Page 3 of Next Level Up
I click through to the linked profiles. Confirm what I already know. Dylan, my ex.
The same one Carter knows about—the one I’d cried to him over multiple times in voice chat months ago. The one who made me feel small. Controlled. Erased.Who told me I was “lucky anyone wanted to watch a girl play shooter games at all.”
My vision goes tight around the edges. I haven’t seen his name in over a year. Not since I blocked him across every platform I could.
Now he’s in my bracket. In the same team, in the same game. Playing under the same banner as me. I slam the laptop shut a little too hard, my breath caught halfway between panic and fury. I’m going to throw up. No, I’m not. I’m fine. I’m fine.
Cassie reappears instantly. “What?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “What happened?”
I look at her. I try to swallow the answer. I try to tell myself it’s fine, that I can handle this, that it’s just a game. But it’s not just a game.
“It’s Dylan,” I whisper.
Cassie’s whole face changes. Her smile instantly drops. “What do you mean it’s Dylan?”
I open the laptop again, screen still glowing with his handle, taunting me. “He’s on my team.”
Her expression is now hardening into something I rarely see, pure protectiveness. The kind that reminds me she might be bubbly, but she’s not soft. “Dylan’s in the tournament?” she asks, voice flat.
“Not just in it,” I whisper. “On my team.”
Her jaw tightens. “Are you kidding me?”
I shake my head. My fingers are still curled around the edge of the laptop, knuckles white.
Cassie walks back over, drops onto the couch beside me. “Okay, breathe. We can fix this.”
“There’s no fixing it,” I say. “Team assignments are locked. It’s part of the format, random bracket teams for the first half of the tournament. You can’t switch once they’re set like that, not for start up.”
Well fuck, what are the odds?”
“I don’t know.” I close my eyes. My stomach turns. “But apparently, I’m cursed.” Actually cursed, not even being dramatic.
“Or he is,” she mutters.
I let out a laugh, but it’s humorless. “He’s probably laughing about this right now. Probably thinks this is fate. Or some twisted redemption arc where he gets to ‘coach me’ through my first official match.”
Cassie’s eyes flash. “You don’t have to play.”
“Yes, I do.”
She blinks at me. I meet her gaze. “I have to play. If I back out now, he wins. He gets to think he still has some kind of power over me. That he can still scare me into disappearing.”
She goes quiet for a second. “So what’s the move?”
I exhale slowly, hands dropping into my lap. “The move,” I say, forcing my voice to steady, “is that I play. I dominate. I make sure he remembers exactly what it feels like to be destroyed by a girl who used to cry over him.”
“There’s my girl.”
But even as I say it, even as I try to believe it, something tightens in my chest. I know I can’t do this alone. Not this time. I also know the second Carter and Tate find out?Shit is going to hit the fan.
Cassie doesn’t ask any more questions. She just hands me the most ridiculous iced coffee concoction, throws a blanket over us, and picks the dumbest movie she can find. Something with bad CGI and a plot so dumb it distracts us for almost two hours. We eat, we laugh, and make fun of every character.
When I stop laughing too suddenly, or when my smile slips just a little too long, she just moves closer, leans her head on my shoulder, and lets me have the silence without asking why I need it.
We end the night curled on opposite sides of the couch, blankets tangled around our legs, the TV screen still glowing softly with the end credits.
“Call him,” she says, not looking at me.
