Category: writing

Twenty

“Has it really been his entire life?”

The question was softly spoken, unexpected and a little jarring. Jason swallowed hard, setting down his coffee mug. He leaned back, regarding Elaine with a measuring look, brow furrowing.

How does she know?

The previous day was just a series of jagged moments in his memory. Lingering in bed and making love with Joslyn. His phone ringing non-stop. Answering. Marissa on the phone, telling him it was back, that Peter was sick again, asking where he was, saying he needed to come home. Panic. Elaine telling him not to go, that his brother wanted him to stay.

He’d talked to Peter later. His brother had sounded exhausted but had repeated what Elaine had said—that he wanted him to stay where he was, at least for now.

“It’s time for you to live a little,” Peter had told him. “Take a chance, little brother. Don’t worry about me. What happens to me happens whether you’re here or not. Stay there—stay with her. You love her. Don’t screw that up.”

Jason didn’t think leaving would have screwed anything up, but if Peter wanted him to stay, he’d stay—at least a little longer. He hadn’t had a vacation since the one he’d taken a few weeks after getting out of the service years before. This was his break—such as it was.

He glanced toward Joslyn for a second and felt a little warmer. As breaks went, it definitely wasn’t bad. His gaze shifted back to Elaine. “That’s quite a question when you haven’t even had a cup of coffee this morning.”

One corner of her mouth curved into a faint smile. “It’s just been bothering me all night,” she said, heading for the coffeemaker on the counter. “Ever since he and I talked.”

Jason nodded slowly, watching her. “Then you did talk.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah, for a couple hours. Maybe longer. I think I kind of lost track of time.”

“He has that effect on people.” Jason idly reached for Joslyn’s hand and found it readily, her fingers warm and strong as they squeezed his. “Peter can be pretty engaging when he tries.”

Elaine nodded slowly. Joslyn squeezed his hand again.

“You haven’t answered her question,” Joslyn said. “Honestly, I’d kind of like to know, too. You’re pretty worried about him.”

“I am,” Jason admitted. “But he also told me to stay and I intend to.”

Elaine slid into a chair at the table, a mug cradled between her hands. “So has it been?”

Jason nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, at least as far back as I can remember. It’s, uhm, it’s why he and I are estranged from our parents. Marissa still talks to them a little but not about us. They kind of lost the privilege of being a part of our lives because of some stuff they did when we were younger.”

“You’re estranged from your parents?” Joslyn asked, brow furrowing. “I mean, I knew they weren’t a part of your lives but I thought they were just…gone, you know?”

“That’s because it’s hard to explain. It’s easier to just gloss it and leave it be.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Elaine said, taking a sip of her coffee. “Talking about that kind of stuff can be shitty.”

“That’s one word for it,” Jason said, then managed to smile. “Complicated and painful and confusing kind of fits this one better.” He sighed, brushing his thumb across Joslyn’s knuckles. “Peter and I were legally emancipated from our parents when were teenagers. There was a trust involved that was earmarked for us and my parents were basically dipping into it for Peter’s medical treatment without any of our consent against the terms of the trust. That was the case we made in court—the larger chunk of it, anyway.” He smiled sadly and shook his head. “The real problem that Peter had—and I guess a little bit of Marissa, too—was the fact that our parents kind of ignored I existed. He was everything and I…I guess he felt like they treated me like I was nothing and honestly, I’m not sure how wrong he was in hindsight. They were always hyper focused on him. Marissa basically raised me. Uncle Ezacaius helped when he was around but he really wasn’t around much because he was working all the time. He helped with the emancipation, too.” He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “So we were legally on our own when I was sixteen and Peter was seventeen. He’s was already halfway through a bachelor’s by then. I was still in high school.”

“I didn’t realize you guys were that close in age,” Joslyn said softly. “For some reason I always thought he was older.”

“Well, he is Doctor Peter Grey,” Jason said with a crooked smile. “Genius-level intelligence does that kind of crazy shit. A lot of the heavy lifting and developing that went into the tech we’re using for Universe came from his dissertation project.”

“He said he wanted it to help people,” Elaine said, staring down into her coffee.

Jason nodded. “Yeah. He’s been working on some things as a side project to the game on the down-low, stuff to maybe help veterans and other victims of traumatic injury with physical and mental recovery. It’s important to him to make a difference and give a little back. Or a lot, if you ask some people.”

For a few seconds, he stared off into space, thoughts drifting to a conversation now a year past, when he’d gone looking for his brother to tell him it was time to come eat dinner. It was Thanksgiving, and Peter had quietly snuck off to Brannon’s office to snag a little bit of peace from the crowds that had descended on Marissa’s house for dinner. Their uncle had been there for once, their parents decidedly not in deference to both Peter and Jason—and to a greater or lesser extent, their uncle, too. He’d found Peter sitting near a window, notebook in hand, jotting something down in his tiny, neat handwriting, the page already half full of calculations and notes. Jason had asked him what he was doing and Peter had just smiled and shook his head.

“A dream,” he’d said. “Something beyond the boundaries of a game but built on the game to help people who need it the most. Not ready yet, but someday. Someday, Jason.”

“We hire a lot of vets,” he said quietly, almost as an afterthought. “About half my team are, then a bunch of the programmers, a couple of the GMs. Marissa’s got a few on her business team, a couple in HR. It just—we try but in some ways it doesn’t feel like enough.” He thought back to Zander and the first time his friend had tried out the immersion functionality of the game. He could still remember the look on the artist’s face. It had been a year since he’d walked at that point, and the game had let him run. For someone who’d been an athlete in high school and was facing the very real possibility of never standing again, let alone walking, that had meant the world. That had been the first time he’d really begun to understand what Peter was trying to accomplish with his side project. Things had started to click, slowly but surely.

“Is that because of you?” Joslyn asked softly.

Jason shook his head. “Not entirely. It was something important to us, though. Brannon’s brother and dad did stints in the RAF and one of our uncles that we never see was in the service, too, but Mom never talked about what he was doing or when, just that he had. Then there was me.”

“You guys are incredible,” Elaine said softly. “You know that, right? Everything you’ve done so far with Universe and the technology and everything? It’s insane, it’s wonderful.”

He shrugged slightly. “It’s just something we set out to do—Rissa and Brannon and Peter and I. And we did it.” He swallowed hard, reaching for his mug and gulping down a deep swallow of coffee before he trusted himself to speak. “Peter keeps saying it’s his legacy—the thing he wants to pass down to our niece and any other kids that Rissa and Brannon have, any family I eventually have. He never talks about having a family himself.”

The lump in his throat was so huge it threatened to choke him. He gulped down more coffee, trying to swallow the lump down with it. It helped, but it didn’t go away. You couldn’t just drink away feelings, no matter how much people tried with the beverages of their choice or just the beverages at hand.

Joslyn’s fingers tightened around his for a few seconds and he exhaled, glancing at her. From the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of pain pass through Elaine’s expression, one she smothered quickly. She stood up, heading for the counter, where she stood for a few seconds before she opened a cabinet and got down a plate. Jason watched her as she took out some bread, the butter, started making herself toast.

His lips thinned.

Peter reached out to her. That never happens.

“I’m not going to let him quit,” he said quietly. The statement was for himself, but mostly for her. “I never really say it, but I think he knows. He just smiles at me when I answer. I don’t know what he believes anymore.” That part was at least a little bit of a lie. He didn’t know, but he suspected.

It just hurt to think about what he suspected.

“Good,” Elaine said after a few seconds of silence. “Because I don’t want him to.”

“Neither do I,” Jason said softly.

“How have you guys managed to keep all of this a secret?” Joslyn asked softly. “How is it that no one knows?”

“Think about it,” Jason said quietly. “How much does anyone really know about us, Joss? Yeah, we’re out there on the internet talking about what we’re trying to do, talking about our goals and the game and maybe a little bit about us, but how much does everyone really know?”

“Only as much as you’ve been willing to reveal,” Elaine said, leaning against the counter, watching them. “We know that you were a soldier who served in the Gulf. We know that Marissa and Brannon met in England and got married in Ontario. We know Peter’s a genius with a Ph.D in computer science and technology. We know it’s a family business and you aim for it to stay that way and what you guys want to do is make games that speak to people and touch them in ways that most games don’t. You’re not in it for the money—you’re in it for the joy.”

