Chapter Twenty-Four
“Now, if you look at that leaderboard, you’ll see—”
“Shut up, English,” Jackson cuts in.
“You’ll see that I am at the top. Four games in a row now.”
“Fuck off,” Aleks growls.
“How’s the weather down there, boys?”
I grin like a child, the taste of victory fresh. I was crushing everyone in Kill Strike tonight. It didn’t matter what the lads tried, I just kept coming out on top. I was one-shot, one-killing like a madman.
This was probably my best stream in weeks.
We play another round, and I manage to get off a triple kill in no time.
“Do you see that, my little coffeemakers? Your boy is sending it today.” I flick my eyes to the comments and grin.
Jackson and Aleks groan and grumble, trash talking in their growing frustration.
The round ends with me sitting MVP again.
“That’s it, I’m done. Have fun stroking your dick.” Jackson exits the lobby.
We’ve been streaming for five hours, so we are due to end anyway.
“All right, let’s end it,” Aleks agrees.
We say our goodbyes, and I spend a few extra minutes on my own stream, chatting with the commenters before clicking off.
I push my headset around my neck and reach across my desk to flip my phone over.
A text from my grandfather shines back at me, and instead of feeling like I’m on cloud nine, it’s like I’m falling through the sky. I’m plummeting to the ground at breakneck speed, and I have no idea if the parachute on my back is going to save me or not.
I shove the phone in my pocket.
I hang up my headset and give my neck a crack as I grab the screen recording of the stream and drop it into my shared folder. Our editors would work on doing their magic with it and posting it to the appropriate social channels. I power off my monitors and then push back from my desk with a sigh.
I lean my head back against the chair and just bask in the blue LED-lit room.
My streaming room is one of my favorite places in the world. There’s just something about it that calms me, that brings me back to center. Sure, the games can be stressful, and I spend hours shouting with the lads, but that’s just part of the appeal. This is my home base. It’s my core.
I use my feet to twirl the chair around and around, spinning in the blue darkness.
Tomorrow we fly out to Vegas for the championship.
Everyone’s going, and I can’t tell if that makes me more or less nervous.
Since Halloween, I’ve spent every waking second grinding. The team and I even decided to skip the last practice tournament in Dallas so that I could get more hours in with Final Destiny.
Mathias had the team review Creep’s gameplay from the Miami game, and they’d come up with an intensive training schedule for me that I’d been following to a T the last three weeks. Honestly, once the championship is over, I never want to play Final Destiny again.
All I need to do is defeat Creep once. That is it.
Mathias keeps reminding me that I don’t necessarily need to beat Creep’s time in Final Destiny so long as my times for Dreadlander and Styx are up to par. But I don’t care. Because I know I am better than him in Dreadlander and Styx. He isn’t the competition I am trying to beat there.
OnlyVan would give me a run for my money in Styx, and JustAGame would come at me in Dreadlander, but Creep is undisputed in his times for Final Destiny. Even if I crush Creep in Dreadlander and Styx, it would mean nothing if I have a repeat of Miami.
Twenty minutes would end me.
Statistically speaking, less than five minutes would separate the top three speedrunners at the end of the night. So, if I don’t stick close to Creep, nothing else matters.
The door to my room cracks open, and bright light cuts through the blue haze.
Aleks leans against the door frame, his tattooed arms crossed over his chest. “You good?”
“Yeah.” I push up from the chair and follow him out into the kitchen.
Jackson is pulling a tray of chicken parm from the oven, but even the smell of food doesn’t quell the mild nausea in my gut.
Aleks continues to side-eye me as we take our seats at the island, but I ignore him, opting to pull out my phone and scroll instead. My grandfather’s text notification burns back at me.
In typical Jackson fashion, he plates everything for us, even going so far as to pour us each a glass of water before joining us on his own stool to the right of Aleks.
Some might think it was dickish of me not to offer help. But I’m not really allowed in the kitchen. You could even say I’d been banned.
Alicia, our personal chef, is a goddess and makes us meals during the week that we can reheat since our streaming schedules left us out of whack. But even the simplicity of reheating a meal didn’t always go right when I was involved. I can tell you that, if I’d been in charge of reheating that chicken parm, it would have burnt to an indecipherable crisp.
I cut the chicken into bite-size pieces, hoping that the effort would spark some desire to eat in me.
It does not. It just makes me look like a child playing with their food.
Distracted, a heavy sigh leaves my body.
Aleks lets his fork clatter against the marble, and he turns to stare.
“Either talk or stop being a broody bitch.”
“Dude, just let him be. He’s nervous,” Jackson mumbles between bites.
“I’m not nervous,” I retort.
Jackson leans forward so I can see him, and he gives a strong look. “Liar.”
“Whatever.” I push back from the island and hop off the stool, stalking to my bedroom.
I don’t even bother taking off my clothes. I just lift up the bed sheets before throwing myself under them, encasing myself in darkness.
