Page 80 of The Player Next Door
Move on. He’d been telling himself to do just that since the second he left her in that parking lot, looking devastated, but he couldn’t imagine it, not really. He’d tried with Steph and only managed to fall apart. And then the other day he’d simply given in, letting his impulses run his life the way they used to, which naturally just made things worse. Logan could only imagine what Sam would say if he admitted he’d screwed Clare in the elevator, so he kept that to himself.
“Is it pathetic to admit I don’t even know how to move on?”
Sam blinked, and Logan had the distinct impression she wasn’t expecting him to agree with her about moving on. But true to form, she recovered quickly. “Everything about you is pathetic, but in this case, I get it. You’re basically a dating virgin.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “Okay, then how do I do it? Because I tried the other day and it ended with my fist in Brooks’ face.”
“That’s because moving on isn’t about just picking up where you left off; it’s about taking some time to figure out how you’ve changed. Let yourself grieve the relationship, then move on.”
“That’s overkill,” he argued. “It was like, three weeks.”
“You literally just said you’re still not over her,” Sam threw back.
Logan fell silent. Maybe that was what he was so angry about; that Clare had come into his life barely a month ago but changed him entirely. She’d chiseled away the carefully constructed facade he had built for himself, and then had the audacity to say she hadn’t even meant any of it in the first place. She’d upended everything he thought he knew about himself, turned sex from a fun physical activity to something meaningful.
She’d changed him, and he hadn’t agreed to that. She was supposed to be a blip before he returned to his regularly scheduled life, but instead it turned outhe’dbeen the blip toher. He wasn’t anything more than research; a chance to stretch her wings and really nail a character in that stupid game that was more fun than it had any right to be.
“It’d be a lot easier if I didn’t still lo—miss her,” he said, catching himself half a second too late.
Sam looked sympathetic for the first time all night, possibly the first time in their entire friendship. “I thought as much,” she said softly. “Are you really sure you want to let her go?”
Letting her go. Logan hated the idea, but he didn’t have a better one. He looked at Sam and forced a resigned smile on his face. “I have to,” he said, even though he had no idea where to begin.
Chapter Forty-one
Clare sat back in her chair, watching yet another meeting happen without her. In the end, Leadership had chosen the Elfborn’s portal world adventure, and now each team was assigned a different world to workshop. The Mages, probably in deference to their horror-inspired pitch, had been given one of the Dark Worlds to create. Noah had an interview to lead the Dragon Army team scheduled for next week, but Clare didn’t see any point in putting her name in for his job. Not now, anyway.
Horror wasn’t her favorite genre—she’d seen a handful of slasher movies, but generally didn’t like jump-scares—so this would have been a tough one to participate in to begin with, though Clare was confident enough in her storytelling abilities that she normally should have been able to propose a few ideas. But with everything that had happened, she didn’t particularly feel like chiming in.
“I’m thinking we should do something with necromancy to start,” Noah said, rotating his chair back and forth. “Zombies are always fun, and that got a decent response in the pitch meeting.”
Derek spoke up. “We already settled on the sorcerer as an NPC, maybe we could have him be the Big Bad, sending armies of monsters after the players?”
Clare decided it was time to try again. “We should probably establish how hard all the monsters would be to kill first, unless the goal of the campaign is to kill off players one at a time, in which case we make them nearly invincible.”
“So nice of you to join us,” Craig said, shaking his head.
Clare’s chest burned with anger and she started scouring her brain for more ideas to throw out. If Craig wanted to make her seem incompetent, she’d make him work for it. “I like your idea, Derek,” he added pointedly.
“If we’re going with reanimated corpses, those should probably have the lowest hit points. If there’s a horde, that would make it more challenging, and newer groups would have to learn to work together first,” she offered.
“I guess we could work with that,” Craig said reluctantly, and Clare wanted to snap. She wanted to shout in his face, but instead she plastered on a smile.
“And maybe we could work in a mystery, just as a bonus if someone wants to stretch the campaign out. Like, the sorcerer could seem to be on the players’ side at first and then have a villain reveal if they uncover the right set of clues.”
Craig shook his head. “Boring. And too much like Saruman andLord of the Rings.”
Clare wasn’t about to let it go. “Does that really matter? We’re not talking about creating a whole mystery game, just having this as an option for groups who want to go that way. It doesn’t matter if the beats are familiar so long as you’re doing something fun and interesting with them,” she argued. She was done with being the meek pushover she had been. If Craig didn’t like her ideas, well, fuck him. She was going to channel Yaen and not give a damn.
Craig waved his hand dismissively. “You’d be well served to learn how to take no for an answer,” he said. “And you were the one who insisted on doing your own silly little pitch that wasted my time instead of working with the rest of the team, so I think you should sit back and listen rather than throw out useless ideas.”
That was in no way what happened, and Clare blinked in surprise. She hadn’t realized Craig was this comfortable outright lying, although she really should have.
He smirked. “Weren’t you saying the other day you aren’t even familiar with the horror genre? Maybe you should spend some time watching a few movies, then get back to us.”
Clare snapped her mouth shut. She was abruptly aware that if she pushed it any harder, it could mean her job. “I’ll do some research,” she mumbled, cheeks burning with rage and humiliation. She turned her eyes to her tablet as the discussion moved on.
She couldn’t do this anymore. She wouldn’t resign herself to it, even though just a month ago she had been the one insisting that everything was fine. Everything was not fine, and Clare was fucking sick of it. Working for Quest Gaming—and for Craig in particular, given his near-legendary status within the company—had been a dream come true. She loved Quest for Sulzuris with her whole, entire heart, and Craig was dangerously close to ruining it for her.