“Yes, mistress. Thank you, mistress.” He takes his stupid sandwich reverently and places it on his desk, beside his soundboard.
I grimace. “Well. That’s all. So.” I pull my hand away from the camera, step back, and make it less than a foot closer to the door before Kyran rises, pulling his headphones off completelyand catching me in my retreat. “H-hey,” I protest, cutting my attention toward the video playback of us, close, everything above our shoulders out of frame.
My attention catches on Enigma, in Kyran’s chat, his Tier 3 Twitch membership loud and clear as he suggests we either get aprivateroom or switch to the office camera view.
I flush.
Enigma riles a moderator to start a poll, and the landslide ofoffice camerawinning erupts to fill my overheating head.Whyis it so unearthly hot in here? Oh. Right.All the gaming equipment.
“I have to get back to work,” he says, like no,duh. I’m being a nuisance. I know that. Iknowthat. But he…does not seem to know that as he repeats, “Ireallyhave to get back to work.”
“Yeah, obviously. I shouldn’t even be bothering you. At all.”
Yet, he’s still smiling.
He didnotdo what he said he would, but he’s not upset. Maybe that means something? Obviously what he said he’d do was a joke. I’m probably the only one who remembers it. So the fact he’s not upset with me for interrupting him after he told me last night how much being a creator means to him must mean something.
I’m being greedy. And dumb.
Despite this, he cups my chin, lifts my face, andkissesme. It is not calm; it is not tame. It is sudden and short, butdevouring. And then it’s over, and I’m off balance as he steps back, freeing me. “I love you,” he says as he reaches for his headphones. “I’m unmuting now, okay?”
“I…uh…” Air is not forthcoming. “Okay.”
Setting what just happened aside, Kyran—still smiling—settles back down at his desk, unmutes, and says, “Sorry about that.” His smile says he’s not even a little bit sorry about that. Iturn before the nonchalance of him getting right back to it has a chance to hurt me. He says, “My wife brought me lunch.”
I freeze in place, halfway out the door.
“Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t look. Let me check.” He hums, then helaughs. “Looks like it’s a BLT. Yum. Good thing Ender’s not here right now. He’d have eaten the whole thing while I was…preoccupied.” A pause. “No, I don’t think we need to talk about the wife reveal. Everyone saw enough of her to know I’m lucky… How long have we been married? Our whole lives. Why’s it matter? I’m allowed to keep dirty little secrets.”
My heart pounds.
“I know, I know. I’m off brand. I’ll stop smiling as soon as I can figure out how. Promise.”
He doesn’t. For a while.
After I leave his gaming room, I pull up his stream on my phone, sit in his sensory swing, and watch him beam with every bite. Even after his sandwich and smile gradually siphon away, the twinkle that clings to his eye doesn’t.
?
“Having a crisis, mistress?” a voice from the outside world asks, invading the peace of my crisis cocoon.
Huddled up in a ball, I say, “No. Don’t be an idiot, e-boy. I’m just processing injustices.”
“Injustices?”
“I was lied to.”
He settles into the fluffy pink saucer chair just outside the sensory swing. “Lied to?”
“Yousaidyou’d tell everyone I was yourgirlfriend, not yourwife.”
“Oh?” Genuine curiosity. “I forgot I said that.”
“You fo—” I huff. “Why’d you say anything like that at all if youforgot?”
“Because. That’s the great thing about telling the truth. I don’t need to remember what I say.”
Eye twitching, I shove my face out of the cocoon and glare at this infernal man. “Telling thetruth, Kyran?”
