Chapter 16
Tate
The replay’s on mute.
The only way I can watch it without wanting to punch a hole straight through my screen.
Haven, she’s flawless. Tight aim, clean strategy, every movement sharp, precise.
She’s always got that controlled edge, that predator-on-adrenaline thing that makes her untouchable.
Dylan barely even kept up. Shit, she didn’t just beat him, she annihilated him.
A complete, total dismantling. Yeah, dude’s a fucking joke, but that’s not what’s pissing me off.
No. It’s the chat. The goddamn chat. I can’t stop thinking. Why the hell does it piss me off so much? She’s just playing the game, just like she always does.
The lines of text I can’t stop reading. Comments that started subtle questioning her bracket, her streaming hours, her “connections.” Then it turned uglier, louder, crueler.
The kind of misogynistic trash that makes me want to dox every single little fucker hiding behind a keyboard and let them find out what NoOneGhost looks like off-screen.
She didn’t react to it, didn’t even flinch but I saw the way her hands tensed when she thought no one noticed. I fucking noticed.
The post drafts itself in my head before I’ve even opened the app. I don’t bother rereading it. I just type with my jaw tight and my middle finger hovering over the send button.
NoOneGhost: you can disrespect her all you want. but don’t pretend you wouldn’t cry if she fragged you mid-lobby and never spoke your name again. I’ve seen her, you haven’t, she won. stay fucking quiet.
Hit post. The likes roll in within seconds. I scroll through her comments, screenshot the worst ones. Then I go hunting, some of these assholes are bold enough to keep their usernames linked to their socials. Twitch bios, discord handles. Idiots. One DM, and they’d fold.
Carter’s voice hits me from the hallway. “Tate?”
I don’t answer.
He steps into the room a second later, holding two cups of coffee. His brows knit the moment he sees. He sets one cup down. “You’re spiraling.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m serious.”
I exhale hard through my nose. The screen glows bright, the match clip keeps looping in the background; Haven’s final kill. Her tiny smirk, her perfect silence.
“They came for her,” I say. “And she didn’t say a fucking word.”
Carter’s quiet for a moment. “She didn’t need to.”
I glare up at him. “She shouldn’t have to take it.”
“She didn’t. She won.”
“She shouldn’t have to be silent to win.
” I snap. Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if I were the kind of guy who made her tea after a hard stream.
The kind who says things like “you’re stronger than this” and “just ignore them.” Like Carter, but I’m not.
I’m the guy who wants to hunt them down and make them apologize with broken hands.
He raises both hands in surrender, stepping back. “I get it. I do, but maybe let her decide how to fight her own battles.”
My jaw tightens again. I don’t want her to fight alone. I want to scorch the earth before they even get to her door. I want them to know if they so much as whisper her name with disrespect again, I’ll come down on them like a goddamn reaper.
She shouldn’t need me like this, that’s the part that guts me the most. That the push back and the silence comes with the territory. She’s what, just supposed to take it? To smile through it while strangers dissect her down to the last click? I’m not okay with that. I’ll never be okay with that.
He hovers for a second longer than usual, I know he wants to say more. I know he’s scared this is the moment I snap and do something we can’t come back from.
I don’t look at him, I just watch the kill cam loop on Haven’s screen like it’s the only thing that matters. Eventually, he leaves. Smart.
I open my phone. I tap the message open and start typing.
Me: Do you want me to come in? I’ll sit on the floor. You don’t even have to talk.
I stare at the blinking cursor, watch it mock me. Then delete every line, I don’t want to make her feel like she has to perform for me. I don’t want to be the reason she softens when she should be allowed to stay angry.
But god, I want her to let me in anyway. I want her to call my name like I belong in the answer.
Instead, I pull up the social to post again. By the time I post the second once, the first one’s already hit over 40k likes. I should stop, but I won’t.
NoOneGhost: Sure, call her over hyped. She’s fine with that, she’s too busy dismantling everyone in the lobby while you flail around. Keep typing, maybe one day you’ll learn what losing with style actually looks like.
The replies are wild. Half of them are people tagging Haven with things like “QUEEN BEHAVIOR ONLY” and “marry him.”
The other half are screenshots of me, moments from past matches, fan edits of my kill cams. Someone clips the kill cam from her match with Dylan and overlays my tweet on top of it.
Another edit surfaces of Haven smiling mid-match, slow zoom on her face with the text: “Imagine having nooneghostready to kill for you.”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t save it. I’m still halfway through replying to some dumbass with a keyboard warrior complex when the door creaks open behind me.
