Chapter 13
T he rest of the week was an absolute slog.
Back when I was still fretting about Tristan, I’d been distracted, barely able to focus on my manuscripts without him drifting into my mind. But now, I threw myself into my work, immersing my brain in covers and typesets, completing projects in record time.
It kept me distracted. Because as soon as I clocked out every evening at 5 p.m., I had to face the fact that I was alone in a silent bedroom, with only the lazy whorls of the ceiling fan for company. And that’s when it all came back to haunt me.
The worst of it was when I went to bed. Lying wide-eyed in the darkness, I still felt Devin’s hands pressed against my back. I remembered his lips on my neck, his hips pressed against mine, and the way he breathed my name in my ear. It was so intoxicating, so euphoric, but those thoughts always left me a sobbing mess. I needed him, desperately, but our tryst was doomed to never happen again .
I wondered if he was still upset. If he hated me. If he also spent his nights lying alone in bed, paralyzed by his thoughts. Or maybe he was over it, and he’d forgotten about that night completely. Maybe he’d already tossed me out of his mind, while mine was still consumed with thoughts of him.
Five years. Five long, oblivious years, where I’d never thought of Devin as anything more than a snarky, annoying older brother figure.
How did my mind flip so quickly?
But I knew it hadn’t. My feelings had been lurking beneath the surface for years, veiled with banter and snarky comments that now meant so much to me.
No matter who I met on my dating app, no matter how hard I fell for them, they would never compare.
It was always Devin.
And I could never have him.
I sighed, closing my eyes and praying that sleep wouldn’t keep eluding me. I noted that I still needed to schedule a gynecologist appointment. I was going to confront my worst fear so that I could keep seeing the pelvic physical therapist. I didn’t care how much pain and suffering it involved. I didn’t care if it took weeks, months, or even years. I would overcome this.
But by then, Devin would likely have moved on.
I squeezed my eyelids tighter as a tear slid down the side of my face.
That meant I needed to move on too.
Friday came quicker than I had anticipated.
And it also filled me with dread. Because as the workday waned and the evening grew closer, it reminded me of Critical Games. It was Friday, which was the night I usually played the Creatures relationship problems be damned. Besides, the alternative was sitting around my bedroom on a Friday night, which would only dredge up more painful memories of Devin .
“Of course.” I stepped toward her and extended my hands, offering a hug. She took it, wrapping her thin arms around me as we squeezed out our pain and frustration.
We both broke the hug before the tears returned, and shared a knowing glance of two women with broken hearts. We didn’t have the full details of each other’s relationship woes, but we still acknowledged each other’s pain. I was eager to know what happened to my best friend, but I understood her silence. I wasn’t ready to talk about Devin yet either.
“I’ll drive,” Cassidy offered. “Want to stop at Raceway and get frozen yogurt?”
I giggled. That was Cassidy’s go-to when in a bad mood.
“Of course. Let’s go.”
Not even a heaping cup full of frozen yogurt, topped with every form of sugary candy imaginable, could stop me from feeling sick the moment I stepped into Critical Games.
Cassidy had already finished hers and tossed the empty cup in the trash can next to the entrance, but mine was still half-full. And as soon as I caught a glimpse of him, standing behind the counter happily engaged in conversation with a few patrons, I suddenly couldn’t handle another bite.
The bell above the doorframe chimed as we walked in. Devin glimpsed at the door like he did any time a customer entered the shop. But as soon as he saw me, his head snapped away like he was staring straight at the sun. Like I was painful to look at.
I stood there, dumbfounded, my spoon still frozen in my mouth as Cassidy steppe d past me.
“Damn, something really did happen between the two of you,” she remarked as she approached the front counter. Devin was still chatting with customers, and I could tell he was pretending I wasn’t there.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered in reply as I stepped in line behind her. I took another bite of my frozen yogurt, the sweet dessert suddenly tasting sour in my mouth. I debated tossing it before offering the rest to Cassidy.
She happily obliged, gulping the remaining third down in a few bites.
“Avery,” she noted as she tossed the empty cup. “Calm down. You look like a deer caught in headlights.”
I huffed, my nostrils flaring. Devin’s current customer finished paying and stepped away, and the line moved forward. I was now one person closer to having to confront him. Relationship woes aside, he was still the shop owner, and I needed to interact with him to register for the event. And it filled me with nauseating dread.
Devin was oblivious to my presence, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I studied his every feature like I was seeing him for the first time. He had little silver skulls in his earlobes, and his snakebites held studs that were long and pointed like arrows. As usual, he wore a black sweatshirt, although this one had artwork of a large red dragon curled around a d20 die. And just below his collar, against his bare chest, I saw both a thick silver chain necklace and the very top of his Critical Games tattoo. The one he’d shown me just a few weeks earlier.
As I studied him, it all came flooding back, just like it had all week. His hands against my back, his lips against my neck, his hips against—
“Uh, Avery?”
I spun around. Chris stood behind me, tapping me on the shoulder .
“You’re up.”
I turned back around and noticed Devin was staring at me from behind the counter.
Shit.
The few steps up to the front counter felt torturous. I hated the look on his face; how blank it was. The usual mischievous glint in his eye, the smug grin tugging at the corner of his lips…it was all gone. There was no smile, no recognition, no “hey there, Avie.” He looked at me as if I were a stranger, just another customer in the shop.
