Page 50 of Gamebreaker

She caught me staring across the ballroom and held my gaze. She smiled the most beautifully devastating smile I’d probably ever seen in my life, completely lethal.

I was in catastrophic trouble.

The kind of trouble that ended careers and demolished carefully constructed lives.

"Cam!" Isla materialized beside me in a gold dress that made her look like a champagne flute, wearing a smile that promised chaos with professional courtesy. "You look miserable."

"I'm practicing my pleasant expression."

"That's what miserable looks like on you. Interesting." She hooked her arm through mine with the kind of certainty that meant arguing was pointless. "You're sitting at our table for dinner."

My brain performed rapid calculations, trying to determine the safest response. "Your table."

"Table seven. Me, Trish, Mia, Laine, and Harper." She paused, let that information detonate. "You'll be sitting next to Harper, actually. I thought you two could use more bonding time after game night went so well."

"That's not necessary."

"It's already done. I had the seating chart finalized with the organizer this morning." Isla's expression changed, suddenly serious. "Be nice, Cam. I mean it. No fighting. No passive-aggressive comments. Just be a decent human being for two hours."

"I'm always decent."

"You're always controlled. That’s not the same thing." She patted my arm with false sympathy. "Try smiling. It won't kill you. Probably."

She disappeared back into the crowd, leaving me standing there trying to remember how to regulate my breathing like a normal person instead of someone whose entire nervous system had just short-circuited.

Two hours.

I could survive two hours sitting next to Harper in that dress.

The mathematics of survival didn't account for my stupid, hideous, ugly, embarrassingly huge schoolyard crush on that woman.

This was going to be a long night.

Dinner was served at seven. I found my seat at table seven—Isla's particular brand of chaos extended to symbolic numerology—and discovered my name card positioned directly beside Harper's, close enough that our chairs would touch if either of us shifted wrong.

Harper slid into her seat with perfect grace, set down a wine glass that was definitely not her first of the evening, and gave me a look that combined amusement with challenge in equal measure.

"Captain Miserable," she said, her voice warm with wine and mischief.

"Instagram."

"We're really committing to these nicknames, aren't we?"

"You established the pattern."

"I absolutely did not. You called me Instagram first, thereby initiating the nickname warfare. I merely respond with appropriate force."

Trish, seated across from us beside Isla, made a sound that resembled a laugh disguised as a cough. Isla was grinning with undisguised delight. Mia looked concerned. Laine looked fascinated, like she was watching an experiment whose results would be either brilliant or catastrophic.

"You look nice," I said, because apparently my mouth had declared independence from my brain.

Harper blinked, thrown off her rhythm. "What?"

"Your dress. It's nice."

"Oh." She looked down at herself like she'd forgotten what she was wearing, which was impossible given how that dress fit. "Thanks. You clean up okay too. Very 'serious professional athlete forced to attend social function.' Very 'I'd rather be literally anywhere else but I'm too polite to leave.'"

"That's oddly specific."