Good Game: A Gamer Romance (Leveling Up In Love Book 1)

by Kat Alex Crystal

  M0U5E: Don’t look now, but I think your brother is drunk

  Jack rolled his eyes and groaned at the message the popped up on Steam.

  S1NT1NEL: again? what is it now

  M0U5E: I think he found your channel, he’s commenting all over every fucking thing

  “What is it?” said Violet. She pulled her headphones down around her neck so she could hear him but didn’t look away from the monitor just yet. She couldn’t; the match was at a critical point. His computer hummed beside hers on the desk they’d added to his “dining room.” He’d never used it as such, though. She was snuggled cozily in a high-backed black computer chair he’d bought her and looking hot as hell in one of his oversized hoodies.

  He leaned back in his own chair, sighing. “It’s Mouse. Apparently Frank’s trashed. And posting bullshit on YouTube.” He was already pulling up his dashboards. No rest for the wicked.

  Furious clicking exploded, along with a curse. There was a pause before she answered. “Oh. Shit.”

  “You miss ’em?”

  “Oh, no, I got him. I’m good at finishing this far in, if I can get that Blade of Hellfire and boots. But Frank is annoying.”

  “Eh. Don’t worry. I’ll check it out. You concentrate.”

  S1NT1NEL: Thanks, man, I’ll look into it

  Sure enough, some douche named FReming1981 was leaving comments all over the place. That alone would have been bad enough, but his eyes widened when he caught on the latest.

  His address. To where they were sitting just now.

  Delete, delete, delete. On with comment moderation. More were coming in, though, but at least the YouTube ones were held in the queue for now. Fuck, what an idiot. Didn’t he know how dangerous that was? Or perhaps he did, and he knew exactly what would piss Jack off the most.

  He had to go find him and stop him. Right now, the comments were on sites he controlled. If he branched out to other sites, there’d be no telling when or if he could get the information taken down.

  He growled, stood up, and headed for his coat. He had better go… talk to him. Yeah. Because they always talked so well together.

  S1NT1NEL: at least he hasn’t found Twitch

  M0U5E: Not yet

  S1NT1NEL: You’re a ray of sunshine as always

  M0U5E: I’ll watch it and pwn him if he shows up

  Thank God he’d made Mouse a moderator on half his stuff a few months back. He shrugged into his coat and grabbed his keys.

  “Are you leaving?” Violet called.

  Oh. Yeah. Duh.

  He went back into the dining room. He paused behind her as a vicious flurry of clicks and keys resulted in an assist. “Nice. Yeah, I’m going to find him and tell him to stop.”

  She glanced up with big, sad eyes before checking the screen. Her team was reaching the final base. The game was almost over. “What did he post?”

  “Well, the worst thing is this address, but I caught that. Some other inane insults.”

  Her eyes widened as she glanced over once more.

  “Uh. Actually you probably ought to come with me, huh? Just on the off chance that he’s… up to anything else.” He didn’t get specific, but he probably didn’t need to. Violet knew addresses being shared publicly could get annoying. Or dangerous. Everything from unordered pizzas to SWAT teams could show up at your house.

  “Yeah, I’m coming. We shouldn’t be here until you’ve at least talked to him. I’m almost done.” She leaned forward and bit her lip, pressing the attack.

  “I’ll get your coat.”

  Walking back in, he paused behind her chair. She’d died, but her team was finishing the job as she leaned back in her chair. He bent down and kissed the top of her head.

  With a brightly colored blast of lights, the title for victory exploded on the screen, and she jumped to her feet, grabbing her coat. “Let’s go. You know where he is?”

  “Well, I know where to start.”

  It wasn’t far to his dad’s stupid McMansion in the burbs.

  She squinted out at the house and then her mouth dropped open. “For all his whining about coach surfing and shit, Frank still lives at home with Daddy?”

  Gritting his teeth, Jack pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yep. Why don’t you stay here? He might not even be in there.”