Jason nodded slowly. “And you know that because we’ve told you. The rest? We keep that under wraps. If you hadn’t seen one or two very specific casts, you don’t know that my niece exists, let alone ever seen her. You don’t know what I told you about our parents, you don’t know about Brannon’s family—you just know very specific slices of information, things that we’ve told you—and nothing else. It’s by design. It’s to protect us—to keep things that should be private, private.”

“Makes sense,” Elaine said softly. “Moreso now, given what your brother told me.”

“How much did he tell you?” Jason asked, stomach sinking for a second before it righted itself.

“He told me what happens. What happened.”

Jason winced and exhaled. “Oh.”

“I don’t like that look,” Joslyn said, studying him. “What did happen? You said that something changed when I asked you last night after you talked to him.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “What we thought was nothing was actually something. His neurologist was wrong. Doesn’t happen often but at the same time we kind of fooled ourselves.”

“He said the same thing to me,” Elaine said. “I’m sorry, Jason.”

“For what?” He glanced up at her, brow furrowing. “You didn’t do anything to us, Elaine. You did what he asked and he was right. My being there isn’t going to change anything, not right now. I just—I worry about him. He’s my big brother and I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

There was that lump, that tightness, the dread that coiled in his belly and left his stomach sour. There it was again, rearing its head as he once again confronted the fact that his brother was sick, that they never knew what was going to happen. Every day was one day at a time—and every day was a gift to all of them.

“He said you don’t know how or why he got it or even what it is,” Elaine said softly. “Is that really true?”

Jason nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. It’s a mystery that even after more than twenty years, we can’t figure it out. Our parents couldn’t, his doctors haven’t been able to, and I don’t know that we have a prayer of ever sorting it out. There’s no evident triggers, no real reason it seems to flare up, it just does and there’s nothing we’ve ever been able to do to change or stop it. We treat the symptoms and hope.”  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “And every time we hope it doesn’t come back this time, that there’s not a next time it flares up because damn it all, he doesn’t deserve to go through this hell. He’s never hurt anyone in his life. It’s just not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair, though,” Elaine whispered, then turned away again. “He’s sweet, though. Your brother. He seems that way, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Jason murmured. “Yeah, he is. He’s a good guy.”

Elaine nodded and said nothing. Jason swallowed, glancing at Joslyn. She shrugged. Apparently, she didn’t know what to make of the statement, either. At the same time, that moment didn’t seem the right one to press, to ask Elaine to elaborate.

Jason kept watching Elaine for a few seconds more as she finished fixing her toast and then joined them at the table. She met his gaze as she settled in, picking up a piece of toast. “He seems a little lonely.”

“He is.”

She nodded and didn’t say anything else. What had Peter said to her when she’d talked to him in the game the day before?

Did it matter?

Maybe, just maybe, it didn’t.

“So what do we do now?” Joslyn asked, swirling her coffee in her mug. “With…everything?”

“We keep on keeping on,” Jason murmured. “That’s what he wants, so that’s what we’ll do. No one can know outside of the family and us. That’s how this works. That’s how he’s always planned it. We’ll figure it out.”

There was a little part of him that was glad that for once, though, they wouldn’t have to figure it out alone.

Nineteen

Her boots echoed hollowly against the stone steps as she climbed upward toward Caius’s rooms in the tower. Her heart was going at twice its normal speed and was lodged in her throat, threatening to choke her. She didn’t know what she would say to him, or what he’d say to her. She didn’t know what this explanation would hold.

All she knew was that his brother was hurting probably more deeply than he knew, that Jason felt betrayed and lost and abandoned, all because his brother hadn’t told him himself that something was going on, that something had gone wrong.

Elaine hoped that she’d been right about it being something that had changed, not something that Peter Grey had known about before he’d told his brother to go, to come to Michigan to finally meet the girl he’d been talking to for months, the girl he’d fallen in love with. She hoped that Jason’s deepest fears hadn’t been realized—fears, she didn’t think Jason had even realized he had until that moment in her kitchen.

The door at the top of the stairs was closed, but when she tried it, it was unlocked. She didn’t bother to knock, just walked inside. Caius was there, standing by a door to a balcony at one end of the room, staring through its windows at the world outside, or perhaps at his own reflection in the glass. Elaine closed the door gently behind her, watching him for a few seconds. Her heart slowed but her throat tightened even more.

Somehow, she could tell he was tired and it had nothing to do with the game—it had everything to do with life.

“Real talk,” she said, her voice half a whisper as she locked the door. “Out of character.”

“Real talk,” he agreed, his voice quiet. “Out of character.”

He turned and she could see the tears on his face, his eyes red and puffy, as if he’d been crying for a long time. He leaned a shoulder against the French doors to the balcony, watching her as she stood frozen, her hand still on the lock.

“I’m sorry,” he said before she could say anything. “I didn’t see another way.”

“You couldn’t have called him yourself?”

Caius squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “No.”

She wanted to ask why, but the words died on her tongue as she stared at him. His shoulders were slumped, his expression slack. Her hand fell away from the door and she moved toward him. The only sound was their breathing and the wind outside, even the sound of her footfalls was muffled by the thick rug spread across the floor of his sitting room.

“Talk to me,” she said, the whispered request almost a plea. “Please.”

“That’s why I asked you to come,” he admitted, reaching to take her hands. “Because I wanted to. I needed to. I needed someone to hear me and not judge and help me figure this out. I—I thought—” he broke off as his fingers closed around hers. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Maybe I thought wrong. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you my messenger, Isolde.”

“Elaine,” she said.

His eyes popped open. “What?”

“My name is Elaine,” she said, watching his eyes, his face. “And yours is Peter.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

His fingers were cold around hers. Elaine wet her lips, taking half a step closer, still holding his gaze. “Talk to me,” she said, her voice stronger than she thought it would be. “What’s going on? Jason is freaking out a little bit. He said your sister called and talked about a neurologist and was trying to figure out why you would have lied to him.”

“I didn’t lie to him,” Caius—Peter—said to her, shaking his head. “I didn’t. When he and I talked about it on Thursday, I told him the truth. My neurologist didn’t think it was anything.”

“And now something’s changed,” Elaine said.

He nodded. “Yeah. And it sucks.”

“What’s going on?” she asked again. He exhaled, leaning back against the doors.

“I don’t know,” he said, and somehow she knew he was telling the truth. “I really don’t know. I’ve—” he broke off, sighing. “This is where shit gets complicated.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “Just what I said,” he murmured. “This is where shit gets complicated.”

She watched him for a few seconds, then asked, “Should we go sit down?”

After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we probably should.”

She nodded, then took him by the hand and drew him toward two chairs near the fireplace. He didn’t sit in one of those chairs, though—he sat down on the floor, cross-legged, staring at the flickering flames. She drifted after him, sitting down alongside him, tucking one leg up underneath her and drawing her other knee to her chest. He stayed quiet for a few moments, just watching the fire, and she let him take the time he needed to gather his thoughts, to put some organization to whatever chaos was raging inside his head.

“I’ve been sick my entire life,” he finally said, the words coming as a low murmur. His gaze never wavered from the flames. “It started when I was little and just kept coming back no matter what anyone did. It’s a neurological thing that no one can seem to figure out. There’s no predicting when it’ll come or when it’ll go away. When it does go away, no one ever knows how long it’s going to stay away. Everything’s a crapshoot. Usually it puts me down pretty hard and it’s only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older, but the remissions seemed to be longer, at least for a while. It’s…” he trailed off. She reached over and took his hand, squeezing gently. Only then did he glance over at her and smile, though weakly. “It’s hard. Jason’s always been there, and our sister, too. They suffer right alongside me but different because they don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen. When my neurologist told me on Thursday that she didn’t think it was anything, I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe her so badly.”

“But something changed today,” she said softly.

He nodded and his shoulders slumped slightly. “I woke up with a migraine. I was getting ready to go into work anyway because that’s what I do. Sometimes they happen and they don’t always mean something.” He closed his eyes. “The last thing I remembered happening before eight o’clock in the morning was staring to make a cup of coffee. I came to on my kitchen floor at nine.”

“You passed out?”

“Something like that,” he said. “It might have been a seizure. I’m not sure and no one else was there so there’s no way to know and my memory’s too fuzzy about all of it to figure it out. Usually I can tell the difference. This time, I couldn’t and that scared me. It scared me a lot.” He sighed. “I called my brother-in-law to take me in. My sister came with him.” He swallowed turning back to the fire. “It’s flaring up again and I don’t know what I’m going to do or how bad it’s going to be this time. I just—I just have to work through it for as long as I can. There’s still so much I want to do, that I want to accomplish. I can’t just lay back and relax and whatever the hell else my neurologist is going to try to make me do. I can’t stop living because I’m fighting this bullshit again—and I don’t want anyone else to, either.”

