The Princess and the Fangirl (Once Upon a Con #2)(60)

“Is everything all right?” he asks.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” I clip in reply, but instantly regret it.

He nods quietly and sits on a stool in the corner, pulling out his phone to ignore me, or to pretend as though I don’t matter. I know he’s only here for Jess’s sake, but I wish he wasn’t.

The air is thick with tension. Like Jabba the Hut thick, so thick I’d have to wrap my chains around its neck and strangle it just to make it go away—and I’m not even wearing a metal bikini to do that in.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a guy saunter into the booth. He doesn’t even glance at Ethan, who just got a text and is replying with furious punches. Ethan doesn’t notice him either.

He isn’t supposed to be here, this guy. That much I can tell.

And when he looks at me, my blood freezes.

It’s Jasper.

I would notice him from a football field away, the way he holds himself when he walks, and he grins as we make eye contact. Brown hair and green eyes. Oh how I wish he had looked at me when we dated the way he looks at Me-as-Jessica-Stone now. Then I might not have ended up bawling on the curb at last year’s con.

I instantly get a bad feeling in my gut.

“Amaraaaaah!” Jasper cries, arms wide. He’s wearing a Joker and Harley Quinn T-shirt and jeans, and one of his YouTube filming lackeys is somewhere close by, I’m sure of it. “You broke the internet today!”

I did…?

How?

When I don’t rush to embrace him, his smile falters.

“What, too good for a hug?” He says it jokingly, but my skin prickles.

He doesn’t recognize me?

No—he thinks I’m Jess.

I smile thinly. “Of course not.”

I’m just being paranoid. We hug. His hands slip low.

I push away from him so fast, it takes him by surprise and he stumbles backward.

“What the heck?” he yelps, and then breaks into another laugh. “What’s wrong, Jessica?”

Jessica. He has the nerve to call me by my first name—well, by Jessica’s first name—when he doesn’t even know her. When he just touched my butt like it was absolutely nothing?

I don’t remember Jasper ever doing that to me.

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that I only knew the Jasper in my head—the Jasper I wanted to know—not the one who ghosted me at the ExcelsiCon ball last year and broke up with me over text messages.

He outstretches his hand, the one that touched my butt. “The name’s Jasper Webster. I’m a pro gamer. Got about four million followers. Can we get a vid together for my fans?”

“Do you have a ticket?” I ask.

“I just”—he makes a slick slicing motion—“cut in line a little. Don’t worry, I’m sure you don’t mind.”

He’s talking to me like he didn’t just grab me. Like I overreacted for nothing. No, he knows what he did was wrong and he’s just acting as if it doesn’t matter.

He notices the button pinned to my lanyard. “Save Amara? That’s really cute.”

“What do you want?”

He flicks out his cell phone and starts recording. “I just want to congratulate the girl who ruined Starfield.”

The confusion must be written all over my face, because he laughs and asks, “Is it true you didn’t want to be in the sequel, so the director cut you at the last minute in the first movie?”

“Excuse me?” In my surprise, my voice slips out of Jessica’s drawl and into my nondescript crisp one. It’s a little lower than Jess’s, a little less sweet.

“Now Carmindor’s dying, and it’s your fault.”

That was about the most absurd thing I’d ever heard in my entire life—and I was raised in fandom. I look at the video camera, and then at Jasper, trying to gauge how he wants me to react, so I don’t give him the satisfaction— Suddenly Ethan is there, yanking the phone out of his hand and deleting the video.

“What the hell, man?” Jasper snarls (but he definitely doesn’t say hell).

Ethan tosses back the phone, his eyes like onyx. “You’re done. Get out.” At his full height, he’s a head taller than Jasper. His expression is cold and impassive, the kind of look reserved for people about to snap someone else’s neck. The only clue that he is the least bit agitated is the quickened pulse beating at his throat.

Starflame, Jessica doesn’t need a bodyguard when she has that, I realize.

Jasper laughs off Ethan’s unspoken threat and raises his hands in a surrender-like motion. “Dude, look, step back. We’re busy.”

Then he tries to come at me again, but Ethan puts a hand on his shoulder.

Jasper whirls around, fists clenched, ready to swing. I don’t have time to shout to Ethan that a punch is coming before he raises a hand and deflects the blow with his lower arm, grabbing Jasper by the shirt and pull-throwing him out through the nearest curtain. The panels of black fabric fly apart just wide enough for me to watch Jasper trip and fall on his face onto the retro rug, right in front of a line of fans waiting for the next star, before fluttering closed.

I look at Ethan wide-eyed, and he seems just as surprised as me that his move actually worked. He opens his mouth to say something but the volunteer pops back into the booth, fixing her glasses that keep falling down the bridge of her nose.