Chapter 2
Mason Black was big. I’d seen him in his yard, and of course there was that day I found him passed out in his truck, but he’d never been this close to me while upright. Big was an understatement. He was massive.
And I’d just challenged him to play video games inside my house. Mom was going to kill me. I blamed my preoccupation with the follow up email I’d just received from Valor Legion—one of the best professional teams in esports—asking for a meeting.
They’d been pursuing me for a couple of weeks, and their messages were becoming increasingly urgent. I’d been sitting in the dark reading through my emails like a weirdo when I heard the knock.
Mase shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and I realized I was still acting like a weirdo staring at him without saying anything while he froze on my front porch.
I stepped back and held the door open for him to move past me—not enough for the width of his shoulders though. Dumb, but I couldn’t help myself. Arrogant men made me salty, and I’d been dealing with them virtually for most of the day.
He sidestepped so as not to brush my arm, and I caught the slight upturn of his lips. Not a smile—an acknowledgment of the size difference between us, and my stupid attempt to hide my sudden nerves by being a dick.
At least he didn’t call me out on it.
I closed the door, ignoring the slight buzz of electricity radiating from the vicinity of my neighbor. In general, I didn’t get all buzzy when it came to other people being near me. Mase was different.
He stood carefully still in my shadowy foyer, and without looking, I could pinpoint his exact location. Mom called it her sonar, which became superpowered after the attack, but I’d never experienced it myself.
Thought of the attack made me slow as I closed the door. Was I being stupid? Mom was upstairs asleep, but having her here was more a detriment than a level of protection.
As if he could read my mind, his voice rumbled from the darkness behind me. “Not too smart to invite strange men into your house in the middle of the night.”
I shrugged without looking in his direction and nodded toward the living room. “Wouldn’t be the first time a strange man called me stupid.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught his frown, but despite his size and the weird shiver in my belly, I wasn’t concerned. I’d seen him handle his fluffy little duck in the backyard as if it were an actual baby.
Granted, that was a while ago, but I clung to the image as I led him into my dark living room.
One of my biggest complaints about the house was the location of the light switches. Whoever had designed the electrical was clearly a bat of some sort. Why would you make someone walk all the way across the room in the dark to turn on the light?
Talk about stupid.
Mase’s clothes rustled as he followed me, but he didn’t make any other noise, not even on the squeaky part of the floor I purposely stepped over. Maybe he was part bat.
I hadn’t forgotten his bare feet either. The temps outside were close to freezing, and he’d been standing on the concrete stoop for a while. Goosebumps had popped up on my arms when I’d opened the door, but the shiver that had followed wasn’t from the cold.
After an eternity of silence, I hit the switch and flooded the room with warm light.
Mom and I lived frugally as far as furniture and décor were concerned.
We’d had the same squishy couch and chair for as long as I could remember in a super faded blue floral pattern.
A standard issue coffee table and a chunky entertainment center filled out the rest of the room.
I’d splurged on a large TV we’d hung on the wall, and my beloved game systems were neatly organized out of Hudson’s reach. He’d thankfully outgrown his cord-chewing phase, but once in a while, he liked to test my patience with regression.
Mase, as his friends called him, stood in front of my collection with his brows raised. “You have the special edition Citadel skin.”
He was talking about the wrap on my favored game system. I’d gotten it from the company for winning one of their early competitions—it was actually the reason I could do what I loved and make enough money to support Mom.
The prize money had helped set up my equipment, but the notoriety from utterly destroying the favored champion had garnered me enough followers to monetize my gaming channel. I didn’t tell Mase any of that.
I nodded as I pulled out two controllers. “Sit or stand?”
He glanced at me, his eyes shadowed despite the light. “Sit.”
I offered him a tiny smile and took my spot on the couch. If he’d been confident in a quick win, he’d have stood by the screen. Sitting, in gamer speak, meant he expected a drawn-out battle.
Mase took the other end. “Why a video game challenge?”
“You mentioned sleep, hockey, and video games. I have some time to kill, and your feet looked cold.”
He didn’t look down. “I’m used to it.”
I cast him a sidelong look while navigating the menu. “From hockey?”
His shoulders rolled in a half-shrug, and a weird little flutter hit me low in my belly. “Mostly.”
Not a talker then. From what little his roommate had told me when I’d found him, I wasn’t surprised. Though he’d certainly seemed verbose enough at the door.
“Why Citadel in particular?” he continued.
I took a longer look at him, curious about his curiosity, and the way he barely perched on the edge of my couch along with the slight inward roll of his shoulders made me relent a little. “Mostly nostalgia, but I like the challenge of the original.”
Normally, I wouldn’t admit any level of skill before a competition—better to keep the opponent guessing and underestimating—but he looked so damn uncomfortable.
Mase wouldn’t look at me, instead focusing on the loading screen splashed across my TV. “Citadel is one of my favorite games,” he admitted.
Tit for tat. I could appreciate his reluctant confession, especially when it gave me a better understanding of what kind of player he’d be. Knowing his style gave me the opportunity to build a strategy against him.
Citadel was a mix of battle royale and capture the flag games—either kill off all the other players or claim the citadel to win. The trick was each game had a new, random map, and the citadel was hidden.
Some guys went straight for my throat, and some built elaborate traps to prevent me from reaching the hidden citadel first. Very few did both, which was my specialty.
Mase seemed like the sneaky type with a strong core of fairness.
He’d try for the citadel and eliminate me only if necessary, but I couldn’t let my guard down.
“Ground rules,” I stated before he could choose his character. “We’ll play the base version with no power-ups. Twenty-minute time limit. Best of three wins.”
This time his dark blue eyes met mine. “Any character restrictions?”
