Chapter 2
At first, Noah didn’t recognize the ultra-thin young woman with short, spiky, pink hair who stepped into the office.
Caitlyn had beautiful long brown hair. It’d been something he’d noticed straight away the day she’d walked into his class two years ago.
This girl also looked like someone with an eating disorder.
Then she met his gaze with her big gray-blue eyes. She was Caitlyn. The old familiar flush of attraction surged through him, but he pushed it aside. What happened to her?
Was the rumor that she’d spent the last semester in rehab true?
He would not have thought it of her. He’d also not thought she would be the kind of girl to make false accusations against a man like she’d done to Noah’s friend Keven.
A familiar sense of loss hit Noah that Caitlyn hadn’t been the kind of girl he’d thought.
He averted his gaze. At least if she’d been in rehab, she was getting help. Noah’s heart gave an unexpected twist at her sickly appearance. He couldn’t let his sympathy distract him from Keven’s warning about her.
“Sorry if I’m late. I just came from Orianna’s office.” Caitlyn took the seat Joe indicated, which was beside Noah. She didn’t glance his way either. From the corner of his eye, he noticed her slide her hands under her thighs. What was she nervous about?
“It’s nice to meet you again,” Sona said. “Ezreal speaks very highly of you.”
How had Caitlyn managed to get past the reserve of one of the shyest people Noah had ever met? He couldn’t help himself and looked at her again.
“That’s kind of him.” Her cheeks had flushed, the additional color on her pale face making her look more like the girl he’d once cared about. Caitlyn said, “Orianna didn’t tell me much about the project except it’ll be in New York.”
“At the penthouse?” Noah asked, his excitement at the prospect making him speak when he hadn’t meant to.
“What penthouse?” Caitlyn sent him a wide-eyed glance before frowning. She faced forward again.
“Now you’re both here,” Sona said with a chuckle, “I’ll explain.
Kayn owns a penthouse there. He purchased it to host events around the North America playoffs leading to the World Championship.
We’ve been discussing how to better utilize it.
Being in the middle of such a vibrant city and right across the street from Central Park, it would be a great location to take small groups of people for team-building retreats. ”
“We’re attending one?” Caitlyn asked.
“No, your group will be coming up with team-building activities for future events,” Sona said.
“Oh.” Caitlyn now sounded intimidated.
“We’ll be hiring a company to run the retreats,” Sona explained, “but we wanted some staff input on activities. We thought this would be an excellent intern experience, both in the planning and in the leadership elements of the activity.”
Caitlyn glanced his way. In spite of the shadows under her eyes, she still had the ability to pull him in. Her cheeks flushed again, and she shifted her gaze. He did too, irritated he’d looked at her.
“Orianna said it’d be for about a week,” Caitlyn said.
“Five days, so almost a week,” Sona clarified.
“Kayn and I have business to conduct in New York and have scheduled appointments over the course of our time there. We’ll be available for some of your activities, but you’ll have responsibilities of your own.
We’ll obviously expect reports from when we’re not there.
Have either of you heard of gamification? ”
“Isn’t that when you apply typical elements of gaming—like point scoring and reward systems—to nongame activities?” Caitlyn asked.
“That’s right,” Sona said. “What do you know about it?”
“Well, the bit I’ve read related more to marketing techniques.” Caitlyn shifted in her seat, moving her hands out from under her legs. “I love the idea of taking something tedious and making it fun. Tapping into our natural desire for competition and achievement is a great way to do it.”
Noah had forgotten how smart she was, but he wasn’t about to be outshone.
“Aye,” he said. “‘Twould motivate people to meet personal challenges. All employees are expected to set job goals. ‘Tis more fun to track the progress when it feels like a game.”
“Exactly,” Caitlyn agreed and then asked Sona, “Is that how you’d like us to focus our time, looking at ways to incorporate gamification into team-building activities?”
“Yes. One of the reasons we’ve chosen employees to do this is because we want people who are immersed in the game of REKD, as only our own folks can be, to design some of the activities.
