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“I doubt that. Didn’t you look in the mirror?”
He snickers. “Yeah, but you don’t understand. Back then, I still looked at myself as a nerdy programmer with no game. I didn’t see the same thing in the mirror as you.” Nate moves his hand from beneath my skirt and hooks his arm around my back. “You should understand this better than anyone. For most of our lives, you’ve become whatever everyone wants you to be, all at the cost of losing yourself.”
“That’s not true,” I snap.
“No? Then, how come it took you marrying me for you to stand up to your dad?”
Annoyed, I look away from him, knowing he’s right. Nate moves his hand beneath my chin to gain my attention. He tips his head at the sketchpad filled with new drawings on my desk. “This is what you were meant to do. You’re one of the most skilled artists I’ve ever known. No one should stop you from becoming the artist you were meant to be, not even your dad. Especially not him.”
I wish I had his confidence.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I know so.”
“I need to finish this.” I tap the pencil on the pad. “And you have code to write.”
He glances at his monitor and sighs.
“You’re stuck, aren’t you?”
He nods. “Something is missing.”
“You’ve been saying that since high school.”
I drop my pencil on the desk and move my chair closer to his. “Show me.”
“You don’t know how to read code,” he points out.
“Demo it for me.”
“I only have a few levels completed.”
“Show them to me.”
He scratches the corner of his jaw, staring at the screen. “Okay, but they kinda suck. They’re nowhere near as good as the storyboards I wrote for Ashborn.”
“Why are you so afraid of finishing this game?”
“I’m not,” he says, defensive. “It’s just…”
“It scares you for some reason. Why?”
“I don’t know,” he admits after a long pause.
“You started writing it when we were still friends.”
He rolls his shoulders. “Every time I’ve tried to work on it since—”
“It’s because you associate the game with losing me.”
A silence passes between us.
“The same thing happened to me,” I confess. “After we stopped talking, I couldn’t draw a single comic book character, not even Harley Quinn.”
His eyebrows rise. “Really?”
I nod. “I couldn’t even look at a comic book for over a year.”
“Is that why you stopped sketching? Because of me?”
I blow out a deep breath. “You believed in me, pushed me to work on my art, and once you were gone, it was like… I don’t know. I lost my creativity for a while. Sometimes, I would sit there and trace over the lines of my old designs just so I could feel alive again.”
He lifts a curious eyebrow. “How did you overcome it?”
“I got away from you.”
“You didn’t have to move to LA,” he counters.
“The thought of being on the same side of the country as you was suffocating. I didn’t want to come home on breaks and see you with other girls. I couldn’t bear the thought.”
“You wouldn’t have seen them anyway.” He laughs. “They snuck around back when my dad was home.”
I shake my head. “You’re such a pig.”
Nate wraps his arms around me, smothering me with his manly scent. “You know you love it.”
“I do,” I whisper.
“I love you, Harley.” He hugs me tighter. “Always have, always will.”
Resting my head on his shoulder, I peek up at him. “It’s always been you.”
“I’m so afraid of losing you,” he says in a hushed tone.
“This started as a fake relationship.” I thread my fingers between his, and electricity skates along my skin. “But this is real. It has been for me for a while now.”
He sighs. “I was afraid it was just me.”
“I’m scared, too,” I mutter. “Falling in love is terrifying. I gave all of myself to you before, and it didn’t end well. I can’t go through that again. And I can’t help but feel like we’re too happy, that we’re too comfortable. Whenever it feels too good to be true, it usually is.”
“Not this time.” He rubs his thumb along the top of my hand. “I’m not letting you go again. I’m not that stupid.”
“You’re the smartest man I know.” My words earn me a smirk from Nate. “And the cockiest.”
“You’re good for a man’s self-esteem.” He presses his lips to my forehead. “What was I thinking when I let you move across the country?”
I howl with laughter. “You let me? I don’t think so, buddy. You couldn’t wait to get away from me.”
“I think we both needed the break.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I’m always right,” he says with a wicked grin.
I pinch his cheek, a smile tugging at my mouth. “You’re terrible.”
“And you drive me crazy.”
I run my fingers down his arm, loving that I can touch Nate like this. “Show me the game.”
He taps his mouse, and the screen comes to life. “I’m warning you, it’s not my best.”