Elaine tried to swallow past a lump in her throat. His hand rested on his knee and she reached for it, weaving her fingers through his and squeezing gently. He bowed his head. A tear caught the fire’s glow as it fell, dropping from his lashes to soak into the linen of his loose pants.

She leaned toward him and wrapped her arms around him. He reached up, wrapping his fingers around one of her arms, resting his chin against her wrist.

“I shouldn’t have made you my messenger,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I just thought—if I talked to Jason myself, Elaine, he would have argued me down and he’s where he needs to be—where I really need him to be. There’s nothing he can do for me here right now. He needs to be where he is. She’s his future. In my heart of hearts, I know it even if he doesn’t yet. I just know it.” He shook his head a little. “Everything’s just too raw right now and we don’t know enough—I don’t know enough about how this is going to go. I knew that Marissa would call. I knew she would. I didn’t want her to, told her not to, but I knew she wasn’t going to listen, not about that. As angry as it makes me sometimes that she’ll just do shit like that, I understand it.”

“Marissa’s your sister,” she said softly. He nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, older than the two of us. She’s the business brain. The rest of us are the creative ones and the programming, the tech. She’s the one that keeps shit real. She always has.” Another tear slipped free, dropped onto her wrist.

She held him a little tighter, heart aching. “So what happens now?” It was hard to ask the question. He might not even have a real answer, and even if he did, he might not want to tell her. He barely knew her, after all.

And yet he’d reached out to her.

That means something, right?

“My neurologist and I work out a course of treatment,” he murmured. “Something I can hopefully handle. We hope that we can mitigate symptoms until my nervous system settles down and decides to function normally again. Every time it happens, we don’t know how it’s going to go.”

“What kind of stuff are we talking?” she asked, brow furrowing. Her head rested against his. He was warm, leaning against her now, body starting to relax slowly but surely. “What are you facing?”

“Probably hell,” he murmured. “My nervous system malfunctions. Things stop working. Things misfire. Cognitive function always seems to be fine but everything else? Everything else has a very distinct possibility of being really screwed up.” He swallowed hard. “When I was fifteen, I ended up on life support for two weeks before my brain remembered that breathing was a thing I needed to do so I could keep living. When I was twelve, I lost motor function all along the left side of my body. They thought I’d had a stroke but I didn’t show any signs of anything burst or shit like that. Stuff had just stopped working. Severe synesthesia when I was eleven. I could taste colors and see sounds and the migraines almost gave me a literal aneurism. Seizures that just kept coming when I was five. Nothing could stop them and there was no predicting when they’d hit. A couple years ago, around the time my niece was born, it got bad again. I was bedridden and trapped in my own head for a month. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t do anything. I was on life support again then, too, because my heart kept stopping. They couldn’t tell if it was from pain or my nervous system misfiring or microseizures or something else. That’s how bad it can get and even after all this time, we’re nowhere near figuring out what’s caused it and how to stop it. All we can do is watch and treat the symptoms as shit happens.”

She stayed silent, struggling to breath around the tightness of her throat. He stayed quiet for a few minutes, too, the two of them just staring at the fire.

“I just wish I had answers,” he finally said. “I wish I knew what caused it because then maybe we’d be able to figure out how to fix it.”

“I am so sorry,” she breathed. He shook his head slightly.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. It just is. There’s nothing I can do that’s going to change it, I just have to hang on, push through, wait and see what happens.”

He was much more relaxed now, almost slumped against her, the tension that had been there when she’d arrived gone. It was like somehow a weight had been lifted even though she knew a new one had settled over him—now she knew and there was an open question of what that would end up meaning in the long term.

“If anyone should be sorry, it should be me,” he said, gazing at the fire. “You didn’t ask for this.”

“No,” she agreed. “No, I didn’t. But it’s okay. I’d rather know than be in the dark, I think.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, was it was kind of rough playing the messenger for you? Yeah, a little. But at least now I know why I did it and why Jason’s upset. Stuff makes a lot more sense now.”

“And I haven’t scared you off?” He looked at her now, gaze searching hers. For a second, she tried to remember what color his eyes were supposed to be and found that she couldn’t even as she fell into his gaze. “You’re not ready to…I don’t know. Run screaming?”

“No,” she said. “No, in fact, if anything, it makes me want to get to know you better.”

“You sure about that?”

She smiled crookedly. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Her arms tightened around him slightly and he sighed, relaxing into them, gaze finally drifting back to the fire. She rested her head against his again, watching the flames as they flickered and danced, the logs crackling softly, breaking up as the fire burned. It was warm and comfortable here, cozy, somewhere she wouldn’t mind lingering despite the hard floor beneath the plush rug. Even that didn’t seem so bad.

“Where are you right now?” she whispered. “Physically?”

“At home,” he murmured. “Marissa wouldn’t hear it when I wanted to go back to the office. They dropped me off at home. I’m in bed with my VR rig. Migraine hasn’t quite gone away, but it’s better, at least.” He paused. “Is that so you can tell my brother?”

“Partially,” she admitted. “It was partially because I was worried.”

“I didn’t mean to do that. Worry you.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “Every so often, a little worry’s good.”

“Maybe,” he murmured. His thumb brushed over her arm gently where he held onto her wrist. “Thank you for coming.”

“You asked,” she said.

“I know. But you didn’t have to. I just—I hoped you would.”

“Occasionally, we get what we hope for,” she said softly.

“Yeah. Yeah, we do.”

They lapsed into silence again, staring at the fire. His thumb kept stroking her arm. Somehow, for some reason, it felt good, felt right.

“I made this so I’d have somewhere to escape to,” he said in a faint whisper after what seemed like a long time. “All of this—everything we’ve done at GreySoft, it’s a sick child’s dream. A place where people can be free and not worry about anything outside. Where they can live in ways they never thought possible.” He wet his lips. “It’s been worth it, I think.”

“Is that the story behind it?” she asked, stomach feeling hollow. “That’s really why?”

After a bare moment’s hesitation, he nodded. “Yeah. I thought it could help people. Maybe it can. I hope so.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about there.”

He glanced at her and smiled, settling further into her arms. She smiled back, squeezing him gently.

They sat there together by the fire for a long, long time.

Eighteen

On the table, laying between her cup of coffee, her notebook, and the text she was working with, Elaine’s phone buzzed. Both she and Hadrian glanced up from their research. Hadrian’s brow arched. Elaine set down her pen and picked up her phone, frowning slightly. It was the Universe app, telling her she had a message. One corner of her mouth curled up into a smile.

Hadrian noticed. “Message from someone?”

“Yeah,” she said softly, swiping her finger across her phone’s screen to open the app and the message.

“From the one you’ve been talking to?”

Elaine nodded, her smile fading as she started to read the message.

I’m breaking my own rules in reaching out like this, but I don’t have a choice. Real talk, out of character. Don’t let him leave. Tell him I said to stay. It’s okay. Tell him I said it. He’ll try to leave. I need him to stay and he needs it, too.

He’d signed it Caius, but it didn’t matter who he’d signed it as, not really. It confirmed what she suspected without him even giving his real name.

“What’s the matter?” Hadrian asked, watching her. He’d evidently noticed her expression change, though she wasn’t quite sure what it looked like now, only knew that she wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Just a strange message,” she said quietly.

“From him?”

She nodded. “I—I think I need to go home.”

“Is everything all right?” Oddly, he didn’t sound quite as alarmed as she expected.

“I don’t know,” she said, knowing it was the honest answer, the only really honest answer she could give. “But I think I need to find out.”

“Are you all right?” Hadrian asked, his voice more gentle.

“I don’t know,” she said again, staring at her phone for a few seconds more before she started packing up her things. “I guess I’ll have to find out.”

“You’re worried.”

She managed to smile. “Usually.”

That, at least, made him laugh. He watched her as she packed up her things, laughter fading after a few seconds. “Trust him,” he finally said, softly, almost too quiet for her to hear. She paused, staring at him for a few seconds.

“Trust him?” she echoed, her voice as soft as his.

Hadrian nodded. Her brows knit.

“Hadrian—”

“Have I ever led you wrong before?”

Her mouth dried up. She shook her head. “No.”

“Then trust him,” he said gently. “It’s okay.” He paused, eyes glazing for a half a second before he added, “But hurry.”

