Chapter 5

Luke

I was in. Now all I had to do was prove to her that I wasn’t the idiot that she seemed to think I was, and that I could actually be serious about something.

About her.

Focus, idiot. First things first. “So, did you have any thoughts on what new setting you want to build?”

She gave me an incredulous look. If I was hoping to convince her I wasn’t a moron, clearly that had not been the right question to ask.

She pulled a notebook out of her oversized tote bag and set it on the desk between us. She flipped it open to a page in the middle that was marked with a sticky tab.

“What the…” I muttered under my breath.

For the first time since she sat down across from me, Suzie looked like she might smile. “I have a few thoughts.”

I let out a short laugh at the understatement. Two pages of lined notebook pages were covered from top to bottom with her small, precise handwriting. Each line was numbered which made it clear even from my upside-down view that this was a list—a crazy long list—of all her ideas.

I waved a hand toward the list. “Okay, hit me.”

She pressed her lips together in an adorable and rare display of vulnerability. Then she tucked one of the bright red curls that had slipped free from her ponytail back behind her ear and turned her attention to the list. In a no-nonsense tone she rattled off her ideas.

By idea ten I wasn’t fully listening. I got the gist of where she was going with her ideas and it wasn’t what I’d had in mind. It wasn’t bad, but it was more of the same. By idea number twenty I realized that her reading to me like this gave me the perfect excuse to study her in a way I rarely got to do. I took note of the impossibly pale lashes, the telltale fair skin that held a hint of a blush even now just because I was watching her read. I catalogued the freckles on her nose and made a mental note of how they spattered her cheekbones and disappeared into her hair. I studied the way her hair was held back neatly and efficiently and let myself envision for one moment what it would feel like if she let me bury my hands in those curls as I kissed the hell out of her.

She glanced up then and whatever she saw on my face had her cheeks turning twenty shades pinker. “What?” she said, her tone defensive.

I shook my head and cleared my throat, shifting in my seat in an attempt to hide the fact that my mind had not only strayed…it had gone rogue. “Nothing.”

“So?” she demanded, her brows arched in obvious anticipation. I didn’t know if she was expecting to be mocked or degraded, but there was no denying the defensiveness in her tone.

“They, uh…they all sound good,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes.

“I mean,” I toyed with a scratch mark on the edge of the desk. “They’re all…fine.”

“Fine?” She jumped on the word.

I shrugged. I might’ve liked the girl and yeah, I totally had the hots for her, but I wasn’t about to lie to her. She deserved to hear the truth. And knowing Prince Z, she’d want to hear it. She crossed her arms and glared at me.

Or…maybe not.

I sat up straighter. “Look, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with those ideas,” I started.

“Gee, thanks. So glad to hear it.”

I ignored the sarcasm. “It’s just not the direction I was thinking.”

“You were thinking?”

I couldn’t stop the shocked laugh that escaped. See now, that little rejoinder? That was totally something Prince Z would have shot back and having a voice to the quips made it that much better.

“I was, as a matter of fact,” I said.

Some of her defensiveness seemed to ebb in the face of my teasing. I wasn’t rising to her bait and she knew it.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “So what were your ideas then?”

I took a deep breath, oddly nervous now that it was my turn to talk. I cleared my throat. “Well, here’s the thing. I was thinking about what you said yesterday.” I paused for a second to gather my thoughts and she stared at me blankly.

“The thing about Fonzie?”

I laughed and earned a little smile in return. “No, Suzie Q, not the Fonzie comment. I was thinking about what you said about why Arcadia Games is holding this contest.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I’m listening.”

I leaned forward a bit but stopped from going any further when I saw her stiffen. She definitely was not cool with me being in her personal space…yet.

“You said they wanted to make this game more marketable to a younger demographic, right?”

She nodded.

“All the ideas you threw out there, they’d be providing more of the same.” I saw her open her mouth to cut me off but I hurried on. “I’m not saying they’re not great ideas—they are.” I paused to meet her gaze. “They’d be perfect if the company were looking to expand their current market.”

Her brows drew down and I could see that she wanted to argue with me but she didn’t. She let out a loud exhale. “So then, what are your ideas?”

“Uh, more like idea,” I said with a sheepish grin. “Singular.”

