Page 72 of Level Up for Love

Chapter

Twenty

I don’t get very far.

I hear Wesley’s heavy footfalls echoing behind me in the hallway leading from the closet to the Dungeon Room. I finish stuffing my notes and dice haphazardly into my bag before I turn to look at him. He stands silhouetted in the doorframe, the plastic torches mounted to the wall flickering ominously on either side of his head. He’s holding on to his composure by a thread, his hair unruly, hands shoved stiffly into his pockets, and cheeks spotted with color. His shoulders visibly rise and fall with each breath, like he’s struggling not to pant. I can’t tell if he looks frustrated or just hurt.

With deliberate slowness, Wesley shuts the door behind him.

“Reagan,” he snaps, the desperation in his voice making his tone hard. “Sit. Down.”

This nearly unravels me. My heart thunders against my sternum, my knees turn to jelly, and I feel an unexpected but not entirely unwelcome spear of heat straight to my core.

He pauses, and his voice softens to a strained whisper. “Please.”

I fall heavily into the chair I occupied during this session and all the ones before it—the one that sits across the long table from Wesley. Slowly, he lowers himself into his own spot, the DM’s screen shielding him from view.

Although our jaws are locked shut, sound fills the room. Wesley arrives to each session with a bespoke soundtrack prepared, and long, drawn-out notes from an organ croon hauntingly through the speakers, the perfect mood for a masquerade—and the perfect encapsulation of the tension strung tight between us.

We might as well just grab our dice and roll for initiative.

Instead, Wesley folds the DM’s screen shut with a snap, lays it down on the table, and laces his hands atop it. There’s nothing between us now, nothing to shield me from the piercing stare of his dark eyes.

Finally, he speaks.

“We can’t keep doing this.”

I swallow thickly; my throat has gone tight. “It won’t happen again,” I say, a hollow echo of my words from just a few weeks ago.

But Wesley shakes his head. “That is not what I’m saying. I don’t want to keep dancing around each other like we don’t want this. This”—he gestures wildly toward the door, toward the hallway I stormed through on my way back into this room—“is exhausting.”

I stare at him.

“Can you tell me I’m wrong?” He’s asking almost nicely, like it would make everything so much simpler if I could just say yes. His pupils are blown wide enough that I can barely see the sliver of chocolate brown that rings them. “Can you tell me that you truly don’t want it to happen again?”

Fuck me, but I can’t. I can’t say that the intensity of his stare isn’t making my blood pound in my ears, that the sight of his swollen lips doesn’t make me want to kiss him harder.

“It’s a bad idea, Wes,” I insist. The words don’t even taste convincing in my own mouth. “Every time, it’s a bad idea.”

“Why?”

My jaw works for a moment. “It could throw off the table dynamic.”

He laughs—actually laughs. “Oh, come on. Shay and Mona are hardly weird. Why would we make things uncomfortable?”

But I’m not thinking of our current group—I’m thinking of everything that went down with my last one. Maybe if Owen and I hadn’t gotten so wrapped up in each other, maybe if I’d set better boundaries, I wouldn’t have ruined it all.

I try another excuse. “It could complicate things with NEWT.”

He rolls his eyes before setting an even gaze on me. “There’s not a thing on earth that could stand between you and something you’ve set your mind to, Reagan,” he says dryly. “Not even me.” The corner of his lips ticks upward, and his voice drops lower. “And for me—I’d find it more motivating than anything.”

The compliment spurs my heart to a gallop again; I have never found him more attractive than I do in this moment. But I can’t get distracted. I have more reasons for my uncertainty—plenty. Ones I refuse to say out loud.

I don’t want to be the thing you return to only when you’re at your lowest.

I don’t know if I can trust that you won’t change if you win.

I can’t be sure that you won’t just leave again.