Elaine swallowed hard and nodded. She slung her bag across her body and bolted, practically sprinting down the stairs and out into the gathering clouds of an October afternoon. It was trying to turn blustery, as Octobers did. Hopefully any sort of rain would wait until she made it home, though the wind was picking up considerably and the clouds had a concerning look to them.

I just want to make it home before the heavens open up.

With a grimace, she sprinted toward her car, parked in a lot far enough from the library that she worried that she might not make it before the rain started. A shiver wracked her as the wind gusted up, bile rising in her throat.

Trust him.

Hadrian really hadn’t ever steered her wrong before, but how did he know?

Does it matter?

She threw herself into the front seat of her car just as the first few fat drops of rain spattered against her windshield. A mumbled curse escaped her lips as she started the engine. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Somehow, she knew this storm was going to be a doozy—she could feel it.

I just need to get home before it gets worse.

She wasn’t sure how much worse it was going to get, but again, her gut told her there was reason enough for concern. Caius’s note and Hadrian’s words coupled with the storm had left her that much of an impression.

She sped out of the parking lot, down the street toward home, heart beating faster than usual but not too fast. Her windshield wipers whipped back and forth as more rain joined those first few drops. It was a hard rain, sounding like pellets pounding against her car’s roof. For a few seconds, she wondered if it was actually hail, but she couldn’t see anything but rain falling through her windshield.

She left her research in the car when she arrived home, bolting with only her jacket and her phone to her front porch. Elaine fumbled with her keys as thunder rumbled again, lightning forking through the sky somewhere high above. Another shiver wracked her. Had the temperature dropped, or was it just her imagination?

At this point, it was anyone’s guess.

She unlocked the door. The house was quiet as she dropped her keys on the table in the foyer. “Joss? Jason?”

No answer, though she could hear faint sounds from Joslyn’s room. She started to breathe a little easier. Nothing seemed wrong.

Maybe it’s preemptive? Maybe there’s nothing wrong.

Elaine exhaled and glanced toward the slider out to the patio, watching the rain fall in torrents. Thunder rumbled, nearer now, its depth rattling the plates and glasses in the cupboard.

She shivered again and was glad that she’d made it home in time.

Losing half a day’s worth of plowing through materials, though. Elaine shrugged slightly. Maybe Hadrian was right, maybe she needed to allow herself that kind of break—maybe she needed to give herself permission not to feel guilty about it, too.

Either way, she wasn’t going out in the storm to get the research she’d left in the car. That was going to have to wait until later, one way or another. She tugged her phone out of her pocket, setting it on the edge of the kitchen counter as she started to shrug out of her jacket. Faintly, as she ducked back into the foyer to hang up her jacket, she heard her phone buzz again on the counter, then heard it hit the floor.

Shit. I should’ve set it a little further in. Hope I didn’t crack my screen.

Ducking back into the kitchen, she scooped her phone up from the floor, checking her screen for cracks—it had already gone dark; whatever had caused it to vibrate hidden. Upstairs, she heard the floor creak and a second later, Jason’s voice.

“What?”

That doesn’t sound good. Elaine stuffed her phone into her back pocket, heading for the stairs. She could still hear his voice, though muffled enough that she couldn’t make out the words as she jogged up the stairs, taking them two at a time in her haste. She heard Joslyn asking what was wrong—at least, that’s what she assumed the question was from the cadence of her friend’s voice. Jason didn’t answer—it sounded like he might be on the phone. Elaine frowned as she moved down the hall toward the bedroom.

I have a bad feeling about this. Christ, do I ever have a bad feeling about this.

What the hell is going on?

She reached back to grab her phone when the door to the bedroom opened and Jason came out, dressed in only his shorts, his complexion ashen. Joslyn was on his heels, but they both stopped dead in their tracks at the sight of her standing in the hallway.

“What’s wrong?” Elaine asked, looking Jason dead in the eye. “What happened?”

Jason shook his head, adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed and started walking again, twisting to move past her toward the stairs. “I have to go.”

Elaine glanced at Joslyn, whose lips were drawn together tightly in a pale line across her face. Her friend shook her head slightly and Elaine frowned, then turned to follow Jason, already halfway down the stairs.

“Jason, wait.”

“I need to eat something, I need to get dressed, and I need to go,” he said, headed for the fridge. There were scars on his back from who knew what, a tattoo of a compass over a sword on the back of his left shoulder blade. “Something happened at home,” he said a second later, as if a peace offering after failing to answer her initial question.

“He said not to let you go.”

Jason froze, standing with the refrigerator door open, his hand wrapped around the carton of milk. Slowly, he straightened again, shoving the milk back onto the shelf as he twisted to look at her. “What?”

“Your brother said not to let you go,” she said. “I got a message from him. That’s why I rushed home—he said he broke his rules to send the message.”

Joslyn’s fingers tangled in the sleeve of Elaine’s sweater as she gripped her friend’s arm. “Jason, what is going on?”

His expression crumpled slightly, brow creasing in distress even as his jaw hung slightly agape, his breathing abruptly ragged as he closed the fridge and stumbled to a chair. He dropped into it heavily, tossing his phone onto the table with a faint clatter. “He lied to me,” he whispered, staring blankly at the edge of the table—through the edge of the table, the look Elaine had heard called a thousand yard stare. Joslyn’s fingers tightened around her arm.

“Who did?” Joslyn whispered.

“My brother.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Peter lied to me. He said everything was okay.”

The two women exchanged a look. Elaine nudged Joslyn toward the table and headed for the counter, intending to make a pot of coffee. Joslyn didn’t go to the table right away, instead turning to snag a blanket from the back of a chair in the living room. She wrapped it around Jason’s shoulders before she drew a chair up in front of him, sitting in it so their knees touched. Elaine watched as her friend took his hands and squeezed.

“Jason, talk to me,” Joslyn said softly. “Please.”

“He lied and he said everything was okay,” Jason said again, leaning forward. Joslyn leaned forward, too, and their foreheads touched. Elaine only watched for another second before she turned around, staring a pot of coffee. “He said it was a false alarm.”

“I don’t get it,” Joslyn said softly. “What’re you talking about? What kind of false alarm?”

Elaine’s phone buzzed in her pocket again and she winced, staring at the coffee pot. She tugged her phone out, glancing at Joslyn and Jason. Joslyn’s fingers were tangled up in Jason’s, squeezing so hard her knuckles had gone white. She couldn’t quite tell from this angle, but she thought there might be tears on Jason’s cheek.

She swallowed hard and looked away again, checking her phone.

Two more messages from the game—two more messages that could only have come from him.

What the hell is going on?

Leaning against the counter, she swiped a finger across the first message.

I will tell you everything, the message said. Just don’t let him leave. He needs to be there not here. Tell him.

Then, the second: I need to talk to you. Soon. I’m sorry.

Elaine exhaled a shaky sigh and straightened, putting her phone away before she started getting down three coffee mugs. “Just breathe, Jason,” she said quietly, gathering the mugs and the jar of sugar, some spoons from the drawer and the creamer from the refrigerator. “Try to calm down.”

He sucked in one rasping breath, then another, shaking his head slowly. As Elaine set her cargo down on the table, she could see that yes, those were tears on Jason’s cheeks. She winced.

Why did you make me the messenger? Why can’t you do this yourself?

He looked up at her, tears sparkling in his lashes, rimming his eyes like jewels that sparkled in what little light the storm outside hadn’t stolen yet. “What exactly did he say to you?” Jason asked, his voice little more than a whisper, so full of anguish and pain that it made Elaine’s own heart ache.

“He said it’s okay,” Elaine told him, her voice soft. “He needs you to stay and you need you to stay. That’s what he said. He said he broke his own rules to reach out to me but it was important.”

“Why didn’t he just call me himself?” Jason stared at the floor for a few seconds. Joslyn leaned further forward, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing tight. Elaine swallowed hard and turned away to get the coffee.

“Can I see it?” Jason asked as she turned away.

She glanced back as she reached the counter, picked up the carafe. “See what?”

“The message he sent you,” Jason said. “Can I see it?”

Elaine nodded. She brought the coffee over, set down the carafe, dug her phone out of her pocket. She handed it to Jason and then started to pour the coffee. Hunching, Jason opened the app, then the first message she’d gotten that day from Caius—from Peter. From his brother.

From the fucking founding force behind GreySoft. Fuck me what the hell is going on?

She stole a glance at him as he read the message—he must have read it twice, because he was looking at it for what felt like a long time. His lips thinned and he carefully set her phone down on the edge of the table, the hand that had been holding it covering his eyes. His shoulders shook and then Joslyn was hugging him again. He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face against her neck.

