Page 41 of Our Final Game

“Oh? You wanna get in?” he says, staring down at me.

“Well, yeah,” I mumble, pinching the skin on my arm a little.

He leans down, whispering into my ear. “Who would’ve thought? But you know we have to get naked for that, right?”

“You’re so fucking stupid,” I say, pushing him away from me.

I can blame the heat of my body on the steaming water a few feet away from us, but how do I explain the way my heart is shuddering lately around Tyson Moon?

Chapter 20

Tyson

Rohan is at the bottom of the hill in the grassy part of the map, setting up what appears to be a picnic. He’s smoothing out the brown blanket and beginning to place sandwiches down. I pad over to him and his moving figure. He jumps a little when I get closer. He’s been acting a little strange ever since we arrived, and honestly, I was thinking maybe even before that. But I could just be seeing things, maybe things I want to see.

“Where’d you get all this?”

“The inn, someone had to come prepared just in case we had to sleep outside the town again at some point,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“Oh yeah? Or did you purposely plan all of this?” I say, leaning down close to his ear. “How romantic, Rohan.”

“Ugh! Can you stop!? That’s not it at all!” Rohan snaps, stepping away from me.

“I’m just playing, calm down,” I laugh.

“Well, here, just shut up and eat.” He shoves one of the neatly made sandwiches into my hands before flopping down onto the blanket.

“Thanks,” I smirk, sitting next to him.

We sit in silence for a little while, the sound of the waterfall crashing into the pool of steamy water below the only sound between us. When Rohan shifts next to me, his fingers brush mine briefly, making him flinch away. Just as quickly as the touch came, it was gone. I tilt my head at him, my brows pinched.

He seems tense.

“Do you like working at Riserr?” Rohan coughs a little after taking a sip of a drink he also brought for us.

How sweet.

“Well, I don’t wanna piss you off even more, but yeah,” I laugh.

“You’re not pissing me off actually.” He does that thing with his eyes when I say something he doesn’t like. It’s kind of cute.

“So, where did you end up working anyways?” I ask, eyeing him out of my peripherals. He tenses as soon as the question leaves my mouth, and I sigh a little. Here we go. I keep fucking up with him, but shit, he’s like a fucking mine. One wrong move and he’s back to snapping at me.

To my surprise, his shoulders drop. “Nowhere important.”

“Everywhere’s important. Every worker is important.”

“Yeah. Right,” he says. “My parents don’t even know I’m not doing that well. I … I was too scared…” Rohan mumbles.

“Scared of what?”

“Disappointing them. I feel like a loser sometimes,” he says, biting his lip as he stares down at the sandwich in his hands.

I frown. “You’re not a loser, Rohan.”

“Are you guys close? I’m sure they would’ve understood, maybe helped even.”

“Yeah, we are. That makes it worse, though. They were so happy when I got into university and graduated. They only let me take up gaming seriously because of all that. Also, I was winning, ya know…” Rohan laughs softly. “Little do they know, I’m making lattes to get by right now.”