Gamed (A Standalone Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Romance) by Claire Adams

anything. "Your sister always had something to say. She was easy to
talk to. There was always the next step of her plan to discuss, the
accomplishments she could already check off. Sienna was going up and up."
    "Thinking
about the future made her happy," I said. The words left a painful
reverberation in the car.
    Sienna was only
happy when she was discussing future plans. She never stopped to concentrate on
where she was – or who she was with for that matter. She lived to become a
projected version of herself. The perfect version of Sienna was always a few
steps away in the certain future.
    If she lost that
certainty, even for a moment, a gloom fell over everything around her. When
Sienna stopped to look around her, she found faults everywhere and her mood
plummeted. I knew that was exactly what had happened, but I could not tell my
father.
    "What about
your future?" my father asked. "You don't seem to spend much time
thinking about it."
    I gripped the
steering wheel harder to keep the accusation in his tone from knocking us off
course. "I have been lately," I said. "I think I should meet
with my advisor again and discuss majors. There might be a better fit out there
for me."
    "Of course. Some
people would take a tragedy like this and turn it into a reason to work hard
with every breath. And some take it as an excuse to go spinning off into la-la-land,"
my father said.
    I held on tighter.
"No. It’s just I think I let Sienna influence me too much. She was always
so excited about becoming a surgeon, she made us all excited about it too. I
think that's why I chose nursing, not because I loved it. You have to love it
to be good at it."
    My father pinched
the bridge of his nose. "Please, for the love of God, don't tell me this,
not now. From what I see, all you love is hanging out in the basement playing
video games. How are you going to turn that into any sort of respectable
career?"
    I turned the car,
taking a shortcut through a neighborhood towards the pizza place. The drive
could not be over quickly enough for either of us. "It's an entire
international, multi-billion-dollar industry. People have very successful and
very respectable careers in it."
    "People? You
mean like that Owen Redd? Please, Quinn, you cannot be drawing inspiration from
a guy like him."
    "Owen is
creating his own career, his dream job. How can I not be inspired by
that?" I asked. I realized too late we were on the street where Owen
lived. His apartment, the top-floor loft of a three-story six-plex was two
blocks ahead. I had driven Sienna there dozens of times.
    "Turn right
up here," my father said. "Looks like the police are causing some
kind of detour.”
    I bit my lip and
turned. Two squad cars were parked outside of Owen's apartment building. One of
the uniformed officers at the curb was pointing to the top-floor apartment. "I
hope there wasn't an accident." My heart flopped and my ears buzzed; the
memory of the last time I saw flashing emergency lights squeezed my heart.
    My father ignored
me. "You need to understand something about people like Owen. He's taking
the easy way out. Just because he has a talent does not mean he'll make a
living at it. If he's telling you that then it’s a lie."
    "How can you
say that? You don't know anything about Owen," I said.
    "I've seen
enough guys like Owen. I've had to defend them in court. If he's telling
everyone he's made a successful career out of sitting around on his couch,
ten-to-one there is something illegal going on. Sure, it might look good on the
surface, but he's cheating the system somehow," my father said. "Your
sister understood the only way you get ahead is through hard work. Following
your dreams means you're either dirt poor or you are running a scam."
    I drove the rest
of the way to the pizza parlor without saying a word. I was worried about Owen,
but my father's words filtered into my brain like acid. What did I really know
about what Owen did?