Page 74 of Playing for Keeps

Jerkily, her hand pulled back and reached for her necklace, and I noticed a smear of blood against her chest. Her fingernail, chewed until the skin around it bled, was the culprit. I pressed another kiss to her lips, grabbed a can of pop from the fridge, then led Jen into my living room.

The boy was sitting on the chair closest to the door, and his eyes snapped away from the windows as we walked into the room. He removed his helmet from his lap and set it on the floor before taking the pop can from me. “Thanks.”

“What are you doing here, Levi?”

There were deep purple bags under his eyes, the kid looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. His voice shook when he told me, “I came to find you.”

Leaning back in my seat on the couch, I crossed my legs, lifting my hands to my sides. “I’m right here. And that begs another question: How did you find me?”

Levi shot a furtive glance at Jen as he raised a shaky hand to take a drink. Jen wasn’t a whiskey drinker, she’d had her first sip the night we met, but she threw back her drink as if it were water, then set her empty glass on the table beside mine.

“You can trust her,” I told Levi when he seemed unwilling to talk. I reached for Jen’s hand, slipping my fingers between hers. “I don’t want secrets from her. Not anymore.”

“I followed you in the game.”

Those six words felt like a kick to the chest. “What do you mean? How?”

Levi quirked an eyebrow, a slight smirk tilting his lips. “I learned from the best.”

My head dropped back against the couch, my eyes clamping shut. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“What’s wrong?” Jen asked, her fingers tightening on mine. The girl’s eyes were wide, the stress of the day weighing her shoulders down.

My body shifted toward her, giving her my attention as I answered her question. “I found Levi online a few years ago. The kids at his school were bullying him, hiding behind their screens. I stepped in and shut them down, then taught Levi here a thing or two to keep them from doing it again.”

“He’s a great teacher.”

“And the game?” Jen asked. “Is that—”

“What you saw the other night,” I told her, trying to convey without words that I needed her to watch what she said. While I didn’t want to keep secrets from her, there were things I didn’t want others to know. “My business associates and I created the online video game.”

“And I found him in there and followed him.”

“Why?”

Levi shrugged, chin dropping to his chest. “I wanted to thank you. To pay you back.”

“I told you, I don’t need to be paid back.”

“But you changed my life.” His voice was quiet, hopeful, even as he looked like he might break.

I knew I’d changed his life. I’d been following up on him regularly.

Until recently.

When everything else got in the way.

Feeling bad for abandoning my watch over the kid, I tried to tone down the anger I felt rolling around inside of me.

“So, you followed me. Why? What did you hope to find besides me?”

“A way to help you. And I did. You were following that Parker guy and I knew I could help.”

A tiny gasp escaped Jen’s lips. One that, any other time, would have had my cock stirring in my pants. She shot up in her seat, her hand dropping from her necklace to her lap. “That email?”

“Yeah, that was me,” Levi responded at the same time I asked, “What email?”

“I got an email on Thursday night, after Aaron... left. It said it was from me, and it had all kinds of pictures of Aaron with other girls. At that point, things were over between us, so I tried to put it out of my head.”