“…Tate ?” Her voice is quiet.
My hands still on the keyboard. I stare at the cursor blinking on the screen. All the rage I’ve been riding hits the wall and halts. She crosses the room slowly.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” I mutter, not looking at her.
“Carter told me you were in here growling at the internet.”
“I wasn’t—.” Fuck me. She’s got that look on her face, half bemused, half wide-eyed, hair still messy from earlier.
“You went viral again,” she adds, stepping closer.
I drag a hand down my face. “Stupid fucks Haven.”
She slips beside me, her hand finding my shoulder gently. “You didn’t have to do all that.”
I turn to face her, eyes catching hers, my jaw tight still. “Yes. I did.”
She swallows and steps closer right into the tension still bristling off me and rests her forehead against mine. “I’m okay.”
“I know, but if anyone ever makes you feel small again, I’ll make them choke on their own mouse.”
Haven laughs, a real one then kisses me. Not the soft kind, not the kind Carter gives her when he’s trying to soothe her. It’s mine. When she pulls back, I’m still trembling. Not from rage, fuck no, from trying not to fall harder.
She kisses me again, this time with teeth. I groan into her mouth, my hands gripping her waist, dragging her closer like I’m proving a point I already made a thousand times tonight. She makes this little sound and it fucking fuels me.
I spin her, back hitting the edge of the desk as I press in closer, my thigh slipping between hers, mouth on hers, my hands greedy and shaking.
“You shouldn’t be walking around like that,” I groan. “Wearing Carter’s hoodie, looking at me like you want to be ruined all over again.”
“I do,” she whispers. “By both of you.”
That makes me stop, not that I don’t want it but because wanting it this much might actually be a medical condition. I step back just enough to breathe. “Let me guess,” I say, dragging my thumb over her lower lip. “You want us both in bed. Right now, again.”
She smirks. “It’s not like there’s rules.”
“There should be.”
“Too late.”
Before I can say another word Carter pokes his head into the room like the goddamn golden retriever he is.
“Is this where the party’s at?” he asks, holding two pillows and looking disgustingly pleased with himself.
I blink. “You brought pillows..?”
He tosses one straight at my face just as Haven’s cackle breaks the tension completely.
Before I can recover, she grabs the other pillow and whacks me in the shoulder, fast as hell.
“You’re teaming with him?” I grin, aiming one at Carter.
“He’s part of the package,” she giggles, ducking and shrieking as I chase her toward the bedroom.
The next five minutes are nothing but flailing limbs, flying pillows, and Haven shrieking in laughter between curses as Carter tries to pin her down and I pretend not to enjoy watching them both fall apart on her mattress.
Eventually, we collapse. Carter’s on one side, flushed and trying to talk her into stealing the covers. Haven’s in the middle, half under me, her legs tangled with mine, her cheek against my chest. I’m tense, still wound tight but when she presses a soft kiss to my jaw and mumbles, “Stay tonight.”
Everything in me caves. “Fine.” She grins into my skin.
“You’re gonna make a habit of this aren’t you.” I sigh.
“Maybe,” she whispers.
Carter mumbles something unintelligible and curls into her back. I trace one finger along the edge of her blanket, the worn cotton catching on a callus near my thumb. It’s nothing, but fuck it’s everything. She stirs slightly, finally drifting to sleep.
I don’t sleep for a while. I just listen, and try to believe this is still real.
Her breathing evens out first, then Carter’s.
Mine’s the last to settle. Peace is new, fragile.
I don’t trust it completely but her fingers twitch against my stomach like she’s dreaming something good.
So I stay, just in case it’s me she’s dreaming about.
Her leg shifts in sleep, brushing against mine, and I feel it like a shock straight to the chest, it makes something I’ve always felt was ugly claw at my ribs. Need. It’s a simple thing. The press of her thigh, the god damn heat of her breath.
I used to think I didn’t need much. A decent chair. A good rig. Silence. That was before she started falling asleep with her face tucked into my neck like I’m not made of blades, before she started saying my name like it’s safe in her mouth. It’s ridiculous, almost humiliating how much I need this.
I stare at the ceiling and tell myself not to move.
Not to chase the one good thing I didn’t earn.
Her hand shifts under the blanket, searching for something again.
It finds my wrist, and holds. Just two fingers curled lightly around my pulse.
I stop breathing. She’s not even awake but she still reached for me. I turn my face into the pillow.
This fucking girl. I’m not angry, but I’ve never wanted to be touched this gently in my life and now I think I’d burn the whole fucking world down to keep it.