Chapter 51
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Andi
A symphony of sticker bush branches grab at my ankles. I nudge them out of the way, my stomach growling. I haven’t eaten all day, and I’m looking forward to filling my insides with the best snacks I can dig up at the nearest gas station. When my feet hit the dirt of semipaved road, though, I register an obstacle a few hundred feet up from where the trail spit me out.
Someone’s there.
I squint. They’re just sitting there, on the shoulder of the road. Are they awake, or even alive? And does that rusted-out Volkswagen Beetle belong to them, or was it there when I drove up this morning? I accidentally toe a rock and send it skittering. The noise rouses the person, and they turn toward me. Alive, then. And familiar looking, despite the dark.
I break into a run. The lumpen figure gains features. They’re dressed in a sundress (in this weather?), sitting cross-legged, with their long hair down to their shoulders. My leg muscles speed up.
“Cat?” I pelt into the shadows. “Cat!”
The figure grows limbs and stands. “Andi?”
“Cat!”
I nearly collide with her, I’m running so fast. At the last second, I dig my heels in and skid to a stop. A small dust cloud puffs up, covering my shins in dirt, but my eyes don’t leave Cat’s face.
“What, the hell, are you doing here?” I pant. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I needed to see you,” she says.
Her hair is a mess, sticking to her forehead and temples and cheeks. My fingers twitch. I want to cup her face so badly, but I settle for running my hand through my own hair and mussing it. “I’m here,” is all I manage to say.
“Me too.”
We stand in the newly falling snow, inches apart. If Cat is cold—and she must be, since she runs cold—she’s hiding it well. Of all the times to not be wearing a hoodie.
“How’d you find me?” I croak, pulling off my leather jacket. I wrap it around her bare shoulders, and only then does she start shivering.
“I … looked.” Pulling the lapels closed, she leans in toward me. Not much, but enough for me to feel her warmth radiating outward like the sun. “I knew about your tattoo. And about mission six of Aftermath . Between those two things and the internet, this seemed like the most likely spot for you to go if you wanted to drop off the face of the earth.”
“That’s”—I lick my lips—“a lot of sleuthing.”
“I’ve … played a lot of Phoenix Wright .”
As she buries her face in her palms, I stifle a laugh. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney , in which a fresh-out-of-school lawyer defends clairvoyants and shady actors while doing his own detective work, is hardly a model worth emulating, but I appreciate the reference nonetheless.
Lightly, I pull her hands away from her cheeks. The beat of her heart under my fingers sends a shock straight through my core, but I compose myself and say, “I’m glad you’re here.”
In the cold, her breath takes form and brushes against my skin. I want to close the gap between us and inhale her soft scent, but I stay frozen. Until I know why she’s here, why she spent all that time looking for me, I can’t let my guard down.
She tilts her face up toward me, though, like a flower finding the sun, and my body—ever traitorous—inclines. In a rush, she pushes up onto her toes and meets her mouth with mine.
Lips. Heat. An unwinding in the pit of my belly.
Our second kiss—slow, unhurried, full of the contradiction that is desperation and patience within the same breath—is so unlike our first that, without quite meaning to, I let a soft, raspy sound escape from my lips. As Cat tangles her fingers in my hair, sending a teasing shudder ricocheting down my spine, one of my hands cups the curve of her neck while the other finds her waist and clasps it. She’s so close to me that I can feel her heartbeat going hummingbird quick against my chest, yet she’s still not close enough, not nearly—so I crush her hips against mine and stroke the soft skin of her cheek and trap her lower lip between my teeth until she’s squirming in my arms and together, we deepen the kiss, like we’re both searching for a new place to call home.
We break apart, both of us breathing hard. My hands are still on her neck and waist. I don’t let go, can’t imagine letting go.
“Cat?” I exhale her name, and it sounds like a plea.
“Brett!”
Okay … not what I was hoping to hear, especially after that . Reluctantly, I pull away. “What about Brett?”
“He’s a jackass. He and Jan—” Cat slaps her forehead so hard the sound echoes. “They’re going to light everything we did on fire and throw you under the bus for it.”
