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“Thanks. I won’t keep you, but you should know, Bryce is here.”
She was familiar with both the man and our reasons for letting him go. “I assume you mention it because he might be a problem?”
“He already has been. He’s not going to stop because I asked him too—He never has before.”
She already had her phone out and was jabbing at the screen. “We’ll revoke his pass, so he won’t be able to get in again once he leaves, and if security finds him before then, we’ll escort him out.”
Someone called her name, and she was heading in a new direction before I could thank her.
My next task for the day awaited. I headed to our booth. Not that it was hard to find—as headliners, we were front and center in the exhibitor hall. I was surprised to see Xander standing next to Elliot, doing theI’m imposingthing.
Xander was a friend of Judith’s, and like Elliot, he was an investor. But Xander was more of a silent partner, and he was rarely around.
I greeted him with a smile and a handshake. “Didn’t expect to find you here. Well, nothere.”
“Had to see the payoff, you know?” Xander said. Which made sense. Even though he didn’t work with us, he’d been here from the start. “And I’m someone who can stand-in if needed, since I don’t have to go fix the game if it breaks.”
I was grateful for that. I relieved him of hissecuritypost, and took his place with Elliot. This was a good spot to be right now. Calm. Quiet, despite the roar of the crowds around us. Despite the hectic tone in the booth. There was a pocket of chill around the two of us.
When I was younger, I had a harsher temper, and it got me in trouble. I was happier now, having learned to embrace positivity, but I was also fine withlookingimposing as long as I didn’t have tobeimposing.
Seeing Bryce tugged me closer to anger, though. He’d cost us one of our best programmers, when he decided if she was okay with writing a game with sex in it, that she should be okay with fucking anyone who wanted her.
She’d been so intimidated by the information he dug up on her, that she hadn’t told anyone why she was quitting. It was on us, on me, because I let myself believe that anything he said was as much playful as what the rest of us did. So many of us had been fucking around for so long that I didn’t think twice about it when it was happening.
One of our other devs, Alys, had been the one to report him, and we put the pieces together about Cara once she did.
Bryce was out at that point, but I still got furious when I thought about the way he’d treated them, and that he was stilldoing so to others. I just wanted to make him feel a little of that same fear he’d projected on them—
I needed to stop, or I’d spiral into that mood. “You see Fallyn today?” Maybe not the best topic to bring up with Elliot, but it was the next thing on my mind and it was better than sinking into rage.
“Everyone has.” Elliot’s tone was flat, but in a forced way. “You?”
“I’m part of everyone.”
“Hmm.” Elliot did his best Witcher impersonation.
The clock sped toward the top of the hour, and the crowds surged as people got out of panels and headed in to see what was going on in here. The foot traffic in the booth surged to the point where we needed to step in and get people to form a line if they wanted to play the game.
When the bedlam was under control, we returned to our station.
“You talk to her?” Elliot asked.
“Yup. She apologized. Again.” And she looked both adorable and fuckable, and by the way, did Elliot really need to go through with this stupid bet?
I already knew the answer—he didn’t back down from anything. For some people, for me, any argument like the one he had with Fallyn was a heat of the moment thing. For him, that bet might as well be carved in stone.
“You?” I asked. As in,you talk to her?
He shrugged. “She didn’t apologize to me. I think she got the point Monday night.”
“But you talked to her.”
A group of people all cosplaying as X—Rinslet’s most popular character—stopped just a few feet away to let several people take their pictures. We watched. They were close enough that conversation didn’t seem like a good idea.
Fallyn joined them, and I couldn’t stop staring. The only acknowledgement she gave us was a quick glance in our direction.
A murmur rippled through the booth as more of our people recognized her, and died just as quickly as the group of cosplayers moved on and she went with them.