She rolled her eyes and waggled her fingers. “Hit me with this fantastic, singular idea.”

I swallowed down a ridiculous wave of nerves. “A ski slope.”

She stared at me, and for a split second it was impossible to tell if she was stunned by the awesomeness of my idea or blown away by the idiocy of my plan.

Then her brows drew together in confusion. “Are you positive you’ve played this game?”

Okay, so probably not wowed by my genius then. Fair enough. “Hear me out,” I said, leaning forward once again.

This time she didn’t pull away or stiffen. No, she got right up out of her seat and started collecting her notebook. “And here I thought you might actually be serious about something for once.”

“I am,” I said, coming to my feet as well. I could practically feel her pulling away from me, and not just physically. I could see her shutting down the gates that were harder to access than the freakin’ Bridge of Nydor.

“Suzie Q, I’m serious.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Why?” I said. “It’s cute.”

“It’s juvenile.”

“It’s adorable, just like you.” I said it in a teasing tone but instantly regretted it because I could tell by the color in her cheeks that she thought I was mocking her again.

Teasing, I wanted to shout. Teasing, not mocking. There’s a difference.

The thing was, she did know that. She never took a joke the wrong way when I was DataG. She just expected the worst of Luke Warner. The sad part was, when I was DataG and she was Prince Z, no one expected more from me than she did. She pushed me and challenged me and never let me get away with any lame excuses. She also didn’t jump to conclusions about me or suspect me of being cruel and mean.

Right now, I missed the hell out of Prince Z. Which was sort of ironic since she was standing right in front of me.

I thrust a hand through my hair as I watched Suzie shove her notebook in her bag, two seconds away from dashing out the door.

I grasped her arms, not roughly or anything but she froze like I’d just electrocuted her. “Just hear me out, okay?”

Her jaw was clenched and her mouth set. I knew that stubborn, mutinous glare well. But I had no idea what I’d done to flip the switch. For a second there she’d been ready to listen to me, but then—

“I get it,” she said simply.

“What do you get?”

She arched her brows. “A ski slope. So, what, you’re thinking a blank white canvas? Basically, you’re going for the easiest plan you can think of, right?” She hitched her bag up on her shoulder. “Well, bravo, because you definitely came up with something easy. But I’m not looking for the easiest option, thank you very much. There are other people like me who will be taking this project seriously. They’ll be devoting time and energy and—”

“Are you almost done?” I kept my tone flat. Bored.

It made anger flash in those pretty eyes of hers.

Good. I was pissed too. I knew she didn’t think highly of me, but instantly assuming I’d tried to find the easy way out because I’m just such a slacker? Yeah, that hit a nerve.

She jerked her arms out of my hands and crossed them. “Am I wrong?” she demanded.

“Actually, yes. You are wrong.”

A flicker of self-doubt passed through those eyes, there and gone in an instant, but I latched onto it. I pointed toward the chair she’d just jumped out of. “Just hear me out.”

She sank back into the seat, not even trying to hide her wariness.

Man, what had I ever done to her to merit this level of mistrust? I’d barely spoken to the girl up until this year.

Bingo.

I ignored the sarcastic voice, drowning it out with a sales pitch instead. “Look, if we want to stand out in this contest, the idea we choose needs to be something fresh. Something different from what they already have going on.”

She pursed her lips and for a second I thought she might argue, but she just said, “I’m listening.”

“They want to appeal to a younger crowd, right?”

She nodded. “This whole contest is basically a publicity stunt to make high schoolers aware of the game.”

I bit back a laugh at her pragmatic statement that bordered on cynical. “Right, my point exactly. Not to be sexist or anything, but my guess is they’re hoping to target teen guys specifically.”

She hitched her lips to the side and tilted her head back and forth, a grudging maybe.

“From the little research I’ve done, more than double the amount of young adult guys would describe themselves as gamers while—”

“Okay, fine,” she cut in loudly. “You’ve made your point. They’re probably gearing their marketing toward guys.”

“Right,” I said, absurdly pleased that she was conceding a point in my favor. “So it stands to reason that our mod setting should be something that appeals to a younger male crowd.”

“And you think that’s a ski slope?” she asked, her tone still wary but not nearly as defensive.