“Uh—”
“And I ended things with Sally.” She flutters her hands. “There’s more to say on that, but for now, just so you know, this is okay. I mean, more than okay. That was the best kiss. For me. I don’t mean to say I know how it was for you.”
“Cat.” I press a finger to her lips, and she goes silent. “Give me a second to catch up.”
My brain whirrs, trying to ignore the sweep of her lips against my skin and the want building between my legs. Slowly, sluggishly, her news registers—both revelations bombshells in their own way. I take a breath to slow my galloping heartbeat and address the safer of the two.
“What’s this about Brett and Jan?”
“Brett’s engaged to my sister—my sorority sister. I was at their engagement party, not by choice, when I overheard him on the phone with Jan. They’re planning on issuing a statement on Monday debunking the rumors that Compass Hollow will ship with romanceable NPCs and blaming it on you.”
I frown. “That doesn’t make any sense. Jan I get, but why would Brett nix the romance when it was his idea to begin with?” As Cat’s face begins to fall, I amend my reaction. “Hey, I believe you. I’m just trying to suss out their motivations, that’s all.”
“I’m not sure, but I got the feeling Jan’s pretty sore that you—but really I—humiliated him at IAX. Plus, Brett was asking about a job? I don’t know.”
“Job?” I clarify, my neurons firing on all cylinders to put the pieces of this nightmare together.
“Uh, promotion,” Cat corrects, her brow going wrinkly with concentration. “Brett said something about blaming the whole thing on a ‘lack of interest from the narrative team,’ and at the end of the call, Jan asked Brett to look into the identity of the cosplayer behind Sheik’s mask.”
Every muscle in my body tenses. “Have you told anyone that was you?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Good. Don’t.” As rattled as I am by Cat’s news, the thought of Jan or Brett finding out her identity and messing with her has my hackles up to my ears. For good measure, I take her hands in mine and squeeze. Hard.
“I won’t,” she says, her expression relaxing. “But Brett and Jan are going to eviscerate Hollow and feed you to the wolves unless we do something about it. Is there anything we can do about it?”
“I’ll think of something,” my mouth says automatically. I have to. No way no how am I letting Jan and Brett—and Carter, because by now it’s clear to me he’s involved too—hijack this game from the people it actually belongs to. I can see the fallout already, the clickbait headlines following whatever statement EA puts out: “Heartrender Exec Snaps Under Pressure?” A week after narrative director Andi Zhang, known for their work on Aftermath , publicly fell apart at IAX when asked about Connor White’s lack of romance options, the executives at Heartrender and its publisher Elevation Art have decided to officially scrap romance from their upcoming title Compass Hollow . This highly anticipated new IP …
My inhales start coming faster and faster as the outlines of things—the trees, the road, Cat’s car in the distance—dull and fall away. I want my brain to stop catastrophizing, but it’s like it’s on a roller coaster that’s already left the station. I can’t let Jan win. I can’t. Not after what he did to me three years ago. But if Cat is right, then I have less than thirty-six hours to preempt the statement Brett (or more likely Carter) is typing up this very instant.
Realistically, what can I do?
“Hey.”
A voice, followed by a dime of pressure on the inside of my wrist, wrests me from my spiraling thoughts. I look down and see Cat’s thumb resting on my pulse, keeping it steady.
“Hey,” Cat says again. “I’m here.”
My breathing steadies as our surroundings come back into sharp relief. Shyly, Cat brushes my hair out of my forehead. The skimming contact, real and grounding, brings me even further back into myself.
“You’ve got this, Andi,” Cat says, her words clouding the night air. “I know you do. You’ll think of something to help us get out in front of whatever runaway narrative Brett has planned, and—”
“Runaway narrative?” I repeat. Where have I heard that phrase recently? Scratch that, where have I read that phrase recently?
“Yeah.” Knitting our fingers together, Cat gives the inside of my palm a stroke. “In the meantime, I’m here. You’re all right.”
She says it like a statement, not a question, and because I don’t have to lie and answer yes, her words become true. I am all right.
And in that moment, I also know what I have to do.