I glance toward the viewing room above the lounge and see him leaning against the railing.
Haven nods. “Better than okay. Just fueling up.”
I smirk back at her. “Then let’s eat. And then we finish what we started.”
There’s a guy from one of the earlier brackets who works up the nerve to approach us, his posture awkward but trying not to be. He throws a glance between us like he’s stepping into something he doesn’t fully understand.
“That last round was insane,” he says, directing it at both of us but looking at her more than me. “Seriously.”
Haven gives him a polite smile, easy and unforced. “Thanks.”
He lingers for a second too long, like he’s considering pushing further, but something in the space between us must shift because he thinks better of it. He nods once and moves on.
I glance back at her. “You attract idiots everywhere, or just here?”
She bumps my arm lightly with her bottle, not even looking at me when she answers. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
That pulls a quiet grin out of me before I can stop it. “Yeah, but I’m your favorite problem.”
An announcement cuts through the room letting everyone know there’s five minutes left. The shift in the room is immediate, conversations taper off.
Haven rolls her shoulders and starts heading back to the floor. “I’ll see you out there,”
“Yeah,” I answer, stepping back just enough to let her pass. “You will.”
She moves past me, close enough that her fingers brush mine for half a second.
The lights feel hotter than usual, the crowd louder, even the countdown feels slower.
It’s the last match of the tournament and I’m staring across the stage at her.
She has her hair tied up, her fingers flexing over the keys like she’s got the next dozen moves mapped out. There’s a fire in her eyes I’ve never seen—not like this.
I swear to God, I’ve never wanted to lose to someone so badly in my fucking life. I flex my fingers, crack my neck and crank the volume.
This is it.
I don’t move right away when everything loads in.
The crowd is loud enough to bleed through the headset, the commentators talking over each other as the chat spikes hard enough to feel like pressure behind my eyes, but none of it reaches where it needs to. It all sits at the edges while I focus on the one thing that actually matters.
I flex my fingers slowly over the keys, grounding myself in something familiar before the match starts. The setup hasn’t changed, the controls haven’t changed. The rhythm is still there, waiting for me to fall into it the second the timer hits zero. But this isn’t the same.
I glance across the stage once, not long enough to break focus but long enough to see her locked in. She isn’t looking around,isn’t reacting to the noise or the lights or the fact that every eye in the room is on her. She’s exactly where she needs to be, like everything else stopped existing the second she sat down.
A slow grin pulls at my mouth beneath the mask. I don’t want hesitation. I don’t want her second-guessing a single move just because I’m the one on the other side of it. I want her sharp, I want her relentless. I want every decision she makes to come from the same place mine will.
The timer ticks down, each second stretching just enough to settle everything into place.
Three.
Two.
One.
The screen flashes.Match: HavenHexed vs. NoOneGhost.
The entire Twitch chatexplodes.