I nodded. “Think X-Games meets magic.”

Her face was unreadable, her eyes shuttered. I found myself holding my breath. When she finally spoke she just repeated what I said like she was trying to wrap her head around it. “X-Games meets magic.”

There was no emotion in her tone, no way of telling if she was intrigued by the idea or repulsed. I had a feeling she was honestly trying to envision it, maybe even thinking through logistics. That was the thing about Suzie—she might’ve been quiet at school but that shy unassuming demeanor was hiding a wicked sharp brain. I had no idea it was currently working a mile a minute to visualize the idea.

I wanted her to see it too. I’d been so psyched about the idea when I was lying in bed last night—so excited I’d had to restrain myself from jumping up and logging into the game to see if Prince Z was online too so I could share it with her.

Of course I’d quickly realized the error inherent in that thinking. To tell her my ideas I’d first have to explain who I was…and that I knew who she was.

It was a secret that needed to be divulged, but not today.

Today I just had to get her to see that my idea had merit. I had to help her picture the setting as vividly as I could, I had to—

Inspiration struck and I moved closer to Suzie, not even trying to hide my excitement. “Let me show you.”

Her eyes narrowed on me. “How?”

“You know the ski resort up on Donnelley Mountain?” I asked.

“I know of it,” she said.

“I’m taking you there this weekend.”

“What?” She shook her head. “No.”

I should have seen the rejection coming a mile away but it still cut like a knife. “Why not?” I said. “Do you have plans this weekend?”

She shifted and her cheeks started to flush. Ah hell, I hadn’t meant it like that.

“No.” She crossed her arms defensively and I tried to salvage the situation.

“Good, neither do I.”

She arched her brows in disbelief. “You have no plans?”

I knew what she meant. I had a bit of an image as a party guy and yeah, I normally kept my weekend schedule packed—more to avoid my father than anything else. “No plans I can’t change,” I said.

I waited for her to toss more arguments my way to get out of this. If Suzie had made one thing clear these past six weeks it was that she had little desire to get to know me, and would actually go to great lengths to steer clear of me.

I took advantage of her temporary silence, pretending that her silence was a tacit agreement. “Great, so I’ll pick you up on Saturday, then.”

“Wait, I didn’t—”

I was already backing away. The club’s meeting was nearing an end, that much was obvious by the fact that everyone around us was packing up and heading toward the door.

I joined in on the mass exodus, ignoring Suzie’s growing look of panic as she realized she was stuck. “I’m not going out with you,” she called out, her cheeks turning crimson as she no doubt realized how that sounded to our peers who were watching us as they filed out. “I mean—”

I didn’t give her a chance to explain. “You want us to take this seriously, right?”

She pressed her lips together. Of course she wanted us to take this seriously.

“Then come along for the sake of the project,” I called back to her.

She opened her mouth to argue and I stopped in the doorway. “Come on, Suzie Q, give me a chance. If you still hate the idea after Saturday we’ll pick one of your ideas. Deal?”

I didn’t wait for her response before I bolted.

I honestly didn’t trust that she’d say yes and this idea I had in my head—the new mod that I could see so clearly, it felt crazy important that she understand. That she was just as excited as I was about it. I knew she wasn’t there yet, but she wasn’t outright hating on it either, and that was a start.

Later that night as Prince Z and I battled an ogre in the Fields of Yarrow, my suspicions were confirmed. She might hate that the idea was coming from me, but she was starting to see its merit.

Prince Z: Question time.

Me: About the contest?

Prince Z: How’d you know?

Me: It’s all anyone is talking about these days.

This was the truth. Right after I’d learned about it, suddenly it was everywhere I looked. Of course, I’d started seeking out info on the rules and the gaming company, but once I did I found people chatting about it on all the major gaming sites.

Prince Z: Oh. Right.

Me: So, what’s the question?

Prince Z: You’re a guy, right?

Me: Affirmative.

When she didn’t immediately respond, I added: I assume that’s a rhetorical question?

Prince Z: What do you think of a mod that’s like X-Games meets magic?

Me: Love it.

I grinned at the screen because I could practically hear her sigh through the computer screen.

Prince Z: That’s what I thought.