Page 31 of Level Up for Love

Back then, I think ruefully. When he was standing in my room, insisting I let him stay, just for a while. I remember how he brushed his knuckles along my collection of game guides and, later, down the line of my jaw. I swallow.

“Why join a new game at all, then?” Wesley asks. “Is it because Shay invited Ramona, or do you just like D&D that much? Since we’ve already established you didn’t join for me.”

Fine—I laugh, just a little. “Mona and I don’t play with our old group anymore.” I begin to tap a rhythm against the cardboard of my coffee cup. “If anything, Shay just asked at the right time. Mona really missed playing, but she felt bad about joining a new group without me. So I joined for her.”

“What happened to your old group?”

My fingers still, and I feel the tension expand in my chest before I let it out in an audible sigh. Am I really about to get into this? With him? Wesley’s looking at me curiously from under the sweep of his hair, and for a long moment, I watch the way the sunlight brightens its lightest strands.

“I killed them.”

He jerks back. “Excuse me?”

“In-game, Wesley, Jesus. I killed their characters.”

“But why?”

I don’t know what exactly compels me to tell him. Maybe I want him to know just how messy it was, just how bad things had gotten that I had to force myself to join a new game—his game. Maybe I want to stress just how uncomfortable this whole situation is for me.

“Do you want the long or the short version?” I ask.

Wesley peers at me from under his unfairly long eyelashes. “I want as much as you’ll give me.”

I don’t know what to make of that, so I ignore it and jump right in.

“The group was me as the DM, then Mona, two other friends, and Owen—my boyfriend at the time.” We’d played so many games together, sticking close to one another through college and beyond. Even now I’m still shocked they’re gone. “Eventually, Mona found out that Owen was cheating on me with one of the other players and that the other friend, Eddie…he knew what was going on between them, but he kept their secret. When Mona found out, she told me immediately, and it was…”

A relief? An exit I’d been seeking for too long? A disappointment? I’ve gone through so many emotions about the whole situation that I hardly know the truth of how I feel anymore.

I can’t gauge how Wesley feels about it, either—his expression has gone suddenly stormy, but I can’t tell if he’s feeling sympathetic on my behalf or if he’s just disgusted by the shit show of my previous group dynamic.

Maybe he’s wondering whether I’ll destroy this group, too.

“Anyway, it sucked.” I pick at my thumbnail, where my teal nail polish is already chipping. “So I figured out how I was going to handle it, I told Mona my plan, and she agreed. That next week, she offered to host our weekly game at her apartment; she lives on the floor under me. We made some excuse about maintenance needing to work on a leak in mine, which thankfully Owen didn’t question, since he lived with me at the time. He was just coming back from a trip to his parents’.

“We were nearing the end of the campaign, and in-game, the party had just made it to the villain’s lair. The villain was a sort of—well, he was a warlock, and he’d been creating this magical weapon he planned to use to threaten the kingdom and take control. While they were fighting him, the weapon malfunctioned and exploded—a nuclear-level explosion. None of the party survived, and it completely wiped the map clean.”

I smile wryly, though old bitterness makes my expression feel brittle. “Mona and I call it the Cataclysm.”

Wesley leans forward. His brows are knitted deep in thought over his dark eyes, but I catch lines of tension in the edge of his jaw, and his knuckles have gone nearly white where his fingers are curled over the back of the bench.

Is he…angry?

I go on. “Everyone was understandably upset, until I told them why I’d done it. And then things got—nasty.”

Memories of our fight rush to the front of my mind.

Why the hell would you do this here, Reagan? It’s our business you’re airing out.

I think it’s everyone’s business, Owen. It’s been your and Lauren’s business for a while now, hasn’t it?

I swallow. “When Owen finally came back upstairs to our apartment, I’d already packed everything he owned. He didn’t even get to step foot through the door.”

Wesley lets out a low whistle and slumps back against the armrest as his earlier tension seems to leave his body. He winces at me, but something in his eyes sparks.

“That’s pretty badass.”

“…What?”