Page 35
He attaches it to a new email and enters Julian Vey’s direct contact from the business card.
He types only a few lines, the words direct and stripped of any small talk. It mentions the DLC project, his qualifications, and his interest in the position.
I read the words upside down on the screen as they appear.
My heart hammers, and I squeeze my knees around Kain’s thighs.
His finger hovers over the trackpad.
“Last chance to change your mind,” he says, without looking at me.
Reaching over the top of the laptop, I push his finger down on the send button.
The email vanishes.
Silence hangs in the room, broken only by the soft hiss of the gas fireplace.
Kain closes the laptop and tosses it aside. His arm settles around my waist, his hand warm through the fabric of my pajama top.
“Happy?” he asks.
I tackle him backward. “Yes!”
Soon, my two favorite parts of life will merge.
7
“How long does an interview take?”
The question echoes in the quiet house.
I check the time on my phone. Ten forty-seven. Kain left at nine.
Interviews take an hour. Maybe more if they do a test. But Julian must think Kain’s talented. He wouldn’t have given Kain his contact information otherwise, so a test is unlikely.
Kain got the interview notification the morning after he sent in his resume, which just proves Julian recognizes the gem he found in my friend.
The three days until the interview dragged. This morning, Kain left in the jeans without holes and a graphic tee with a suit jacket over it.
I was bouncing off the walls when he left, but now all that energy has imploded.
Silence fills the living room, which has been put back to rights after my pamper night. It’s not the companionable silence of us working side-by-side, but an echoing quiet that says I’ve been left behind.
It makes no sense that I couldn’t go with Kain. Julian met me. It wouldn’t have been a big deal to let me sit in the lobby.
Stupid, annoying Kain with all his IRL rules.
I wander to the office where the monitors all sit in wait mode, and my tablet with the farming sim lies on the floor beside my beanbag chair.
I tried to seed my eggplant garden, but lost focus the second I opened the game and found my screen cluttered with notifications for neighbor chores.
A bottle of Respawn Glacial Blue sits half-empty on the other side of my chair, a ring of condensation building on the floor.
I should probably wipe that up. But I don’t.
Instead, I pull my Pulse Riot game from my pocket. The hexagons glow, and my thumbs hover over the screen, but with the competition over, the drive to play is gone.
I switch it for my phone and read the time again.