Elaine gently set down a cup of coffee near him and took her phone back. Joslyn looked up at her, a question in her eyes.

“Caius and I have been talking,” Elaine said as she poured another cup of coffee, this one for Joslyn. “Ever since the other night.”

“I thought that was all in character stuff,” Joslyn said, her voice barely audible. “What’s going on?”

“It was,” Elaine said. “Today that changed. I don’t know what’s going on, but—” she stopped, looking at Jason for a few seconds, leaning against Joslyn, his arms tight around her. “—but he said he’d explain everything. I just got the message right before you guys came out of your room.”

“My sister called,” Jason said, his voice muffled and raw. He turned his head so he could just barely see Elaine, his eyes already bloodshot. “She said that Peter had gone back to the hospital this morning to see his neurologist. That they were talking about courses of action and plans and about what was going on.” Jason exhaled, shaking his head. “He told me the day we launched full-immersion that it was nothing, that it was a false alarm and that his doctor had given him some anti-seizure meds and told him he needed to take it easy. I believed him.” He exhaled, shoulders slumping even as his arms tightened around Joslyn, wrapped around her waist. “I’m such an idiot. Why did I believe him?”

“Because he’s your brother,” Joslyn said. “Because you guys love each other and why wouldn’t you believe him.”

Jason exhaled a shaky sigh. Elaine slowly set down Joslyn’s cup of coffee, then started filling one for herself.

“Maybe he didn’t know,” Elaine said softly. “Maybe something changed after you left.”

“Then why didn’t he call?” Jason asked. “Why would he leave me in the dark? He always calls, always tells me. Why wouldn’t he have done that this time?”

Elaine looked at him, then her gaze slid over to Joslyn, then back again. Jason squeezed his eyes shut.

He swore under his breath, closing his eyes again. “Of course. Of fucking course. My big brother, always trying to take care of me when no one else will.”

“Not no one,” Joslyn said. Jason took a deep breath, straightening to look at her. He smiled weakly.

“No,” he agreed. “Not no one. He sent me to someone he knew would.” He reached up, brushing some of Joslyn’s hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear as his thumb brushed along her cheek and jaw. “If you’re right, Elaine, he at least must have suspected something.” He swallowed hard again, then sighed. “And I know he did—and so did I. I just let him convince me—let me convince me—that it really was nothing. Just a false alarm. We fooled ourselves for a few minutes into believing everything was fine.” Another shaking breath, another exhale. He shook his head. “We let ourselves believe what we wanted to believe, what we needed to believe, but we were wrong. We were wrong and that’s what hurts the most.”

Seventeen

Jason closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of Joslyn’s hair. He lay on his back with his arms wrapped tightly around her, her head nestled against his neck and jaw as she lay half on top of him, half next to him. Sunlight slanted through her blinds and he stared at the shafts of light as they played against the walls of her bedroom. She was still fast asleep, or asleep again—he wasn’t sure if she’d been there when he’d woken up early in the morning when he’d heard his phone buzzing on the bedside table with a text message from his brother.

Stay as long as you need to. That’s what Peter had needed him to know at five in the morning. It shouldn’t have surprised him that his brother was awake at the early hour—four AM back home—since Peter’s sleep patterns had always been strange, even when they were kids. That was the way it had always been and Jason didn’t see much chance of it changing.

Now, hours later, he lay awake with Joslyn in his arms, wondering not why his brother had been up so early in the morning, but why his brother felt like he needed to tell him that again at that very moment.

Did something change back home? Jason frowned at the shafts of light he lay watching, shafts that faded as clouds eclipsed the sun. Joslyn was still fast asleep, comfortable and warm against him. There was something deeply comforting about her presence, about being there with her.

How long will I need to stay? He didn’t have an answer for that question. He’d been guessing he’d know when the moment would come.

Jason sighed and closed his eyes. He must have dozed, because the next thing he was aware of was Joslyn shifting against him, stirring.

“Mmm. You’re still here,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep.

“Where else would I be?” he asked softly, nose buried in her hair. “I’m right where you left me.”

“I’m always surprised,” she whispered, twisting so she was laying on her stomach, still half on top of him. One of her toes grazed the inside of his calf and Jason smiled, reaching to run his fingers through her hair. She smiled back. “I keep wondering how the hell I got lucky and met a guy like you—and how the hell I could’ve ever been so freaking stupid.”

“Stupid?” His brows shot up. “What do you mean?”

“If you hadn’t told me your name, I don’t think I ever would have told you mine. I never would have found the courage and never would have dreamed that there was anything more between us than just two characters who fell in love and players who became friends in the process.”

His heart wrenched and suddenly his throat was tight. “Joss.”

“I mean it,” she whispered. “I am so damn lucky.”

He wrapped his arms around her again, pressing a kiss to her forehead, then her lips as she inched higher and closer, burying her fingers in his short-cropped hair. “I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “I love you, I love you.”

Her tears hit his cheeks and his throat seized. All he could do was keep on kissing her, holding her tighter as she pressed closer. He shivered, heart pounding a little faster.

“I love you, too,” she breathed, kissing him back, hard, fingertips digging into his scalp. Chills shot up and down his spine, danced along his nerves.

His phone buzzed on the bedside table and he ignored it as Joslyn arched, one foot sliding along the inside of his calf, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Jason’s breath caught, his eyes coming open to stare at her.

“I want you,” she whispered, their lips nearly touching, her nose brushing against his. “I want you so badly I can almost taste it.”

“Well, you have me,” he whispered back. “You have me for as long as you want me—as long as you need me.”

“Right back at you,” she said, then leaned in to kiss him again.

Jason’s eyes slid shut. His phone buzzed again. He groped for it as he kept on kissing Joslyn, caught hold, silenced it, then dropped it. It fell somewhere on the floor, covered a few seconds later by her nightgown as she pulled it off, her hands sliding up beneath the hem of his shirt half a second later.

Nothing else mattered, just the girl who said she loved him, wanted him. He’d never had that before.

It was nice.

Whatever the call had been about, it could wait. His team would understand. Peter would understand.

Stay as long as you need to.

What if he never wanted to leave?

After the second round, they lay cuddled together in her bed, facing each other, foreheads touching, hands threaded through each other’s hair and legs tangled together beneath the covers. Joslyn was looking at him with eyes half-lidded, a faint, satisfied smile on her face.

“Wasn’t too much, was it?” he murmured to her, thumb brushing against her cheekbone.

She shook her head slightly. “Not at all. You’re incredible.”

Jason choked on a laugh and shook his head. “Not really. You sure are, though.”

Joslyn laughed, her eyes sliding closed as she shook her head. “Goddamn flatterer.”

“Just telling it like it is.”

“Liar.” She was still laughing, though, and her lips brushed against his.

On the floor, beneath discarded clothes and a spare blanket, his phone buzzed again.

Calming, Joslyn took a slow, deep breath, settling down again against him, running her foot up and down one of his calves from the midway point down to his ankle. “That thing keeps ringing. Someone must need you pretty bad.”

Jason blinked. “What do you mean?”

“It’s gone off at least four times since the first time,” she said. “Maybe you should answer it. They wouldn’t be this persistent if it wasn’t important, right? Whoever’s calling?”

“It might be more than one person,” he murmured. “I didn’t exactly tell my team that I’d be gone.” He started to move, unwinding his arms from her, but his phone stopped buzzing then and instead he wound his arms around her again. “I didn’t tell much of anyone.”

“Really?”

He shook his head. “Just my brother.”

“Peter,” she said softly. Jason nodded.

“Yeah. He knew something was bugging me before the event but I didn’t tell him what it was until after I told you—until after I decided.”

“Decided what? To talk to me?”

“Until after I decided to come to you,” he said. “Until after you and I planned it.”

“Oh,” she said. Her palm rested against his cheek and Jason closed his eyes for a second, sighing.

“I’m glad I did,” he whispered. “And I’m glad he didn’t think this was ridiculous—I’m glad he didn’t try to talk me out of it.”

“What did he say?”

“In essence? That it was about time.” Jason grinned. “If there’s one thing that’s important to understand about my brother, it’s that he wants to see the people around him happy, no matter what. That’s like life to him. It means everything—making people happy.”

“Your brother seems like a pretty nice guy,” Joslyn said. Her thumb brushed against his cheek and Jason was surprised to find himself crying.

When did that start?

