Page 15 of Game Over

“Okay, okay, I’m coming. Fuck, Tara. You’re persuasive as shit when you want to be.”

I stood and stepped out of the tub offering my hand with a wink. “I know. It’s part of what makes me so dangerous.”

The bubbles from the—admittedlydisgusting—IPA I’d ordered steadily rose towards the top of my pint glass as whatever team that was vying for the national hockey title skated for the goal. I didn’t follow sports—well, not unless you counted the OVWatch league world championships, which most people didn’t—so I didn’t really have a dog in the race when it came to wanting someone to win.

The blue team, I guess?

My phone buzzed on the table, rattling along the wooden surface and I tapped the glass screen, making it glow to life.

Still not Jesse. I wasn’t worried though, he wasn’t the type to bail without saying anything. Plus, we hadn’t managed to hang out in person in forever, I knew both of us needed this.

…Right?

It didn’t help that I was slammed with work, even after moving back from the northern coast my schedule was still packed—meetings, deadlines, and deliverables didn’t stop just because I wasn’t the CEO. I just didn’t have to care about theshareholders as much. The only time I’d really managed to take off in the last three months was smack in the middle of Jesse’s streams—which I watched just about every day, but still. It wasn’t the same as an IRL hang.

Things with Jesse had always been…complicated, at least for me.

They toddled through life without a care in the world. Popular. Easy going. But me?

I was in high school when I realized I had the biggest crush on them. Sort of a dick move, given I’d had a girlfriend but the heart—and raging teenage alpha hormones—wants what it wants, I guess.

I was awkward, too lanky, and the furthest from popular you could get.

That Jesse continued to give me the time of day even as they excelled socially… It meant a lot.

One minute we were just chilling, same as always. Jesse doing homework while I fucked around on my phone. A common situation, and one that annoyed the shit out of Jesse.

He’d always had to work twice as hard as I did at school. Which wasn’t really fair, since most of the time I couldn’t be fucked to do my assignments until the absolute last minute.

“You’ll never get anywhere like that,” he said from his desk, his nose so close to the equation he was trying to solve it was like the answer was baked into the molecules of the paper.

“I’ll be fine,” I replied breezily, entirely unconcerned with my friend’s plight. Besides, this butler wasn’t going to transform his employer’s garden by himself. He needed my intense pattern recognition and ability to match tiles! And who was going to pick out the right stonework for the fence?

Clearly not him.

It was crucial, intensely urgent work.

The light above me was suddenly blocked by shadow. I looked up, finding Jesse standing above me—and my entire planet shifted on its axis.

I’d always thought they were attractive, not that it was exactly a novel assessment. His strong jaw, straight white teeth, and deep brown eyes framed by thick lashes had always made them traditionally handsome. But there was something about seeing him like that, a smug smile on his face cast into the deep shadows of the overhead light. Shaggy light locks falling in his face, not quite curly but not quite just wavy either, falling somewhere heavenly in the middle.

Even now, I could remember the butterflies. My heart had jumped from my chest to my stomach, to my throat, and to my ass in a matter of seconds.

“C’mon, man. How’re we supposed to go to the same college if you don’t get good grades?”

I swallowed around the rapidly beating lump in my throat. I felt like a bumbling fool but lucky for me Jesse was so oblivious he didn’t seem to notice that I was in the middle of a crisis.

To be fair, Jesse never noticed how I felt about him. Or if he did, he was polite enough not to say anything.

Our friendship was too important to me to risk over a crush anyway. If he’d rejected me… I shuddered at the thought. There were just some things you could never take back.

I’d rather go the rest of my life carrying this secret than do something to risk what we had.

“Good thing you’re tall and easy to spot,” Jesse called from behind me.

I turned, a crooked smile teasing onto my face without permission as my eyes landed on him. Still just as handsome as he was back then, even more so now that he was covered in tattoos and had a cute septum piercing through his nose.

As a beta, Jesse wasn’t the biggest guy, but what he didn’t have in height or muscle mass, he’d more than made up for with the warmest aura I’d ever encountered in my life. It was like everything he touched just gotbetter.

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