Page 80 of My Cosplay Escape
“I was aiming for Thanksgiving, actually.” Adam stands slowly, until all at once he is towering over me. In my flat little green Converse, I’d have to tilt my chin way up to look him in the eye. I can’t do it without a tear spilling out. “Hey. You okay?” he asks.
No. “This was fun. Thanks for showing me your escape room.” I hesitate for the briefest of moments before wrapping my arms around him. I bury my face in his chest. My body tenses with a primal need. I want to sob into his shoulder while he holds me.
“Sarah.” He strokes my back gently. “I know it isn’t the same. I know I can never even approach what you’ve gone through.”
There is a sob stuck somewhere in my throat. I try to take a deep breath. I try not to lose it. “Breakups are hard.” My words are tight. “I get you must really miss Allison.” I try to pull away, but Adam holds me tighter.
“Sure.” His hand is in my hair. “At the time, I was devastated, which is absurd since Allison was never mine to love.” He pulls me away and finds my eyes. “But your daughter. She’s yours to love forever. And—”
My fingers slip out of my hoodie and over his lips. I need to hold on to those words for a minute. I need to wrap those words around me like a wool blanket on a cold, windy night. I need those words to stay with me forever.
Adam kisses my fingers. He takes hold of my hand and kisses the inside of my palm.
“And it must hurt like hell.”
Adam has rendered my heart transparent. The shock of his understanding stops my tears. I should run away now. This is the point where I need to sprint as hard and as fast as I can. But I don’t want to run. I want to stay here. I want to kiss Adam senseless, to push him back on the couch and kiss him until he can’t speak or see straight. Forget his words; I want to wraphimaround me on a cold, windy night. On all the nights.
But I can’t move. I have to tell Adam the truth. I burn up with the need to bare my soul, to explain why I couldn’t tell him about the cosplay, but I don’t know where to begin.
I’m not who you think I am.
I’m a liar and a freak.
“Adam,” I whisper.
His eyes focus on me with an intensity that approaches painful. If I could ink those eyes out into a black-and-white panel, I would. No man has ever looked at me like this. Maybe no man ever will again. My fingers trace his laugh lines, slowly, cautiously. I’m making contact with a wild creature that is both dangerous and gorgeous. One wrong step, and he’ll bolt so far and fast, I’ll never find him again.
My phone pings again, and I’m the one who spooks. I am out the back door and in my Lyft without even a goodbye. And as I ride away, the words I should have said to Adam come.
I can’t lose you.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I check my cowl in the mirror on the staff room wall and am bracing myself for another Saturday night of strobe lights and screams at the escape room when Stacey calls me over. She’s in the Redemption Ring Reboot costume, which means mere mortals are terrified into speechless submission by her gorgeousness.
“Your number has been called,” she says. “Time to train you in managing Abandum City Cyberattack.”
I follow Stacey and nod to Alan and Frankie in passing.
“How much do you know about Nightbat?” Stacey asks, punching in the code to the door.
“A lot.” My voice ripples with sexy confidence. I follow her into a control room with multiple flat-screen TVs showing split images of the lobby and all the escape rooms.
She kicks the door closed. “Good. Then we can skip all the exposition, and you can tell me what’s going on between you and Adam.”
It’s as if I’ve turned the page of a comic and been blindsided by a left-page sucker punch. Pow! My sexy confidence slips off me like mascara after an impromptu run. Not smooth, definitely not pretty.
Stacey punches a few keys into the main computer and checks the angle of the camera’s rotation. “Come on, Sarah.”
I hiss at the sound of my real name.
Stacey puts her hands on her hips and stares me down. “You two are dating.” She holds up an exquisite hand, complete with deflector cuff, when I try to protest. “I know about the barbecue.”
My face grows hot. Had the cameras been recording when Adam and I came to the escape room last Tuesday? “Barbecue?”
Stacey flicks up the volume, and the control room is filled with quiet static. She tosses me her phone, which has been queued to a series of texts.
Stacey: Hey, any chance you could come over and help Monique out with some econ tonight?