“Peter’s probably one of the best people I’ve ever known,” he murmured, resting his forehead against hers, reaching up to catch her hand in his. He squeezed her fingers gently. “He’s always been there when I needed him, even when he needed someone more than I ever could. He always puts everyone else before himself.” His throat was tight and he squeezed his eyes shut against more stinging tears. Joslyn wrapped her arms around him and drew him close.

“Shh,” she soothed gently. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Jason. Let it out. You don’t have to pretend everything’s okay.”

“But it is,” he whispered. “Everything’s fine.”

He couldn’t shake the sick feeling in his stomach that it wasn’t, though.

“Are you sure?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he said, holding her and forcing himself to relax. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”

He left his phone on the floor where it was buried, trying to convince himself that it was nothing, that it was just people calling because they didn’t know where he was. Peter knew. Peter would handle it.

He always did.

Everything’s fine. He said it was and he told me to come, and to stay.

Everything’s fine.

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.”

Fifteen

Twenty minutes after she’d gotten the message, Elaine was in game, on horseback, heading up the winding roadway to Weatherstone’s perch on top of the cliffs overlooking the sea. The morning was quiet, the sun still rising, and much of the city behind her was still asleep at this hour. It was, after all, Saturday morning, and it was well before nine eastern. As she drew closer to Caius’s stronghold, she could see the massive gates were closed, flanked by armed guards.

It seemed that Ascalon—or perhaps Caius himself, since he’d been awake to at least send her that letter—was taking no chances with his safety, at least not right now. For that, Elaine certainly couldn’t blame him. He’d been stabbed in front of hundreds of witnesses.

I wonder if they’ve gotten anything out of the would-be assassin.

For some reason, she doubted it.

“Hold,” one of the guards called as she approached. She reined up, turning her horse to the side as she met the man’s gaze. He stared at her, hard, eyes like twin bits of flint beneath the rim of his helm. “His lordship is seeing no visitors today. Your name and business.”

“Isolde Caomhánach,” she said, chin lifting. “Lady Arenvale. I’ve come to check on his lordship’s condition after last night. I’m the healer who tended him.”

The guard exchanged a look with his partner. The other guard let out a whistle to someone out of sight. “Let her through,” he rumbled. “His lordship ordered she be admitted.”

The gate opened, the gap in it just wide enough for her to guide her mount through.  Beyond it, a stablehand came jogging from somewhere to take her horse. Behind her, the gate closed again, softly, though with a clank that suggested security, finality. Elaine glanced back as she dismounted, then shook her head at herself, adjusting the bag she carried so it settled more comfortably against her spine. She smiled at the stablehand who took her mount’s reins.

“Thank you.”

The young man nodded. “Of course, m’lady.”

Then he led her horse away and she was left standing in the courtyard, staring up at the oak doors to Weatherstone’s keep. She had to take a few deep breaths before she felt steady enough to mount the steps heading to those doors. There was no reason to be nervous, she tried to remind herself. He’d anticipated her coming—had basically asked her to.

Who was she to deny him?

Besides, she wanted to see him again and needed to make sure that he was, in fact, all right after last night’s events.

A servant opened the door before she could even knock—either they’d been watching, or somehow alerted to her presence. Elaine offered up a smile and slipped inside, only to be met by still another member of Caius’s staff, who bowed at the waist.

“Lady Arenvale,” he said, his voice rumbling. “Please, allow me to escort you to m’lord’s chambers.”

A shiver crept down her spine, but Elaine nodded. “Thank you. Please, lead on.”

He straightened and did, taking her through a hidden door and down a narrow corridor to a staircase that felt familiar. He led her up the winding spiral stair, though he paused before they reached the top.

“If m’lady continues up this way, she will find m’lord,” he said, studying her for a few seconds. “I will bring up a tray shortly with refreshments.”

Then he was gone, leaving her blinking at the spot where he’d been. Elaine shook herself and took another deep breath, then turned and continued up the stairs—another flight and a half by her estimation—to the landing she remembered from the night before. The doors to Caius’s rooms stood closed and he hesitated a moment before knocking. There was no immediate answer, so she tried the knob—unlocked. She eased the door open and slipped inside, shutting it quietly behind her. Unlike every other door in the keep, the one into Caius’s bedroom stood ajar, though only slightly, and through the sliver, Elaine could see him in bed, his back to the door, apparently asleep or otherwise resting.

A sigh of relief escaped her and she silently padded across the floor toward the door and where he lay in bed. He stirred as she got close, half rolling onto his back with a wince, one eye cracked blearily open.

“That was quick,” he murmured, voice thick with sleep and perhaps the effects of a pain draught. “I can’t say that I expected you so quickly.” He offered up a smile then, and her heart that had begun to sink instead soared again. “Though I am certainly not unhappy about it.”

“Well, let’s just say I didn’t have any plans for the morning beyond what you suggested,” Elaine said, a wry smile curving her lips. She unslung her bag and set it on the bedside table, then unfastened her cloak and laid it over a chair. Caius shifted in the bed, his gaze following her as she moved.

“Thank you for last night,” he said quietly. “I can’t tell you how much it meant.”

“I only did what any healer would have done,” she said quietly. “I told your brother that.”

“No.” Caius shook his head slightly, gingerly pushing himself into a more upright position, propped up against his pillows. “Not that. Before.”

“Before?” She looked at him, brows knitting. “I don’t—”

“You let me feel something real,” he said, still watching her, pale eyes gleaming under dark lashes. “More real than anything I’ve felt in a long time. Do you have any idea how isolating it can be? To be—to be what I am?”

Elaine sank down on the edge of the bed, meeting his eyes. They were very, very blue, the blue of a sky at the height of summer, bottomless, endless. She swallowed hard. “No,” she whispered. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

“I haven’t ever danced at one of those,” he said, still watching her. “Not even the first I held as lord. I always stood aloof. I felt like I had to. Last night…” his voice trailed away. Elaine cleared her throat.

“What changed?”

“I don’t know.” Caius closed his eyes for a moment. “I wish I did. Maybe it was you. Maybe it was you being there.”

Elaine started to shake her head. “I don’t—”

“Either way,” he continued, “I don’t regret it and I’m very glad you’re here. I’m glad I didn’t scare you away, that whoever decided to put a knife in my back didn’t drive you away.”

“It’ll take more than that to drive me away,” Elaine said softly. She was blushing and knew it. Caius didn’t seem to notice—or if he did, he said nothing. “I’m made of some rather stern stuff, you’ll learn.”

Caius smiled. “I admittedly look forward to it.”

A lump built in her throat and Elaine swallowed hard, trying to shove it back down again. The way Caius looked at her, spoke to her, sent her heart careening through her chest with reckless abandon, made her feel things that she’d never considered. She reached over and touched his hand where it lay on top of his covers. Caius turned it over and grasped her fingers gently.

“You, m’lady,” he said softly, “are a woman of rare quality, I think.” His eyes glinted and his grin grew a little wider. “And don’t you dare say that I flatter you.”

“Well, I think you are,” Elaine said, smiling back. “But as you are my lord, I will bow to your opinion.”

That made him laugh, which in turn made him wince, his free hand going to his side. Elaine murmured a soft curse, her own free hand chasing his, the words to a spell already on her lips.

“Easy,” she said quietly. “Easy. You need to rest so that will heal properly.”

“I know,” Caius murmured, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. “By the powers above and below, I know. But I’m not used to playing the invalid, not these days.”

Elaine shook her head slightly, her spell delving into the wound to see if he’d undone anything she’d worked the night before—he hadn’t, just tugged on some of it a little. No broken sutures, nothing worse than what she’d found the previous night. Another spell rose to her lips and she whispered the words. She watched as Caius relaxed markedly, eyes blinking open to regard her with relief and perhaps a little awe.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“Of course,” she said softly, reaching to check his forehead and cheeks for fever. A diagnostic spell could have done the same, but sometimes the older, more familiar methods were more reassuring—and that, at least, was half of what most patients needed.

Is he really just a patient, though?

She brushed the thought aside as she withdrew her free hand. Caius still had custody of the other one and didn’t seem inclined to release it anytime soon. “Doesn’t seem like you’re running a fever,” she said quietly.

“I take it that’s a good sign?”  He was smiling. Was he teasing her? It was hard to know.

Elaine smiled back, nodding a little. “At this stage, I’d say yes. We’ll have to keep an eye on it, but at least this means for now things are as they should be. Have you felt anything strange?”

“You mean other than feeling like there’s a hole in my back?”

She gave him a level look. “Yes.”

