Chapter Five #2
“Oh, but I am. My circle is very small. Outside of Ri, Evie, and Dani, I’m friendly with the other doctors at my practice but that’s about it.
I’m what I like to call an extroverted introvert.
Yes, I know ‘ ambivert ’ is a word, but I like my way better.
I can be very social but I’m mainly only that way with my friends and when my social battery dies, it dies. ”
“Damn, so me and the guys aren’t your friends?”
“Arnold definitely isn’t my friend, not anymore. Micah and Christian, yeah, okay. I hang out with them. But I didn’t see you hitting me up for shit prior to this trip, sir.”
He rolls his eyes. “I had my reasons for that.”
“And what were they? Because after we met the first time you kept your distance and I thought, damn, he really doesn’t fuck with me.
When we planned the engagement party together, I thought we had fun but even then you were distant.
This new version of you that wants to dick me down and spend time with me? It’s taken some getting used to.”
“It’s not a new version of me. It’s the real me. I’m just not holding back anymore.”
“Why were you in the first place?”
“Maybe one day I’ll tell you. Just know, you’ve never been the problem.”
I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until he said it. I want to press him for the details but I don’t want to push him past his limits. I’ll let him tell me when he’s ready. I pout my lips and nod my head. “Hmm, okay. Fine. Keep your secrets.”
“Thank you. And I get what you were saying, too. I love spending time with my friends and family. I’m always down for an adventure with them, but I’m really in my bag when I can just zone out and work on a project by myself. Conferences, interviews, and things like that? Completely drain me.”
“See, look at that. You’re more like a sea turtle than you thought.”
“Who would’ve thought?”
“The more you know,” I say, spreading my hands out to represent a rainbow. He tickles the inside of my thigh, making me bend over with laughter.
“You know you can swim with sea turtles here, right? Is that on the agenda for this week?”
My smile drops and I tear my eyes away from him. “It somehow didn’t make the cut.”
He cuts his eyes over to me and lets them linger before turning his attention back to the road. “Can I ask what’s up with you and your sister? I know you said it’s not about Arnold, but what is it about? Because you can’t tell me something isn’t up.”
I shift in my seat so that my right knee is up against the door with my foot under my ass. “Ri is my best friend, or at least she used to be. I don’t know—shit between us has been weird for a minute now, before she started dating Arnold, but her being with him has personified it. I don’t get it.”
“You don’t wanna ask her?”
“I have asked her. She insists that I’m reading everything wrong and that we have no issues, but it doesn’t feel that way.”
I keep making the excuse for her that wedding planning is just stressing her out, but that excuse is paper thin and the words on the page fade more and more with every shot she takes at me.
“It doesn’t look that way either.”
I clear my throat and look out of the window. “Are you and your brother close?” I haven’t met Jalen Martin yet since he wasn’t able to make it to the engagement party, but Rome has mentioned him plenty of times.
“Extremely. That’s my guy. I was always his shadow growing up, because he’s four years older than me and now his son is my little shadow.”
“That’s adorable. Does he play any of your games?”
“Oh yeah, you can’t tell his little ass he’s not a pro gamer. Proving Grounds exists solely because he challenged me to create it.”
Proving Grounds was one of Downhill Studios ’ most popular games last year.
It’s a horror game set in a zombie apocalypse where the player must fight their way through an infested city and is only given a certain timeframe to do so.
His company was already a giant in the videogame industry, but this game quickly became one of the top-rated zombie games next to The Last of Us, the Resident Evil franchise, and Left 4 Dead.
“Wait, you still design the games? I assumed you were too busy running the place to do that.”
“Game design is still my heart even though I don’t get to do it as much anymore. That was a special project for Kam, so I had to.”
“You’re a good uncle.”
“I try to be.” My ovaries keep trying to speak up as if I want to hear anything they have to say. Pipe the fuck down.
“I can’t believe you really designed Proving Grounds. That game gave me nightmares.” I chuckle.
“Hold the fuck up. You played the game?”
“Yeah, Evie made me. She knows I don’t like horror games, but she insisted this one was fire. She wasn’t wrong. Still terrified me though.”
He laughs and rubs his hand over his beard before gripping my thigh again. “I didn’t know you and Eve were gamers.”
