Page 75 of From Drummer to Gamer

“Hi,” he mumbled, staring at the rain like it was raining diamonds instead of water.

Hmm, he seemed more grumpier than usual.

He was fine last night when we played together. Well, he was the usual quiet four-word answer guy, but his tone didn’t seem to lack energy.

I’d gotten a lot closer to him as Luna. He seemed to have taken a rare liking to her. Knowing him for a while now, he didn’t do something that spontaneous often. He kept his circle super close and built heavy fort walls to protect his privacy.

I almost thought he wasn’t going to accept my request, but he did, and I almost lost my shit and started to jump on my bed like a lunatic.

And soon Matty Evans wasn’t just my favorite drummer. He also became my favorite player to game with. He was just too adorably grumpy while I rambled on like an idiot and threw orders at him, but he listened to every single word I said.

Though I hid my appearance and my voice, that was the realest version of Sierra I’d ever been. He thought he was playing with Daisy Luna, but I never even attempted to put on her cloak when I was with him.

I asked him so many dumb questions, some I already knew the answer to, and some I couldn’t ask as Sierra without coming off as weird, but he answered every single one of them with the same enthusiasm, even more so than he did in the interviews.

Matty Evan liked Luna, and he even initiated contact often now. It was hard to keep up with the pretending with my actual training and the tournament, but I always made time for him.

Then there was also this smoky feeling burning inside me. I knew I shouldn’t be jealous because Luna was me, but I couldn’t help it. He gave her a version of himself that he never gave to me.

A version when he wasn’t guarded or cautious like he was with me.

A version he could never give his employee’s sister.

“You’re grumpy,” I commented, my eyes roaming over his beautiful features. I sighed internally. Who needed posters on their bedroom walls if they could stare at this sculpted piece of heaven in real life?

He raised a brow, finally bringing those greens to mine. “I’m not.”

“But you are. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

I rolled my eyes. “Something clearly is.”

“I told you nothing is wrong, Sierra.” He added a little bite to his tone as his gaze pinned me. “What does a man have to do to want some peace and silence?”

Hurt cruised to my heart before I stopped it.

There it was, amid all the ways I tried to hammer down his walls, there was a thousand-mile gap between us.

My schemes and plot to get to know him, to worm my way into his quiet world, were all a false mirage.

Matty Evans would never hold me orLunain the same position that I held him.

By the end of the summer, I would’ve barely scratched the surface of his layers, and by the end of the next, I would be a long-forgotten memory that he once considered an acquaintance, and within the next, I wouldn’t even be the person he once remembered.

I slipped back to a seat like a regular person and blinked as the blood rushed to the other parts of my body. But I didn’t waste a second as I stood, without sparing him a glance, and trudged my sinking heart to my room.

Hopefully, at least this time, you would learn you’re not that important to him, nor will you ever be, Sierra.

“Wait,” he called out, his voice gruff and deep, sending invisible shivers under my skin. “Don’t go. Come back.”

The foolish girl in me would rush to his side in a beat of a second, but I did have some dignity and self-respect. Victoria Chan would have my ass if she knew her daughter didn’t stand up for herself.

I slowly turned and came into sight of Matty standing, still in the same spot. I narrowed my gaze. “Why should I?” I asked, trying to steel my tone.

A helpless expression flickered in his eyes. “Because I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. It was wrong of me when you’re just trying to be nice, when all you’ve ever been is nice. You don’t deserve me speaking to you like that. You caught me in a low mood, and I’m sorry,” he said, running a frustrated hand through his buzz-cut hair.

A simple sorry would’ve sufficed.