  She nodded. “I was hoping to keep future visits to that place to a minimum. Besides, not sure they’ll want to see me after how I left things at the wedding.”

  “I think you’d be surprised. That level of drama is pretty normal for them. They’ll probably act exactly the same as they have every other time.”

  “So, kind of horrible.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “Jack, can I ask you something?”

  He frowned at her. “Of course.”

  “Does your dad know about the whole… drinking thing?”

  “No, he doesn’t know I’m sober.”

  She glanced down at the dashboard, pursing her lips.

  “I’ll tell him someday. Maybe. But you know, he could pull his head out of his ass long enough to notice what I’m drinking. So anyway, don’t worry about it. Here’s the key.”

  He plucked the old house key out of his cupholder and headed inside.

  He needn’t have bothered. The door was unlocked. He let it slam shut behind him. Most of the lights on the first floor were dark, and he knew right away Lawrence and Janet weren’t home. The kitchen light was on, though, so Jack headed in.

  A warm pizza box rested on the oven. The rest of the counter was completely obscured with six-packs of beer. His eyes caught on some much too familiar green bottles. His stomach started to turn.

  He pivoted and headed for the stairs.

  The door to Frank’s room was open. As he neared, he made out the sound of death metal blasting through cheap headphones. He stopped in the doorway.

  Dick was still on YouTube, thank God. Mustn’t have figured out the comments weren’t going through. Or he was one of those guys who left a thousand comments on one video, trying to get it to work. A second pizza box lay open and mostly eaten on his bed, and there were at least ten longnecks strewn around the desk. And two had fallen on the floor.

  Jack knocked on the doorframe. But of course Frank couldn’t hear him. He pounded harder, then harder still.

  Frank jumped and reeled back, dropping his beer and spilling half of it down the front of him. He caught the bottle, then spotting Jack, hurled it at his head.

  Jack ducked. The bottle shattered against the hallway wall behind him.

  Frank ripped off the headphones and glared at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think I’m doing here?”

  “Go play house with your pet nutjob.” Frank grabbed another bottle and eyed it like he was considering how best to aim it when the time came.

  “What’s going on? What brought this on, man?”

  “You.” Frank jabbed a finger at him. “I did everything he ever asked. Every single goddamn thing. And now you’re the fucking golden boy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Jack ducked again, covering his face with his arm. Green glass shattered behind him. He stepped inside the room and closer to Frank’s bed, hoping that’d be off-limits, but he was hardly sure of that.

  “You think I wanted to go into business?” A sticky pad went careening ineffectually into the door. “You think I wanted to work at his stupid firm?” A pen hit the wall and clunked to the ground.

  Frank slumped back in his chair, and only then did Jack lower his arm to look at his brother. Maybe if he could just run over, grab the computer, rip the cables out and run, that’d delay him until he was at least sober again.

  “Why didn’t he try to set me up with that blond chick, huh?”

  “You were dating Mallory!” This time a pencil headed straight for Jack, and he just barely dodged in time. Frank was throwing more out of frustration than a will to hit him, though.

  “She sai
d I drink too much.” Nope, scratch that. Another beer bottle smashed out in the hallway with fresh force. Frank was definitely trying to destroy things. Just not necessarily Jack. Just anything, really.

  “Uh… maybe you do,” said Jack calmly.

  “What do you know about it?”

  He hesitated. “I know a few things.”

  “The hell you do. Mr. Perfect Started His Own Company Without Any Help. Screw you.”

  “Frank, I’ve been sober for one year and nine months now,” he said, hoping this wasn’t going to blow up in his face.

  Frank stared at him like he’d seen a ghost. Or a dancing monkey. Or a dancing ghost monkey. Then his face hardened with anger again. “Oh, well, good for fucking you!”

  “Frank, if you need help, I’m—”

  “He’s right, you are a damn golden boy. He even forgave you for letting him down with the chick and stealing his business. I think he fucking liked that you stole it.” Frank shut his eyes and raked his hands through his hair.

