reaching for one of the books she’d stacked on the desk, already sprouting a dozen paper markers tucked between the pages.
One of his shoulders hitched in a shrug. “Not just that. I trust you and I don’t trust a lot of people. Or have that many friends, for that matter. You’re one of them.”
“The honored few,” she teased, though only mildly. Hadrian smiled, nodding slightly.
“An accurate assessment,” he said quietly, turning to his laptop screen. For a few moments, they lapsed into silence, both intent on their work.
That didn’t last.
Hadrian reached over, covering her hand with his and stilling the pen she’d been drumming against her notebook—without noticing that she’d been doing it. She startled, looking up from her book and meeting his gaze. Hadrian arched a brow.
“Okay,” he said. “Real talk time. What’s bugging you?”
“What makes you think—”
“Because after a year I of this I’d like to think at least I know you a little bit. You’ve been drumming your pen against your notebook for fifteen minutes and I’d like to know if you remember any of what you’ve read in that period of time.”
Elaine winced, glancing down at the book in front of her. The words on the page were unfamiliar, even in the section she knew she’d read a moment before. A sigh escaped her lips and she squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds. “So the guy that Joss has been talking with—the one that’s at my house? It’s Jason Grey. GreySoft’s Jason Grey—one of the founders of the company.”
Hadrian’s brow furrowed slightly. “That’s what’s bothering you?”
“Yes,” she blurted, then sighed, leaning back in her chair and covering her face with both hands. “No. No, it’s not. What’s bugging me is a conclusion I’m drawing based on that and I can’t bring myself to ask the question I need to ask to confirm what I suspect.”
“Why not? What are you thinking?” Hadrian’s brow arched as he studied her. “What’s going on?”
“I met someone in game,” she said, forcing herself to put down her pen before she started drumming it against her notebook again. “I’ve been talking to him a lot—and I like it. I really, really like it. We never talk out of character, though, it’s all roleplay, it’s all characters, but I look forward to doing it. It’s fun.”
“So what’s the problem?” Hadrian said, his brow furrowing now. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Laney. You’re allowed to enjoy a little escapism.”
“That’s not the part that’s bothering me,” she said. “It’s who I suspect is behind the character I can’t wait to log on and talk to, the one that I’m excited to get a message from. That’s the part that’s bothering me.”
“What’s the question you can’t ask?” Hadrian asked, watching her, as if he knew that was at the root of what was bothering her. Maybe he did—he always seemed to be able to figure her out.
He always seemed to be able to figure most people out.
Elaine exhaled. “I can’t ask him if he’s Peter Grey.”