“You’re just gonna feel worse if you stew in it.” Aleks’ voice is muffled by my cocoon, but I can still make out his words.
“I told you, I’m fine.”
“You didn’t, and you’re not.” The bed dips with his weight as he invades my space.
“Go away, I just want to sleep.” I’m getting pissed now.
“I’ll leave but only after I say my piece.”
I groan, but I refrain from kicking out my leg and shoving him off the bed. He’d probably just sit on the floor and continue to preach, anyway. I hate when he puts his leader mask on.
“You’ve been working your ass off for this championship, grinding hours. Stop getting all in your head about it. You’ll come out on top because you always do, Parker. We’re The System, and we’re the fucking best there is. You’ll head out on stage and show everyone that. We’ll be in the stands, cheering your ugly ass on, and after we’ll go out and celebrate by getting absolutely blacked. You’ve got this, brother.”
He doesn’t wait for me to say anything. The weight disappears, and my bed springs up. The soft click of the door is the only sign I have that he has left the room.
I peek my head out from the sheets and breathe in cool air.
My head continues to spin.
Even though Aleks doesn’t have the full grasp of how much weight is on this championship, he is right. Whatever is going to happen, would happen. I’ve been working my ass off, and that is the best I could do. Nothing would change the outcome now.
It is like writing code. You have to let the system run through it and test the parameters before you make any changes. There is no point tweaking it within an inch of its life before knowing the results.
I roll over, facing the wall, and will myself to fall asleep.
But that’s the thing; when you want to fall asleep, your body won’t let you. My brain just keeps playing through what the next forty-eight hours will entail.
The only way I’d been able to distract myself today was by streaming with the lads. Now that I don’t have a game in front of me, my brain won’t shut up. It keeps running through every scenario.
Eventually, I hear the snick of my door opening again.
I should have locked the damn thing.
“Aleksander, I’m trying to sleep,” I growl. “Come near me, and I’ll kick you in the balls. We’ll see how much Stevie likes you with a purple dick.”
“He’s just looking out for you. Which is why he texted me.”
I still at Sydney’s voice. A cool breeze grazes my back as she lifts the sheets and climbs in behind me. It takes her a second to scoot all the way across the large bed, but, finally, I feel her next to me. Her cherry scent washes over me, and I take a deep inhale, letting it flood my system.
She lines her chest up with my back and conforms her body around mine. I lift my arm so she can wrap hers around me, and then I clutch her hand in mine.
The contact of her skin against mine quiets the buzzing in my brain.
She doesn’t say anything. She just lies there. And somehow, it’s exactly what I need. It’s the reassurance that she’s there for me.
I focus on the feeling of her chest rising and falling against my back. The soft rhythm paints a pattern that I follow.
“My family is going to be there,” I tell her.
The text from my grandfather earlier had been a confirmation that he was heading over from Kensington with my parents and Paige.
“And so will thousands of other people.”
“Yes, but those thousands of people don’t know that if I lose, the board will eat my shares like the Last Supper.”
She’s quiet for a beat, and I can’t help but fill the silence this time with something. Everything feels too real.
“I’m going to be poor if I lose.”
“You’re never going to be poor, Parker,” she snorts.
“If I lose my inheritance, I won’t be a multibillionaire. I’m not even sure I’ll still be a billionaire.”
“You won’t be poor even if you’re a millionaire, Parker; that’s not how the world works. And I’d like you regardless, unfortunately.”
“For the record, I would never be a millionaire, love. I’d at least be a multimillionaire.” I wrinkle my nose in offense. My streaming income and the revenue I make off this apartment complex guaranteed that.
“So dramatic.” I can feel her rolling her eyes at me, and some of the tension releases.
“It’s not about the money,” I whisper, my voice threatening to crack.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah, Parker, I know. I haven’t spent the last five years with you to not understand you.” She lets out a sigh, and her chin nuzzles against my shoulder. “It’s your pride.”
Her accuracy is on point, her shot sniping me right in the heart. I struggle to speak for a second, panic rising at how naked I feel. It feels like all my cards are on the table, and she’s just flipped them all over, revealing every part of me.
“I don’t want to disappoint them.” I don’t want to disappoint myself. “I want to prove that I can still be a Covington even if I forge my own path.”
“And you’ll prove that,” she whispers. “I’ve seen how much you’ve improved in just the last twelve weeks. Imagine where you’ll be in a year.” There’s such reverence in her voice. Such belief. “You could take over the world, Parker, if you wanted to. Your family will see that.”
I squeeze her hand. “If I could take over the world, I’d hand it over to you. Because you rule every breath I take, every thought I think.”
“Are you getting sappy on me, Parker Covington?”
“Only when it comes to you, love.”
She chuckles, and with it, my worries bleed away. My body sinks into the plush mattress, and my heart beats in time with hers. The stress that’s been coursing through me dissipates, and exhaustion is left in its place. My lids turn heavy as I finally let myself shut down.
“Thank you, Sydney.”
“Always, Parker.”