  “Dude. What happened.”

  “He fired me,” Frank drawled.

  “Fired you?”

  “Said it was my fault we didn’t get the full Aditech contract. The one you got the rest of.”

  “He didn’t even invite you to that happy hour, how can it be your fault?”

  “Somebody had to be doing the actual fucking work. He just goes out and plays golf all day. Somebody has to actually write the fucking proposals. Make the deadlines. Fuck. He’s gonna be so fucked without me, I swear.” Frank slammed a fist on his desk, then his face contorted in pain and he cradled his hand. “Dammit, I can’t do anything right. Get out of here, Jack. What, you came to gloat?”

  “Dude—you posted the address of my house online. Anybody can see that. People could show up at my house and try to kill me or something.” That really wasn’t the most likely or even the worst thing but he didn’t want to give Frank any ideas. “You can’t do that shit. I can’t leave if you’re gonna keep commenting on there.”

  Frank just scowled harder. “Oh, what. The golden boy can’t take people showing up at his house? Like his fucking family maybe?”

  “I am not any kind of golden boy, Frank. I don’t care what Lawrence said. I’m sorry he fired you, but you can’t—”

  Now another one of those awful green bottles did come flying at him, bed or no bed. Fortunately it didn’t shatter, hitting the comforter. Drops of beer flew, splattering across his shoe and the carpet. The smell, which had already been gnawing at him, rose up in a suffocating wave around him. It couldn’t be that strong. It had to be in his head. He tried to shake it off his foot, fighting back panic, but the liquid had sunk into the fabric of his black tennis shoes.

  He had to get out of here.

  He glanced at the computer. There had to be some other way to stop Frank. Something.

  The router. That was it.

  He dashed out into the hall, jumping over shards of glass. But he stopped at the top of the stairs. Had he heard what he thought he’d heard?

  Frank was sobbing. Fucking sobbing.

  How had he never seen it before? He’d always figured Frank wanted to follow Lawrence’s direction. And maybe he sort of did. Who didn’t want their father to love them? Approve of them? But Frank was more trapped than Jack had ever been because he actually did care what Lawrence thought.

  And there was no way to come out ahead in that equation. Nobody ever measured up.

  In the kitchen, he found a scrap notepad and scribbled the numbers in his phone for an alcohol helpline and his therapist from when he got clean. Below it he scribbled, I’m here if you want to talk. Or even if you need a guest room to crash in. He considered offering to let him surf on the couch, but that seemed a little too asshole-ish, even for him.

  He tucked the note under the pizza so maybe Janet and Lawrence wouldn’t find it. Maybe.

  He headed toward the basement stairs and paused. Frank’s phone sat on the counter next to the pizza box. He grabbed it, powered it down, then took a box of cereal off the top of the refrigerator and dropped the phone inside. There was an old-school landline if Frank really needed to make any calls, but it wouldn’t get him on the internet any more tonight.

  Then he dashed down into the basement and found the modem and the router in the corner closet where the fiber came into the house. He ripped all the cables out of everything, lights blinking out weakly, and tucked the router under one arm.

  He took the stairs back up two at a time. Wouldn’t be long before Frank started to figure out what he’d done, so he’d better get out of there.

  On one last whim, he took a six-pack of the green stuff and tossed it in the garbage can. Perfectly salvageable, but maybe one of them would miss it. It was all he had time to do.

  “I’m leaving you a note under the pizza box!” he shouted up at Frank.

  “Fuck you!” came the reply.

  He locked the door on the way out. Dropping into the seat beside Vi, she eyed him. “Is that… a router?” Her eyes lit up. “No. You didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “You stole their router?” She chuckled, taking it and examining it like it was the Aegis of Champions.

  “I couldn’t think of anything else. He’s… very drunk.”

  “What about his phone?”

  “It’s— Let’s just say it’s going to be hard for him to find.” Jack grinned, suppressing his laughter as he pulled out of the spot. The memory of the bottles smashing drained his smile, though. “He’s not in a good place. I’ll try to talk to him tomorrow or something.”

