Aiden had tried his best to forget about Nova between his single player games, upcoming exams, and spying on people for Aaron. But every time he checked up on Keeley, who his boss was obviously in love with, he felt a faint stirring of longing for the girl he had been ignoring.
He was sure she had tried getting a hold of him through the game chats because she had switched over to messaging him on Facebook. Not knowing how to face her, he couldn't respond even though she seemed worried. He had never been offline this long before and he always told her when he knew he wouldn't be on for the day.
Nova finally caught him one day when he was checking his email. A video call request from an unfamiliar email address popped up and he was so startled that he accidentally accepted it.
A beautiful blonde girl with devastatingly blue eyes immediately began cursing him out in another language. At least, he assumed he was being cursed out because he caught the words 'Aiden Quinn' thrown in there and her tone was angry.
"How did you find my email address?" Aiden asked curiously. He had never given it to her.
"It's connected to your Facebook account, you idiot," Nova sniffed. "Why haven't you answered any of my messages? I've been worried sick."
Yes, it was connected to his Facebook account, but he had also set his privacy settings so it wouldn't be visible. This could only mean one thing. Nova knew a thing or two about hacking as well.
His attraction grew even stronger. She went to all the effort to track him down because she wanted to talk to him. But he tried brushing that off. He had been avoiding her for a reason.
"I didn't know what to say," Aiden answered lamely.
Nova had always been easy to talk to but it was true that he didn't have a clue what to say to her after he realized the scope of his stupid little crush. He didn't want to like her; they would never work out. New York City was in his blood. He already had a job lined up here after graduation and he needed to help take care of his family.
Aiden couldn't leave and neither could she. She had a lot more school left than he did and even if that wasn't a problem she was very attached to her family. They were in different worlds. It wasn't meant to be so why continue talking when it would only hurt more as time went on?
Nova clearly didn't believe him. Her anger and annoyance were written all over her face.
"I find that hard to believe considering how much you talk. You could have at least told me you wouldn't be online. I thought something terrible might have happened to you!"
He was startled when tears appeared in the corners of her eyes that she hastily brushed away. Was she really that worried about him going AWOL?
Aiden tried to think about it from her perspective. If she had gone missing on him without a word he would have been worried too since they talked every day. He had definitely felt her absence in his life the past few weeks.
She deserved to know the truth. He couldn't beat around the bush forever. Knowing how he felt would probably make her even madder; it could help them make a clean break.
"I'm sorry, Nova," he said with a sigh. "The truth is I didn't know what to say to you because I realized I liked you. It's never going to work out so I wanted to back away before I got more attached."
Nova gaped at him for more than a minute. It was as if she had experienced a total system crash. When she finally spoke again, it was in a tone of complete disbelief.
"You like me? Really? Why didn't you say anything sooner?! I've been agonizing over this ever since we got married in Final Fantasy!"
Now it was Aiden's turn to experience a total system crash. Since they got married in Final Fantasy? But that was nearly a year ago! Although…that had been when she first started asking personal questions.
He poked his head out the door and yelled for Sophie. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
"What?" she demanded. "I was doing homework."
"Soph, I need to know. Do girls take things like in-game marriage proposals seriously?" he whispered.
His sister rolled her eyes at him but answered back just as quietly. "Aiden, you're so stupid. Of course they do. It's a marriage proposal! Don't tell me you proposed to a random girl without taking her feelings into consideration."
"…I need to go. Thanks!"
"Aiden, you seriously—" Sophie hollered but he had already shut his door and locked it, cutting off whatever she was going to say.
Sophie was a girl so she would know how girls think. If Nova had been wondering whether he liked her ever since then…did that mean she liked him too?
Nova was scowling at him when he returned. "Where did you go?"
"I had to ask my sister something."
"It was important enough to interrupt our conversation?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
He would say so. If they both liked each other that complicated things even further. Both of them were still minors living in different countries. They wouldn't even be able to visit each other.
Even if his mom—who didn't know what he got up to online—permitted it, the Quinns definitely couldn't afford a trip to Sweden. It wasn't like Aiden could ask Aaron for help either. He was already more indebted to the man than he could ever repay after all he did when Aiden's dad left.
She huffed. "So you were avoiding me because you like me. Now what? Are you going to go back to doing that as soon as this video call ends?"
Somehow he didn't think Nova would let him get away with that even if he wanted to. He needed to ask her straight out. At this point he wasn't even sure what answer he wanted to hear.
"Nova, do you like me too?"
Her glare intensified. "I would have thought that was obvious. Why else would I follow you to three other games and spend all of my free time talking to you?"
Great. Just great. A beautiful, funny girl who was great at video games liked him and she was four thousand miles away. What was he supposed to do about that?