” Sona typed on her keyboard before picking up a remote and pointing it at the wall.
Her computer screen then appeared on it with a satellite map of the area surrounding the New York apartment building.
“Not only is the penthouse large, so there’s plenty of room for the retreat employees to spread out, but look at what’s within walking distance. ”
From the way Caitlyn scanned the map, wide eyes and cheeks flushed with excitement, Noah wondered if she’d ever been to New York before.
“The city has so much potential. My mind is full of possible ideas already.” Caitlyn’s excitement seemed to chase away the shadows under her eyes, and her face didn’t look quite so gaunt anymore. It took his breath away.
After the lies she’d told about Keven, what was wrong with Noah to still be drawn to her?
He rubbed the ache in his chest, the old sense of loss growing stronger.
He thought he’d put those old feelings behind him.
It’d been two years, after all. It would be the hardest thing he’d ever done to work with a woman he’d once loved and now loathed.
When Sona paused, Caitlyn started typing the dates of the trip into her phone. She only had a week to get ready for it, including preparing her father for the separation. It might be good it was soon. He would have less time to worry.
Since the day of her emergency appendectomy and the surgeon’s report that “something’s wrong with your right ovary,” her dad had been Caitlyn’s support, her strength.
She might not have understood the significance of the surgeon’s words, but her father had already lived through it once with her mother.
At fifteen, Caitlyn hadn’t understood what it meant that her mother’s Stage IV ovarian cancer had metastasized.
But she learned, when she and her father had watched her mother die, despite the chemo, less than a year after her diagnosis.
Caitlyn rubbed her temple, staring at her phone. To allay her father’s worries, she must be doing better than fine. That meant she would have to force herself to eat more, even when it made her feel queasy. And if she couldn’t keep down what she forced herself to eat, he couldn’t know about it.
She glanced up and found Noah watching her, the animosity coming from him almost palpable.
Even after all this time, she still didn’t know for sure what had gone wrong.
One day she’d been wondering if their dating was ready to turn exclusive.
The next day he’d ghosted her. And it really had been like she’d died and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—acknowledge her existence.
Keven was behind it; she was sure. A little shudder went through her at the memory of her old boyfriend, short though their relationship had been. The way he tried to manipulate her emotions had already alarmed her. Then he’d hit her. That had been when she’d ended it.
The short time she’d dated Keven during her freshman year should have been ancient history, but Caitlyn had learned the hard way he got too much pleasure from his little vendettas to let them go.
“Would you two like to know who the others on your team will be?” Sona asked when Caitlyn had finished typing into her phone.
“Aye,” Noah said at the same time Caitlyn nodded.
“Each department head nominated an intern from their department. They also suggested people to be team leaders and then narrowed it down to the two of you. I know it’s overkill to have two, but we wanted this particular retreat to be a leadership experience as well.
That’s why we have two of you.” Sona tapped her keyboard and an employee photo appeared on the wall.
“Finn!” Noah cried, looking pleased.
“And this is Max Draven,” Sona said.
“Is he new?” Caitlyn asked, not recognizing him.
“He’s been with us for six months and just finished his first rotation. He’s been working under Rafe coordinating the champion lore.”
The next picture showed a young woman with long dark hair and black horn-rimmed glasses.
“Zoe. Excellent.” It was Caitlyn’s turn to grin happily. At least there would be someone there she knew she could trust.
“I doubt either of you knows our sixth team member.” Sona shifted her mouse and a new photo appeared to show a man who looked like he was old enough to be in a graduate program.
“This is Heath Savage. He works part-time for us but lives in Washington state, where he has strong family connections. He’ll fly to New York to join us there.
He’s one of our part-time programmers, and Kayn’s been trying to talk him into moving to North Carolina.
” Sona chuckled and showed a picture of a castle set in a beautiful forest with a large expanse of lawn and garden before it. “But who wouldn’t want to live here?”
“Oh, wow,” Caitlyn breathed. “I didn’t know they had castles in Washington state.”
“That looks familiar.” Noah peered closely at the photo. “‘Tis an Irish castle.”