Page 57 of Fake Game

I’m addicted to her like a finance bro is to his morning coffee.

Fuck. Why do I keep involving myself with her?

“Sorry.” The word leaves my lips before I can think better of it.

Deer’s mouth closes and her doe eyes blink several times. “It’s fine.”

“Is it that hard to win the redhead over?” I nod my head toward her phone.

“Aidan,” she corrects me before her eyes narrow. “Are you sure you want me to give you the lore? These games get pretty intense. I’m not sure you can keep up; it can be super technical—especially when you play on the hardest mode.”

“It can’t be that tedious.”

She snorts and rolls her eyes. “That’s what everyone thinks.”

“It’s a dating sim.” They couldn’t bethattechnical, for fuck’s sake. You just had to answer the prompts correctly. It was kind of a more basic and less violent version of the choice-based RPGs I’ve played.

A serpentine smile slides across her face. “Okay, just remember you asked.”

She scooches across to the middle seat and proceeds to tuck her left foot under her right thigh, causing her left thigh to plaster against my own. She continues to shift as she gets uncomfortably close, her elbow basically resting against my thigh as she leans over to show me her phone screen.

“All right, so each day is only twenty-four minutes, so you have to try to complete as much as you can within that time.But you only have a certain number of days from when the game starts until it ends. In the case ofIdol Chapter, there are three months from when the storyline begins until the final concert. Each task you complete takes up time, and even when you move between locations, you lose extra time depending on how far the locations are.”

“Currently, I only have a month left until the concert, so I’m a little pressed for time to win those last two hearts from Aidan. The issue is, I can’t focus all my time on him because if his bandmates hate me, it causes him to hate me as well. I learned that the hard way during my last playthrough—which I failed,” she sighs. “It’s why he is the hardest of the four to succeed with.”

Deer tucks one of the small pink braids behind her ear before resting her elbow on my thigh, not bothering to hover anymore. At this point, her shoulder is nearly tucked under mine, and there is no discernable space between our bodies.

She might as well just climb onto my fucking lap.

I can barely focus on everything she is explaining, too caught up in the way her fuzzy sweater begins to slip off her shoulder, revealing a lacey pink bra strap and skin covered in a soft smattering of freckles that are barely darker than her skin color—you wouldn’t even notice them unless you’re this close.

My eyes trace the soft slope of her neck down to the dip at her collarbone. She’s wearing another one of those chokers today. This time it has a little metal heart clipped in the center of the black leather.

My dick twitches at the sight of it.

“Don’t you agree?” Deer nudges her shoulder backward to get my attention. When it takes more than a second for me to respond, she flicks her eyes up to me and narrows them. “Please tell me you were listening.”

“Of course.”

The arch of her brow rises. “Oh, really? Then what’s your suggestion?”

Shit.

I run my eyes over her phone screen, quickly piecing together the scenario in front of me.

“I wouldn’t sneak out to meet him. The note seems like a fake, probably from a rival.”

Her eyes turn to slits, and I worry for a second that I read the situation wrong, but she just lets out a disappointedtskand sits up straight. “Yeah, that was my thought.”

“We’ve arrived, miss.”

I let out a sigh of relief at Francis’ interruption.

I was getting too confused being around her; nothing was making sense anymore. The more time I spend with her, the more sides I get to see, and it muddies the waters of everything I thought I knew about her.

“Thank you, Francis,” Deer chirps as we come to a stop in front of a nail salon with a familiar swan logo.

“Of course. I’ll be parked here when you need to return.”

---