  She looked back to him. “Well. Maybe he can still play some games. Offline ones anyway.”

  He fought to suppress a giggle and failed. “That’s like… none of them these days.”

  “I know!”

  “You’re so mean.”

  “Only to people who deserve it. Or maybe I’ve just been hanging out with you too much.”

  At the next stoplight, he leaned over and gave her a quick peck. “No such thing. You can never hang out with me too much, Violet.”

  She smiled and hugged the router to her chest. “I would have to agree.”

  Epilogue

  A cold, fall wind blew back Violet’s hair as she and Jack dashed from Riola’s, through the sprinkling rain, and into his car.

  “Well, that was lovely,” said Violet, plopping down into the seat. Jack started up the engine.

  Summer was almost over. Maybe was over, with the way the weather hung around them like it demanded turtlenecks and hot cups of cider. Where had the time gone? Normally she relished fall. Not this time.

  “Where to now?” she asked. He had some kind of weird little agenda today. She was just rolling with it. Frank had been crashing in the basement for the last two months while he worked on getting sober. And the elder asshole prince was less shitty when not sloshed. But he still had a long way to go. Jack probably just needed a day away from him.

  They’d started the day with brunch with Mouse, which Mouse always begged them to join and Jack usually dodged. That was at least fifty percent because they tended to spend Sunday mornings tangled up in each other and not getting up before noon.

  But for some reason today, he’d been bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to take on the world.

  “Getting tired?” he asked.

  “Well, the coffee helped. But it’s been a busy day.” They’d also hit a farmer’s market she liked to go to and one of her favorite chocolate shops.

  A small part of her brain had a niggling suspicion that he might be trotting out all the things she loved best about the city—including Mouse, chocolate, and time spent with Jack himself—because she had to give Vientan Labs her answer on Monday. Tomorrow.

  About whether she was moving away from all her friends and these things she loved to one of the best private optics labs in the country.

  She’d survived her thesis and its defense. Without even going crazy. One of her last long-shot pape
rs had even gotten published at the last minute. And three of the research labs on her dream list had been hiring. Three! Two had made her an offer, and the third was supposedly still considering.

  But none of them were here. Everything was finally coming together as she’d hoped. As she’d worked so hard for. Funny how when you got what you wanted, it wasn’t always what you’d expected.

  Nothing had been able to calm the dull lump that had settled in her gut shortly after receiving her job offer last week. Oh, it was a dream job; Vientan had several experimental lasers that existed nowhere else in the world. And they were the principal investigators on the DEGROS project and had won research grants that ranged from missile defense to medical applications. It wasn’t like those kinds of opportunities were lying around just anywhere.

  If only this one weren’t two thousand miles away.

  “Maybe let’s head home then?” Jack said. His voice sounded funny. Maybe he was tired too.

  He was quiet most of the ride home. Maybe dreading dealing with Frank. It was noble of him to try to help his brother out of Lawrence’s clutches, but it did take a toll.

  At each stoplight, he drummed on the steering wheel, tapped the column, the door—something she’d come to learn meant he was nervous. The lump in her stomach twisted and sank. Hell.

  Saying no to the job wasn’t really an option, although she’d spent a lot of time considering it anyway. She could perhaps have tried to stay on at UDW as a postdoc, but much as she didn’t want to leave, this had been her dream. Her plan. Everything she’d thought she’d wanted.

  Until Jack came along.

  She watched the raindrops streak across the car window as he drove, the first tinges of yellow and orange appearing on the trees. It’d been such a sweet day. He’d even surprised her with a rose at the market.

  So why did she feel like shit?

  She was no better than Max. Was this what he’d felt like, trying to drag her off over his shoulder? Of course, he had had a perfectly good job here in town. He’d broken up with her first. And had wanted her to give up her dreams and become his little serving girl, without even feeling bad about it. And she also hadn’t actually asked Jack if he might want to come with her.