He watched me intently. Anyone in the gaming world knew base-version Sarina was overpowered. The company had patched the inequality pretty quickly, but we were playing the original game, pre-patch.
His question was a test. If I said no, he’d probably try to choose Sarina and kick my ass. If I said yes, I couldn’t choose Sarina myself.
Luckily, I didn’t need her to win.
I smiled slowly. “Sarina is out. Everyone else is fair game.”
Mase relaxed as soon as the battle music started. His legs spread, he leaned back, and a smile flirted with his lips. I almost got myself killed with all the micro glances I was sending his way.
Relaxed Mase was a dangerous opponent. He controlled his character flawlessly, and his reaction time was ridiculous. I probably should have anticipated as much. He was one of the best goalies in college hockey. Maybe the best.
Or so I’d heard. Not that I’d ever admit to looking him up after our fateful meeting.
I found myself surprisingly distracted by his nearness, despite the length of the couch between us. Tuning out the rest of the world had always come easily to me, but my mind insisted on cataloguing every tiny movement Mase made.
The first two matches were neck and neck, with us almost hitting the time limit on both of them. I won, then Mase, so it came down to the third and final game. Part of me was sad we were almost done. I hadn’t had fun playing a video game with another person in a long time.
Playing was my job, and when I wasn’t performing, I was taking care of Mom.
I was sweating by the time I won the third match, and I belatedly wondered if I’d put deodorant on today. Or yesterday. God, I really was a house goblin.
As my character did her victory dance inside the citadel, I blew out a breath and collapsed back against the couch. “You’re good.”
He tilted his head to face me, letting his hands dangle between his knees. “You’re better. I admit—I planned to crush you, exact punishing dog restrictions, and head home to wallow in my glory.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of confidence for someone who can’t even remember my name.”
“I don’t need to know your name to judge my own skills.”
I didn’t say it out loud, but I suspected I’d won because he hadn’t taken into account my skills. A lot of gamers dismissed me because I’m female, but Mase didn’t seem like the type. He probably dismissed me because I was human.
“You play against the computer a lot instead of versus people, don’t you?”
His shoulders tensed again, but he answered me. “My roommates are more into racing and hockey games. I prefer playing alone anyway.”
I didn’t miss the shade of sadness in his tone, which made me question if he was lying to himself. Games were fun solo, but they also brought people together. Against my better judgement, I offered him the one commodity I wasn’t sure I could afford. Connection.
“It’s Taryn, by the way. My name. Since you’ve been properly schooled and didn’t act like an ass, I’ll take pity and tell you why I probably seem familiar. I was the one who found you in your truck. You still have my fuzzy car blanket.”
Mase dragged a hand through his messy black hair and let out a dry laugh. “Yeah, that checks out. Thanks, by the way.”
“You’re welcome.” No explanation, but I wasn’t going to pry. People were messed up for all kinds of reasons, and none of it was any of my business. When I didn’t say anything else, the last of his reticence vanished.
“Sooo,” he said, drawing the word out with a slow grin that stole my breath. “Another?”
“Sure,” I croaked, then cleared my throat. “What do I get when I win this time?”
The rest of the world disappeared until the distant sounds of fireworks pulled me from my euphoria. I blinked and checked my phone. Midnight.
Mase frowned at the front windows, then shook his head. “I forgot what day it was.”
“At least you’re not trying to sleep now.”
“Yeah, I’d hate for your dog to be suspiciously quiet while I’m trying to rest.”
As if he could sense the conversation, my brown and black mottled Frenchie trotted into the room and huffed at the big man in his usual seat.
Mase growled back, and my ovaries clenched. Holy shit, I needed to get a grip on my involuntary reactions. My grumpy neighbor showed absolutely zero signs of looking for a hookup, and I had too much going on at the moment to muddy the waters.
Hudson tilted his head and let his tongue loll out as he stared at the newcomer, seemingly content to abandon his spot in favor of a potential new playmate. To be clear, the dog did not suffer from neglect. Mom spoiled him rotten.
With a sigh, Mase set his controller on the coffee table. “I should go.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came out as he leaned toward me. For a split second, I thought he was going to kiss me, and my body flooded with heat. At the last moment, he turned his head to brush his lips against my cheek.
“Happy new year.”
Air exploded out of me in an embarrassingly loud stream. “Right. Happy new year. Better luck next time.”
He raised a knowing brow. “You don’t mean that.”
“I absolutely don’t. I hope I kick your ass in every game from now until eternity.”
“You’re on. Rematch tomorrow?”
My mouth opened and closed a couple of times like a dying fish while I processed the trap I’d just walked into.
He wanted to come back. The grumpy, potentially fucked up, hot as all hell hockey guy next door wanted to spend time playing video games with me.
My first reaction was to say no. I had errands to run, an ad to film, Mom would be home—but none of that seemed particularly important.
I wanted to say no because he challenged me.
It was easy to stay locked in when my world consisted of Mom, Hudson, and my computer. Mase challenged me to open up. The offer from Valor Legion flashed through my mind.
No one else had come close in so long.
Deep inside, the need to see him again burned molten hot against the responsibilities piling up all around me.
In the end, I channeled my best nonchalant performance and pasted a casual smile on my face. “Bring your duck and maybe I’ll let you in again.”
He nodded slowly. “You’ll let me in.”
The quiet confidence burrowed down to my bones as he unfurled himself from the couch and softly closed the front door behind him. Hudson gave a low woof, staring after him.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m confused too. Let’s go bark at his window for a few minutes.”
His ears perked up as much as any Frenchie’s could, meaning they twitched a little, but I knew the look. Hudson loved his outdoor time, and I didn’t hate the idea of Mase thinking of me every time my dog annoyed him.
Bet he’d remember my name now.