He shook his head, sobering. “No. No tingling, burning, itching, nausea, chills, fever, nothing. Nothing to suggest that maybe the blade was poisoned.”

Elaine’s brow arched. “You’ve been through this before.”

Caius shifted uncomfortably in the bed. “Only once,” he said quietly. “And let me be the first to tell you that I am more shocked now than I was then.”

“So it doesn’t happen very often,” Elaine said softly. She stopped trying to examine him further, just sat on the edge of the bed, holding his hand even as he held tightly to hers.

He shook his head. “Three times,” he said, then amended, “that we’re aware of. I suppose there could’ve been others that didn’t get close enough for us to realize what they were or things we chalked up to a nasty case of food poisoning. We almost chalked the second one up to that until we found the vials.”

“Vials?” she echoed, tilting her head slightly.

Caius sighed, nodding. “Yeah. They tried to poison Ascalon and I but they left the vials in the bloody kitchen at the inn where we were staying. One of our friends found it while Ascalon and I were bedridden with what I thought was the worst bout of food poisoning I’d ever had.”

Elaine let out a low whistle. “Shit. That—what happened?”

“Well, we never caught who did it. The poor innkeeper was mortified. He couldn’t be sure who was responsible but he gave us descriptions of all the people who he remembered coming in and out of his kitchen that night, but gods know that he couldn’t have possibly seen or remembered everyone.” Caius shrugged slightly. “We let it go and no one ever spoke of it again except in private, never in mixed company.” One corner of his mouth curved into a slight, rueful smile. “You’re the first person I’ve told outside of that circle. I suspect that Scarlet probably knows, too, but probably not many more people beyond that.”

Her cheeks heated in a blush and she glanced down. “I appreciate the confidence.”

He squeezed her fingers gently but firmly. “You earned it.”

“I was just in the right place at the right time,” she murmured, assuming that he meant the events of the night before. “I only did what any healer would have done.”

Caius just smiled. “Not any healer,” he said.

She looked up, met his gaze. Her breath caught and she had to swallow hard. There was something in his gaze that got her heart going a little faster, that gave her a hint that maybe he wasn’t talking about the role she’d played in saving his life after he’d been stabbed, that maybe it was something else, something different.

“I—”

“I’m glad you came,” he said again, his voice quiet. “I’m glad you’re here.”

For a few seconds, she just stared at him. “Oh,” she finally said, sighing out the word as little more than an exhaled breath. “You’re lonely.”

He smiled sadly, blinking something away. “Ascalon said you were a dangerous one,” he said softly. “That you saw things that sometimes other people didn’t.”

She swallowed hard again, edging a little closer. “I don’t understand.”

Caius shook his head, the smile fading and his gaze growing distant. “It’s okay. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. There’s not a lot of people I’ve let inside and that’s maybe a failing of mine. But there was something about you that made it easier.”

“I’m not sure what,” she said, her soft tone matching his. His fingers tightened around hers again, maintained the pressure. It wasn’t unpleasant, not at all. “I’m just me.”

“Maybe that’s what it was,” Caius said. “Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe you’re just different.” He shifted slightly, leaning back against his pillows. For a few seconds, his eyes slid closed and he didn’t say anything. Elaine stayed there on the edge of the bed, watching him. His fingers tightened more, then loosened a few seconds later.

“Maybe you should rest,” Elaine whispered. “I can get you something for the pain.”

“It’s not bad,” he murmured. “Not as bad as I’ve felt, anyway. I’ll be all right.” He exhaled slowly and opened his eyes again. “And I want you to stay.” Some color rose faintly in his cheeks as he stared at her. “Though if you want to pull back, I completely understand. I know it’s a little much all at once. I mean—you met me last night.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, no, it’s not that, I just—” her lips thinned and she tried to collect her thoughts. “I just don’t want to intrude or overstay.”

“I don’t think that could ever happen,” he said, then smiled. “And I’m rarely wrong about that kind of thing.”

“Confident, aren’t you?” she said with a crooked smile.

He grinned back at her. “I’m told it’s both a fault and a strength of mine—that and the stubbornness.”

“I could see that,” Elaine said, still smiling. “Regarding both—both ways.”

Caius shrugged with one shoulder, tugging her hand gently. “You comfortable sitting there? We can go sit out in the sitting room if you want. I think I can make it that far without falling.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Bed’s soft.”

“Too soft sometimes,” he murmured. “There are days I don’t want to claw my way free of it.”

Her brows knit. “Why not?” she whispered.

His smile was sad. “That,” he said, “is complicated.”

Fourteen

The next morning, the sun came up in all its glory, pinks and oranges painting the clouds in a lavender sky. Elaine watched it from their back deck, a mug of coffee cradled in both hands, an oversized sweater drawn tight around her against the chill. Joslyn was awake, too, despite the early hour, neither of them able to sleep very well though they likely should have. Elaine had been up at her usual time of morning for a weekday, not necessarily odd for a Saturday but not that common, either. There was a bite to the October air, a promise of things to come, perhaps sooner than anyone would have liked. But it was Michigan, and that was to be expected. She could just smell the faintest scent of woodsmoke on the morning wind, a sign that either someone had held a bonfire the night before or perhaps someone had fired up their wood-burning stove or fireplace that morning. It didn’t matter what it was from. In the end, it was a comforting, familiar scent that fall brought every year, one she reveled in the same way she reveled in the changing leaves and the taste of cider and doughnuts. It had always been her favorite season and she suspected it always would be. Affections like that, she’d noticed, seemed to run deep in her family—at least it always had.

It was hard being the only one left.

“You okay?”

She glanced back at Joslyn as her friend leaned out the slider to watch her. They were both still in their pajamas—flannel pants and a tank top for Elaine, an oversized tee and boxer shorts for Joslyn—and seemed poised to stay that way for the better part of the day unless something intervened.

Elaine nodded. “Yeah. Just watching the sunrise. Pretty this morning.”

Joslyn looked past her, gaze lingering on the sky for a few seconds before she nodded. “Yeah,” she said softly, padding in her slippers out onto the deck, hugging herself against the morning air. “But chilly. Was it this cold last night?”

“Pretty close to,” Elaine said. “We just didn’t notice. I think we were better dressed for it.”

Joslyn laughed and shook her head. “Probably right. At least it doesn’t look like rain again.” The previous weekend it had rained from Friday night straight through to Monday morning, soggy and dreary though not necessarily all that cold, surprisingly enough. If it rained today, though, the dampness would certainly set in, likely in the most unpleasant ways.

They leaned against the rail together for a few minutes, both staring up at the sky. Joslyn chewed her lip and Elaine glanced at her sidelong.

“Are you okay?”

Joslyn nodded. “Yeah. Just…just a little nervous, I guess. I don’t even know when he’s going to be here, just that he’s coming, you know?”

“I know,” Elaine said, taking a sip of coffee. “He didn’t tell you anything about where he’d be coming from?”

She shook her head. “No. He just said he’d come and that was that. I gave him the address. I don’t even know if he’s driving. He could be flying or taking a train or who knows what.”

“I’m sure he’ll get here safe,” Elaine said, reaching over to squeeze her arm. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“There is a hell of a lot to worry about,” Joslyn said, then laughed. “I should get dressed. God only knows when he’s going to show up.”

“And you’re not intending for him to see you in your pajamas?” Elaine grinned at her sidelong and Joslyn laughed.

“It would be quite the impression.”

“It’s not like he doesn’t already know you, Joss.” Elaine squeezed her arm again and straightened. “I mean, he’s been talking to you for months.”

“Almost since launch,” Joslyn murmured. “Feels like forever.”

Elaine smiled. “Then what are you worried about?”

“I guess I’m not,” she said, then smiled. “Maybe a little.”

“Well, miss ‘maybe a little,’ let’s go inside and have some breakfast because I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not do this on an empty stomach—if it happens sometime this morning at all. You said yourself, you don’t know how he’s getting here or where he’s coming from.” Elaine threw her arm around Joslyn’s shoulders and tugged her friend back toward their townhouse. Joslyn sighed with a crooked smile and leaned into her for a second, wrapping her arm around Elaine’s waist in a quick hug.

“You’re the best, you know that, right?”

“So are you,” Elaine said, grinning and gulping down the last of what was in her coffee mug as they stepped inside. “I think I want oatmeal.”

“I’m going to make some toast,” Joslyn said, and together they descended on the kitchen.

