Chapter 467: Before Weekend

"Have a safe flight."

"Take care you too..."

"Okay Amelia, I’ll miss you..."

She took the handle. He watched her walk toward the terminal doors, departures, check-in, the long belt where luggage would be taken from her and promised to the hold of a plane she could not see yet.

The suitcase rolled a faithful rhythm. Her figure moved through the sliding glass and the crowd with the particular grace of a woman who had somewhere she had to be, and a body that still remembered being wanted without hurry.

Stan stayed at the curb a moment longer than the lane wanted.

His gaze dropped, helpless and fond, to the sway of her as she went: that full, living line of hip and ass catching the light with every step, the shape he had held in water and in white sheets only an hour ago. He licked his lower lip without thinking. Admired. Then the admiration opened into something wider and quieter.

A sigh left him.

A short stretch of calendar ago he had not had this life, companies, Qi, a sister learning to breathe energy on a floor in Inksea, a vampire on a campus, a childhood friend in Velaris, and this woman walking into an airport with his mark still somewhere under her clothes. Far. Fast. Real.

Amelia did not look back. She did not need to. Inside the terminal she found a pillar and stood for one uncounted second with her eyes closed, feeling the ache and the heat and the promise, then opened them and walked toward security like a woman who could carry both hunger and a schedule.

He watched until the glass took the last bounce of her step, then got into the Audi and pulled away from the curb, the promise of a few days already sitting in the passenger seat like a person who had only just left.

...

The curb released him, and the airport slipped into the distance behind the Audi.

Stan drove with one hand on the wheel, the afternoon sun still warm against his skin.

Traffic carried him away from the airport and back toward campus, but his thoughts remained somewhere else.

Amelia.

The memory returned without asking permission.

Her beneath him, trembling as they moved carefully through her first time together, with him going slow and steady into her...

...

That slow, uncertain beginning. The way she had gradually relaxed when she realized he wasn’t going to rush her. The change in her breathing. The quiet sounds she made once the discomfort faded and something warmer took its place.

Then the bath afterward.

Water sliding over her sexy shoulders and collarbone while she rested against him, her body loose and peaceful for the first time that day.

And her voice. ’I’m glad it was you.’

Stan’s fingers tightened slightly around the steering wheel.

He didn’t try to romanticize the memory, nor did he push it away.

It had happened. It had been intimate, complicated, and real.

And now Amelia was on the other side of an airport security gate, leaving the country again.

Stan exhaled slowly and let his attention return to the road.

There was another woman waiting for him.

’Camilla.’

Her expression when he’d left the game shop had been quiet enough that anyone else might have missed it. ℯℯ𝑙.

Stan hadn’t. He knew that look. She hadn’t stopped him. She hadn’t demanded an explanation. She had simply watched him leave with the unmistakable expression of someone who had been looking forward to spending the afternoon with him and had just discovered that she would have to share those hours with someone else.

He couldn’t blame her. He had promised Amelia he would see her before she left. Keeping that promise had mattered.

So did coming back. By the time Stan reached campus, the sky had begun to deepen toward evening.

He parked near the same stretch of storefronts and continued the rest of the way on foot.

The game shop appeared exactly where he’d left it, its windows throwing blue-white light across the pavement. Through the glass came the muffled sounds of gunfire, explosions, and Zack’s voice rising above all of them.

"No! No, no, no! That was absolutely not my fault!"

Stan slowed, smiling at Zack’s tensed voice... ’Apparently, things had progressed.’

He pushed open the door. The cool air of the shop washed over him.

He immediately found the three of them.

Zack was half out of his stool, staring at the screen with the expression of a man who had just been personally betrayed by modern technology.

Zoey was leaning back in her chair, controller resting loosely in her hands.

And Camilla, Stan stopped.

She was still holding the controller with the same precise grip she’d had when he left. But everything else had changed.

Her character moved across the map with smooth, deliberate movements. She wasn’t wandering anymore. She wasn’t stopping to think about which button did what.

She moved, turned, crouched, aimed. Then fired.

A player appeared at the edge of the screen.

Camilla reacted instantly, one burst from the shotgun she was using, the enemy dropped and notification appeared that instant

ELIMINATION.

Camilla calmly moved on.

Stan’s eyebrows lifted. ’She’s gotten pretty good within such a short time... As expected of Camilla...’

At that moment, Zack finally noticed him. His head snapped around.

"He’s back!"

Zoey glanced over and smiled, "About time."

Stan looked at the clock. "You said you’d play for two hours, it’s been more than that but you guys are still at it..."

"Well we couldn’t help it the game is interesting."

Zoey pointed at Zack. "He spent twenty minutes arguing with the game."

"It was a tactical disagreement."

"You called the developers incompetent."

"They deserved it."

The attendant, passing behind them with a drink in one hand, heard that.

"You’ve been here for two hours."

Zack looked at him. "Time moves differently in Verdansk."

The attendant stared at him.."That’s not how time works."

"Not for you, maybe."

The attendant walked away.

Stan smiled and took in the scene again.

Zack’s character was currently lying dead behind a concrete barrier.

Zoey’s was crouched several meters away. Camilla’s was moving toward them.