Page 93 of Game on, Love

“Fair point,” I shrugged. “I had to do some filming for most of the day.”

“What for?”

“It’s a segment they want to run during the Women’s ODI match next week,” I paused. “I thought you were part of it?”

He threw his head back, groaning. “I was. But they started filming it and decided I would work better as part of the live crew.”

“No shit.” I laughed. Loudly.

Rihaan could barely get through doing anything filming, but there was nothing more than he hated when it was part of the live show. The irony didn’t fail on me considering he often did gaming live streams.

“Yeah, apparently one of the interns watched my streams when I tested the Virtual Reality experience, they liked how I was interacting with my chat. And now I’m stuck with this. I’ll have to drive up to Manchester for it,” He grumbled, before looking back at me. “And what about her?”

“She was at work.”

Damn it. I said it too quickly.

His brows raised, confirming exactly that.

“And after?”

I held back a sigh, as I replied. “We went to see a documentary.”

He frowned. “Like a date?”

“No,” I said, evenly and carefully. “Just as two people who had no interest in joining youorfrankly hearing you moan about what kind of idiots they people in the movie were for doing something they shouldn’t have.”

“So… you are friends now?”

“The past two months, where have you been running off to?”

Rihaan’s frown only deepened, but he didn’t reply. He watched me for a beat, but when I only raised a brow at him, he just shook his head.

AS THE RACE WOUNDdown, the living room was now only filled with the low hum of the commentators analysed the race. Rihaan hadn’t much said to me since my defensive response to his question, but his mood was still much lower after sitting through a race after ages and saw his brother lost a race on the last lap to his championship rival, Axel.

But I could see his brain working overtime. It was the same look Raina got when she was overthinking, and a part of me wanted to point out the similarity. Milo was still on my lap, so I had my new found armour nearby if anything.

“How’s your dad doing?” Rihaan’s tone was casual and careful, but it threw me off either way.

“He’s… better today. I think it was his new meds that were making him feel worse, but they still need to wait a couple days for them to be completely out of his system to be sure of that.”

He nodded, scratching the back of his head. “Let me know if you need anything from me.”

Guilt formed in my throat as I nodded. “Thanks, mate.”

28

Raina

THE JOURNEY BACK TOLondon was brutal. As I dragged my suitcase towards the exit, every muscle in my body ached. It didn’t matter that I’d been flying first class for a change, it was still a nightmare.

My flight was delayed by nine hours; then, when I finally got to my seat, it took us twenty minutes into the flight when the air hostess split… you guessed it: beer, all over me.

Thankfully, carrying luggage filled with clothes and having the means to actually wash over the smell meant I didn’t have to fly for over ten hours with the sticky liquid all over me. But somewhere over the Atlantic, I couldn’t help but think of the memories that it triggered, which led me to spend over half the flight thinking about each day I’d spent with Oliver in the past couple of weeks.

Maybe it was the fact that once I got in my head, I was no longer able to pretend that it didn’t matter how he made me feel or the fact that he’d had a hard weekend, and yet he spent it trying to send me updates on how he found my interviews, the different sessions because he wanted me to feel better about my jerk of a brother, or maybe I was just tired—of overthinking and running away from love.

The realisation that came after was even more terrifying. I thought I was going to be more open to the fact that I would let him in, but as I stepped into the arrivals area, exhaustion followed me on my shoulders, and I felt a tug in my chest. My breath struck me in my throat, and I paused, my eyes scanning the crowd and before it landed on him, I knew there was only one person I wanted to find in the crowd.