Page 75 of The Player Next Door

Noah led the first part of the Mages’ pitch. They had some goofy props to go along with it, something Clare hadn’t been told about, and most of the room was chuckling along with their ideas. They were good ideas, after all, and as a player Clare appreciated the gorier aspects, knowing how much fun Toni and Annie would have on that type of campaign.

She called up the mockup image she’d had Design create of Captain Ellis Ravencroft on her tablet, waiting for her cue to come from Craig as Noah’s presentation wrapped up. Craig stood, facing the leadership team at their conference table off to the side, and nodded. “Thanks for your time,” he said, gesturing. “Take it away, Dragon Army.”

Craig sat. Clare blinked. “Sorry,” he whispered, as several members of the Dragon Army team stood up and moved to the front of the room. “Game-time decision. Looked like they really liked Noah’s pitch, and I didn’t want to undercut it by offering two.”

“But you promised,” Clare said quietly.

Craig didn’t even look at her. “A character like that was never going anywhere.”

“I—”

“Not now,” he said, still whispering but with ice in his tone. “I humored you. Drop it.”

Clare looked away, vision blurring. She blinked rapidly and breathed through her nose, doing her best to contain the sudden anger that threatened to swamp her.

It was all for nothing. Craig had never once taken her pitch seriously, and she would never be in the running for Noah’s job. Everything she’d done for it, up to and including Logan, was now utterly pointless. She saw Natalie from the Elfborn glancing over their way, as if trying to puzzle something out, but whatever it was, Clare couldn’t care less.

The Dragon Army team finished their pitch; Leadership made some meaningless noise about having a difficult decision ahead of them, and people began to leave the room in groups of twos and threes. Clare left on her own, desperate to escape to the bathroom to have a good old-fashioned anger cry. Craig was already rounding the corner up ahead, laughing with Derek, as usual. Noah caught up with her and she braced herself for everything to get much, much worse. She wasn’t sure how much more humiliation she could take, but she suspected she was about to find out.

“I thought Craig had told you your pitch was out,” he said, nicely enough. “I’m sorry you didn’t get a heads-up.”

Clare stared blankly at him. “I’m sorry, what? You knew?”

Noah furrowed his brow. “We all knew. Craig told us at the bar last night.”

“You were at abarlast night? Who all went?”

“Just a few of us,” Noah said defensively. “Craig thought it would be good for morale. Blow off steam before the big presentation.”

“To not invite the whole team? And then talk about me?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Noah protested. “It was just, you know, the way he talked about your character and all, and the way he talked to us about it, I assumed he’d told you a while ago your pitch was cut.”

It was like a veil had been lifted from her eyes. Everything that Craig did took on a new shade. It wasn’t just the extra projects; Clare was the one constantly singled out to do menial projects like take notes at meetings, the only one on their team who would agree to wash the coffee mugs that piled up in the sink—because it was wash them or just live with the filth—and seemed to operate under a different set of rules from the rest of the team. Craig always seemed to want more from her than anyone else, something that just a few weeks ago she had written off as him urging her to reach her true potential.

But it was hard to see it that way once she knew he was literally laughing about her efforts with the rest of the team. She had been lying to herself this whole damn time, and what’s worse, part of her had suspected it all along. She just didn’t want to admit that her dream job could turn out to be so terrible.

“Yeah, well, no, he didn’t tell me. What did you think I was doing, if my pitch wasn’t going anywhere? Why wouldn’t I have joined yours?”

Noah shrugged. “I didn’t really think about it, you know? We were caught up in our thing, and your thing wasn’t happening, that’s all.”

“That’s all,” Clare repeated dully. “Um, well, thanks, I guess.”

He glanced around again. “And about that guy. Logan?”

Her stomach kicked the churning up another four notches, bile rising in her throat. She didn’t want to talk about Logan with Noah. She didn’t want any more associations of Logan with work, because all she had left was work, shitty as it was at the moment. “I don’t want to talk about him,” she said, far more sternly than she would have dared just a week ago. “My personal life is none of your business, okay?”

“Clare . . .”

“It’s—whatever, Noah. Thanks for the apology,” she said, turning on her heel and making a beeline for the women’s room.

She stared at herself in the mirror. Her anger was now beyond tears, but her face was bright red with a combination of embarrassment and rage. She gripped the counter and took a deep breath, trying to figure out her next step. The door behind her swung open and Natalie walked in, drawing up short when she saw Clare’s face. “Are you okay?” she asked hesitantly.

Clare blinked her still dry eyes. She wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay, but she also had no idea where to begin to rebuild. “I’m fine,” she said.

It wasn’t true, but maybe one day it would be.

Chapter Thirty-eight