It was only a few minutes before they were both settled at their little kitchen table, each with the breakfast of their choice and each with a fresh mug of hot coffee. For a few minutes more, there was only the sound of Elaine’s spoon against her bowl and the scrape of a butter knife across toast as Joslyn spread her half-melted butter around.

It was Joslyn who finally broke the silence. “So what’s on your agenda today?”

Elaine shrugged slightly. “Probably going to work on organizing some research I’ve got here and do some reading for Monday afternoon. Maybe I’ll log in for a little while. We’ll see.”

Joslyn smiled wryly. “So how did it go last night with Lord Caius before shit hit the fan all over the place?”

A blush stole across Elaine’s cheeks and she shook her head quickly. Joslyn smirked, leaning back.

“Well?”

“We danced,” Elaine said simply. “That’s all.”

“The entire time?”

“Until he got stabbed,” Elaine said, glancing down into her bowl. “Then shit got a little unpleasant.”

“As one would expect,” Joslyn said, taking a sip of her coffee. “Considering he got stabbed in the back by god knows who.”

“Yeah,” Elaine said, scraping another spoonful of oatmeal from her bowl. “Everything got a little surreal there—ironic, considering it’s a freaking game, but still. It was like things slowed down and sped up at the same time. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced something like that before.”

Joslyn shivered. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad it was you and not me. I don’t know if I’d have been able to keep my head.”

“How do you know that I did?”

“Because the person you sent to come get us told us you did,” Joslyn said, shaking her head. “Besides, you’ve always had a more level head than me. It’s just a thing, I think.”

Elaine snorted. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

Elaine just grinned and got up, shoveling the last spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth and heading for the sink. “Well, I think you’re flattering me just a little in that scenario,” she said as she put her bowl and spoon into the sink and ran hot water into it. “But thank you nonetheless.”

Now it was Joslyn’s turn to snort.

There was a knock at the front door. Both women froze, staring at it for a moment, then meeting each other’s gaze.

“Do you think…?”

Joslyn nodded, swallowing hard. She started to stand up but Elaine waved her back into her chair.

“I got it,” she said, turning off the water, drying her hands on a striped towel on her way to the front door. She fought down a strange queasy, excited feeling in her stomach on her way there, leaving the towel on the edge of the counter as she headed from the kitchen to their small foyer, where light jackets hung on pegs next to their front door, shoes lined up in a neat row beneath them, toes not quite resting against the wall. Elaine twisted the deadbolt and opened the door just a crack, peering out to see who’d come knocking at just past eight in the morning.

He was slender, dark-haired, a few inches taller than she was, perhaps an inch or less taller than Joslyn. His eyes were green, copper around the irises, and seemed much too old for his face. He was dressed in jeans and a wrinkled tee beneath a half-zipped hoodie, its sleeves rolled to his elbows, feet shoved into a pair of old low-rise Converse. He peered through the crack, meeting her gaze with a hopeful one of his own. He swallowed once, then asked quietly, “Is Joslyn here?”

Elaine stared at him a moment longer, then nodded. “Are you—?

“Jason,” he said quietly. “Ascalon, if you know that name, too.”

“I do,” Elaine said as she slowly swung the door open a little wider. “Come on in. I’m Elaine—Joss is my roommate.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Jason murmured as he stepped into the foyer. By now, Joslyn had come to the doorway that led from the foyer back into their kitchen and living room, leaning in its archway and staring directly at him.

“Hi,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“Hi,” he echoed, his own voice not much more than that.

Elaine quietly closed the door behind him and locked it again, watching them stare at each other for an awkwardly long time. She cleared her throat. “I’m sure you’re hungry and could use some coffee,” she said, slipping past him on her way back to the kitchen. “I’ll go put on a fresh pot.”

They’d gone through most of the one she’d made when she’d gotten up anyway.

That jarred the pair out of their awkward silence and unfroze each of them, Jason by the front door and Joslyn six feet away. Elaine glanced back to see Joslyn taking a step forward, toward Jason, and smiled slightly to herself, continuing across the kitchen to the coffeemaker.

“How was the drive?” she heard Joslyn ask, her voice quiet, almost tentative.

“Long,” Jason said. “I had to stop for about an hour once I crossed the state line so I could sleep for an hour. Was going cross-eyed when I was on the tristate and that wasn’t going to be a good way to make the rest of the drive.”

“The tristate,” Joslyn echoed. “Where did you drive from?”

“Wisconsin,” he said. “I know I could’ve taken the ferry but I—I don’t know. I guess I wanted to stay in control.  I know I didn’t want to be on anyone else’s schedule.”

“I’m just glad you got here safely,” Joslyn said.

Elaine leaned back from the coffee pot, peering back through the doorway. The angle wasn’t right; she couldn’t see anything.

Not that I should be spying on them anyway.

She shook her head at herself.

In the pocket of her sweater, her phone buzzed. She dug it out on her way to the sink to rinse the coffee carafe and fill it so she could start the promised fresh pot. An alert glowed on the blue background, one from the Universe companion app she’d finally gotten around to installing on her new phone after replacing her old one months ago.

New letter. Huh.

Elaine tucked her phone back into her pocket, though her heart had started to beat a little faster. There was something exciting about getting a message that morning, as silly as it seemed. She forced herself to wait until she got the coffee going before she dug her phone back out again, setting it on the countertop as she reached up to get a mug down from the cabinet for Jason. She left it there as she went back to the kitchen table to retrieve her own mug, sipping from it as she returned to the counter and swiped a finger across the notification, unlocking her phone and opening the message in the same motion.

The message was from Caius.

Lady Arenvale,

You have my heartfelt thanks for your assistance last night. I hope that the excitement will not prevent you from being my guest again in the future. I would like to see you again soon, though I suspect that as a healer, you will likely appear at Weatherstone soon enough to check on my progress. I assure you that I remain abed, as I suspect you instructed my staff to keep me while I was unconscious. I have instructed them that you are to be admitted into my presence as you see fit. I confess that I hope that you will see fit soon.

Faithfully,

Caius.

Her heart rose into her throat, still beating too fast, and for a second it was hard to breath, a burst of nervous butterflies erupting in her stomach.

He’d signed it simply ‘Caius.’

What did that mean? Did it mean anything, or was she reading too much into all of it?

Taking a deep breath, she closed the app and stuffed her phone back into her pocket, leaning against the countertop. The coffeemaker made its familiar noises as a fresh pot brewed, and she stared at it perhaps a little too intensely, trying not to eavesdrop on what was going on out in the foyer. Joslyn and Jason weren’t making eavesdropping easy, in any case, their voices low enough that she really couldn’t make out whatever they were saying over the sound of the coffeemaker.

They probably wouldn’t miss me if I went upstairs, would they? Would Joss be okay with that? Of course. Of course she would be. She’s known Ascalon for a long time now—even if this is the first time they’ve seen each other face to face. Elaine glanced toward the foyer again, then sighed and shook her head. She took another gulp of coffee, resolving to wait at least until the fresh pot was done.

The brewing had just finished when Joslyn appeared in the doorway again, drawing Jason behind her by the hand, a faint blush creeping across her cheeks. Still leaning against the counter, Elaine arched a brow at her friend, studying the pair as she gulped down the last of the coffee in her mug.

“What?”

Joslyn shook her head, leading Jason over to the kitchen table. Elaine’s brow climbed higher, but she turned away, reaching for the carafe.

“How do you like your coffee, Jason?”

He seemed startled by the question as he dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. “Uhm, black is fine.”

Elaine nodded, her back still to them as she filled the mug. She filled hers, too, before she put the carafe back, then collected Jason’s cup and brought it to the table, handing it over with a crooked smile. “I hope it’s not too strong.”

“I honestly doubt that it would be,” he said, smiling warmly as he took the mug from her. “Thank you.”

Elaine nodded, then headed to the fridge for cream for her own coffee. “Was it a bad drive?”

“No,” he said. “Not too bad. Just long and it was dark and last night was a little exciting before I did that. I probably should’ve slept a couple hours before I left but I—” he broke off, looking at Joslyn for a few seconds as she reclaimed her seat at the table.  “—I just wanted to get here,” he finished, his voice quieter. “I needed to get here, I guess.”

“Well, we’re both glad that you made it safely,” Elaine said, smiling. “I’ll let you two…uhm. I’ll let you two talk. I’ve got some work to do upstairs anyway.” She wrapped both hands around her mug. “It’s nice to meet you, Jason.”

“Likewise,” he said quietly, watching her for a few seconds.

Elaine smiled again, nodded, then retreated up the stairs, leaving the pair alone in the kitchen.