“Uh…I’d like to register for prerelease, please.”
His expression was still muted as he typed into his computer, pausing to grab a pen and write my name down on a clipboard. Avery Murphy , written in his scratchy handwriting, at the bottom of the list. It was the only indicator that he knew who I was, that I wasn’t a stranger to him.
That last week wasn’t just a horrible figment of my imagination.
“That’ll be $32.50,” he replied, still not looking away from his computer screen.
I dared to glance up at him as I swiped my credit card. This time, he was no longer looking at his computer. His gaze was now locked on me, but his eyes were still dull. Nothing. No hint of emotion.
As I walked away, I didn’t know what I had expected. Less than a week ago, I had rejected him in the cruelest, most heartless way possible. I had said no to our relationship, and Devin was respecting that answer. He was giving me space.
The problem was that it was the opposite of what I wanted.
I slunk away, feeling dejected as I sat next to Cassidy. My chair made a loud squealing noise as I pulled it closer to the table, but Cassidy barely noticed. Her eyes were locked on Aaron, who sat at a table in the opposite corner of the room. Like Devin, Aaron was engaged in conversation, happily chatting with other patrons while he shuffled a deck of C&C cards. He’d decided he was no longer a fan of having green hair and had dyed it back to his usual sandy brown. My gaze flicked back to Cassidy, and I noticed she had the same hazy, longing look in her eyes that I did with Devin.
“Alright, everyone!”
My head twisted over my shoulder. Jordan stood at the back of the shop near the inventory walls with a large cardboard box at his feet. Jordan usually managed the shop on Mondays and Tuesdays when Devin was off, but like with the PvP event, pre-release was packed full of players. Which meant that Devin needed Jordan’s help to manage everything.
As Jordan strolled down the aisles, plopping a pre-release kit in front of every seated player, my eyes flicked back to the front counter.
Devin’s gaze was locked on his computer, with his sweatshirt sleeves rolled up to reveal his tattooed forearms. Every few seconds, he’d stop typing and scrawl notes on a sheet of paper in front of him.
He paid no notice to me, or Cassidy, or anyone else.
I shook my head, peeling my gaze away before he noticed me gawking like an idiot.
“Alright, you have forty-five minutes to open your packs and build a 40-card deck,” Jordan shouted above the chattering crowd. “You may begin!”
The shop went quiet, the sounds of peeling cardboard and crinkling plastic filling the air instead. As usual, I flipped through my packs quickly, eager to reveal the high-value cards hidden at the back of the pack.
I had little luck. Six packs later, I hadn’t pulled a single legendary rare.
“Avery, look!” Cassidy exclaimed next to me, revealing a foil dragon that she’d just pulled out of a pack. I smiled and congratulated her, hiding my envy. I hadn’t drawn any high-power cards, which meant my deck would be at a disadvantage against the players who had.
Just my luck, I grumbled, biting my lip. Maybe it was karma after what I did to Devin.
But as I fumbled through my cards, sorting them into stacks by color like I always did, I realized I had a new problem. My head swirled with nausea, and a deep aching sensation pulsed in my pelvis and trickled its way up my torso.
Oh no.
I swear to God.
I couldn’t deal with this right now. It took every bit of emotional stability I had left to march into the shop with Cassidy and play prerelease. To pretend that I wasn’t pathetically pining for the guy behind the counter who acted like I didn’t exist.
I am not going to let my period stop me tonight.
But ten minutes into deckbuilding, my vision was beginning to blur. The ache in my pelvis was growing stronger, sharper, sending even more nausea and fatigue rolling through my body. My body wavered in place as I struggled to sit upright. I desperately needed to go home and lie down in bed.
Fine. I practically threw my cards down on the table, shoving them into my pre-release box with little regard for the fact that they were made of delicate cardboard. My period wins. Fuck prerelease, fuck my feelings for Devin, and most of all, fuck my stupid broken reproductive system.
“Uh, Avery, you okay?”
I turned my head, which caused more nausea to bubble in my stomach. Cassidy had stopped deckbuilding and was staring at me with concern.
“Yeah,” I groaned as I stood up, even though I wasn’t. “Look, I’m gonna need to drop. Can I take the car and pick you up later?”
“Of course,” Cassidy replied. “Is it…”
“Yeah.”
Cassidy was aware of my period problems, although she never asked too many questions about them. Us women had an unspoken sympathy for each other’s period pain, but I always felt queasy bringing it up around men.
Which made marching up to the counter and telling Devin I was dropping from the event even more awkward.
“Why?” He frowned, a dark eyebrow raised. “We haven’t even started.”
“I, uh, don’t feel well.”
I had prayed that he would let me go without asking too many questions. That he would keep that same icy mask of pretending not to know me. But Devin was a kind-hearted person, always concerned about the well-being of others. Which means no matter how much I fucked up our friendship, he wasn’t going to let me just stumble out of there.
“You did this a few weeks ago,” he noted, stepping out from behind the counter. “Are you sick? Do you need help?”
“No!” I hissed, recoiling away from him. “I’m fine. Just let me go home.”
I stumbled away, my heart aching from snapping at him. But after a few paces, I stopped. The pain had amplified when I got up from the table, and it now nearly brought me to my knees.
“Avery, I can’t just let you drive home when you’re this sick.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Devin stepping toward me. “Do you need me to call someone? What if you—shit!”
I collapsed.