She keeps it under wraps, but Evie is a huge gamer.
She has an entire YouTube channel dedicated to speed runs of her favorite games.
I’m not on her level, and I usually spend my free time reading, but I have been known to lose myself in games from time to time.
“Stick around, you might learn a thing or two about me.”
“I plan to.”
A charged silence falls over the car, steeped in unspoken claims and false promises.
One week.
That’s all we have.
“We’re here.” His claim jolts me back to the present. When I look up, I see that we’re at a dock and there’s a group of three people waving to us from a very large boat.
I turn to Rome with my jaw on the ground. “What is going on?”
“You’ve been saying that you just wanted to read by the water. I figured if we went to the pool, we’d just be interrupted and you’d be dragged into yet another activity. So,” he waves toward the yacht, “I brought the water to you.”
I look back and forth from him to the boat several times trying to make sense of his words.
“You…you rented an entire yacht…just so I could read by the water?”
He holds up the tote bag he packed for me and hands it over so I can see my Kindle and both paperbacks I packed resting comfortably inside.
“I did. You ready?”
Ready to go half on a baby with your fine ass? Shit, put me down as a possible. Damn these fucking ovaries. “Y-yeah.”
He puts his hand on my lower back to lead me up the dock and onboard where the captain introduces herself as Shirrelle, and the other two crew members introduce themselves as Paul and Luis.
Luis gives us a tour of the ship from the two bedrooms and bathrooms to the very spacious sundeck and tells us the plan for docking so we can use the swimming platform if we want.
Paul tells us what time to expect lunch and then they leave us in the downstairs lounge area.
“Rome, this is amazing. Thank you.” I’m blown away by this gesture.
According to the Forbes “Forty Under Forty” article that was done on him, Rome’s net worth is in the millions.
To some, dropping at least fifteen hundred dollars on a yacht rental that could easily fit twenty to fifty people on it might seem like a drop in the bucket for him, and I’m sure it is, but the intention behind the gesture speaks volumes as to who he is and I’m listening intently.
“You’re welcome. You happy you trusted me?”
“Listen, you’ll get no questions from me going forward.”
His laughter resonates right in my belly. “Somehow, I doubt that.”
“You tryna say I’m difficult?” I slap my hand against my chest.
“Challenging,” he leans down to whisper in my ear. “In the best way.”
Without waiting for a response from me, he grabs my hand and pulls me over to the comfortable sofa in the lounge area.
While I’m dying to open the book I haven’t had time to read since I started it weeks ago, I don’t make a move to pull it out of my bag.
My focus keeps drifting to this enigma of a man, wondering how the hell we got here and how we’ll ever go back to the status quo.
He starts to walk away but I clutch his hand.
“Wait.”
“What’s up?”
“Where are you going?”
His chest rumbles with a low laugh. “Leaving you to read as planned.”
When I don’t say anything he sits beside me on the sofa, man-spreading as he does, and leans his arm against the back of my seat. “J?”
I swallow my next words in a big gulp and turn to face him. “Yeah?”
“I didn’t bring you here to entertain me. I brought you here so you could relax…properly. So, go ahead and pull out your book and ignore me for whatever fictional world you’re jumping into.”
“I feel so bad, though.”
“Because?”
“Because you did all this for me and I’m about to forget about your entire existence once I crack open that book. What are you gonna do?”
His jaw tenses. “First of all, you need to stop worrying about other people for a second. You don’t have to repay people for every little thing they do for you.
The people who really fuck with you don’t give a shit about that.
Second, if you’re so worried about how I’m gonna spend my time on this boat, run me a book then. ”
My brow piques. “What?”
“Let me hold one of your books so I can read with you.”
“You wanna read with me?”
He lifts his eyebrow to match mine. “You don’t think I can read?”
“I mean, hey, I wasn’t there with you in school.
I don’t know what you know and don’t know.
” He pinches and tickles me on the sides, making me fall over with tears of laughter.
“Okay! Okay! I’m just saying I mostly read romance so I wasn’t sure if you knew what you were getting yourself into.
Although, I do read thrillers too. I have the latest Ciara Jeffries release with me if you wanna read that. ”
“Mhm. What are you reading right now?”