CHAPTER 15
CY
Yesterday my team obliterated the competition, but it was just the beginning. I know having Ariel here watching me compete has made me a fucking beast. We’ve spent a lot of the summer playing together and while she’s not on the circuit, she could be. She’s damn good and she’s made me better.
She’s even played online with me and the rest of my team and they’re all impressed as fuck with her skills. Did I threaten them with bodily harm if they so much as look at her wrong or try and flirt with her? Damn fucking right I did.
They laughed it off, but when they met her a few days ago upon our arrival in New York, I think they understood just how serious I was. Did I growl like a feral fucking beast when one of them let their eyes linger on her a little too long? Damn right I did.
We were up way too late last night because we were spending time with Gabriel’s brother, Jericho, and his woman, Briar. I thought Ariel’s eyes were going to bug out of her head when Briar admitted Jericho stalked her for eight months before he ever made a move.
Knowing Jericho, I’m sure there’s a little more to the story, but we didn’t push. Sometimes not knowing is safer for everyone involved.
We certainly haven’t told Ariel about the ways we stalked her in the six months before we met her. I don’t know if it would send her running or not, but I certainly don’t want to find out. Hell fucking no.
I know I need to get out of bed, but I don’t want to. I do wish Ariel was in bed with me, but I can tell it’s empty. When I hear a sniffle, I spring up and look around the room wildly. We’re in a suite and I already heard Kent and Gabe shuffling around in the main room, but I know that sniffle and it’s not them.
I swing my gaze around the room and almost roar in rage when I see our woman curled up in the corner of the oversized chair, trying to make herself as small as possible.
I leap out of bed, not giving a single fuck that I’m naked. I stalk over to her and crouch down in front of her. When I reach for her, she flinches and my heart plummets.
I yell over my shoulder, “Kent and Gabe, get your asses in here right fucking now.” I hear their footsteps, but I refocus on our girl and gentle my voice, “What’s going on, Ari?”
When she looks at me, there are tears in her eyes and the tracks of them on her cheeks. The look on her face breaks something inside of me. I don’t ever want to see her looking this sad. I can’t take it.
I move slowly, knowing she’s skittish without knowing what’s wrong, and cup her cheeks in my hands. Her face is so small compared to my palms. I use my thumbs and rub away her tears, needing them gone, needing to vanquish whatever has made her look defeated and pained.
“What happened?” My voice is hoarse as I admit, “I can’t stand to see you cry.”
She hiccups and then a sob breaks through. She doesn’t use words, she simply turns her phone, which she’s clutching in her hands, toward me. I glance down and see a headline on one of the biggest gamer sights on the web. I swallow hard at what I see there. It’s not a headline about my team’s win yesterday. It’s about Ariel and the fact she’s involved with me and my best friends.
What the fuck?
I growl and blink, not wanting the rage to take over. I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to prevent my vision from going red. She doesn’t need my anger right now.
“It’s not just this site. It’s everywhere,” she admits quietly before she scrolls and right there is a picture of our girl with a big smile on her face and the three of us wrapped around her. It was right before I joined my team on stage, needing another little hit of her sweetness and luck. I’m kissing her lips, but the way Kent and Gabe are holding her leaves a lot of room for speculation.
“Fuck,” I curse under my breath and feel my woman crumple in my hands. “I didn’t even think of cameras," I admit when I look back into her eyes.
Her blue depths swirl with pain as if her heart is already breaking. As if she’s already saying goodbye to us.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
I shake my head but before I can put her fears to rest, Kent speaks up behind me, his voice panicked, “What’s wrong?”
“Our relationship is all over the internet,” I growl.
Ariel casts her eyes down and shudders as a sob rolls through her. I only want her to look down when it’s one of her adorable submissive gestures, not when she does it out of pain.
“So fucking what?” Gabe grits out the question and I don’t need to look at him to know he’s a mask of rage.
Kent crouches down next to me and reaches for our girl, she flinches away from him too and my heart breaks, but he doesn’t let it stop him. “We don’t give a fuck about that kind of stuff, Ariel. You’re ours.”
“W-what?” There’s a spark of hope when she looks up at Kent before her eyes find me and then Gabe. “This is everywhere. How can you say that?”
Gabe huffs out a humorless chuckle. “Just like he said, we don’t care. Who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks about us and this relationship? Your ours.” His voice takes on a steely edge, “Don’t let this cause you to fall apart.”
Her eyes narrow as she looks at him and she squares her shoulders, even as I don’t let go of her, “I’m not falling apart.”