Page 101 of Let the Game Begin (Kiss Me Like You Love Me #1)

Selene

“I miss you so much. Campus isn’t the same without you.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Alyssa kept calling Logan to tell him again how much she missed having him at school.

Ever since they’d made their relationship official, she’d done nothing but tell me all about how perfect, sweet, considerate, kind, smart, erudite, romantic, sensitive, and intuitive Logan was.

Not to mention how well-endowed and good in bed he was, which was apparently characteristic of the Miller men.

“Okay, puppy, see you later,” she said in a baby voice, flirting with her new boyfriend.

“You’re really laying it on thick.” I gave her a sideways glance as we walked down the hallway of our university, books clutched to our chests and our heads in the clouds.

“I’m a lucky woman,” she answered dreamily. I was a little afraid she was about to do a little twirl right there among the other students.

“And an extremely mushy one,” I muttered.

“You’re so sour. When was the last time you got fucked? You seem frustrated.” She arched an eyebrow and examined me carefully as my cheeks turned red at her observation.

That wasn’t the point, though. I hadn’t yet established a good sex life for myself, so it wasn’t like I was going into withdrawals.

I was just feeling unsettled by the things Neil had said to me the previous night.

In that moment of abandon, I hadn’t been able to give his speech the appropriate consideration, but I’d thought and thought about it all night until I came to a conclusion: he and I were traveling on two completely separate tracks, perhaps even parallel to each other, thus destined to never meet.

For him, it was just a physical attraction between us; while for me, it was something more, and it had been ever since I agreed to reenact my first time with him so that I could recall every feeling, every detail.

“It’s not that, the problem is…him. Him and his twisted personality,” I admitted.

I felt an enormous need to just talk to someone about it.

I was tired of keeping everything bottled up inside and never being able to hear an opinion other than my own.

I was tired of only having my own conscience to bounce things off, and I needed advice and perspectives from other people.

“Him who? Jared?” Alyssa obviously wasn’t aware how ridiculous my love life had gotten or of the fact that I’d broken up with Jared.

For a moment, I rethought the idea of telling her everything, but I needed to free myself from the enormous burden that was weighing me down. I had to confide in someone.

“No, it’s not Jared.”

We went into the lecture hall, but I already knew that we wouldn’t be paying attention to the lesson. In fact, Alyssa immediately started in with her questions, and I told her everything. Absolutely everything.

“So, you’re sleeping with Neil? The Neil?” she practically shouted.

“Shut up or we are going to get kicked out. And yes,” I whispered, bowing my head and pretending to scrutinize my notes.

“Oh my god. There are girls in this room who would sell a kidney for one night with him. You know that, right? But everyone says he’s only into super-hot blonds and doesn’t have sex with just anyone,” she whispered with her hand over her mouth, preventing others from reading her lips clearly.

I sighed because that wasn’t just a rumor; it was the plain truth.

“Do your parents know?” she asked, getting more and more curious.

“Are you kidding? Obviously not.” And I had no idea how they would react to that kind of news.

I’d often wondered, but ultimately, I tried to avoid thinking about it because I didn’t want to worry about my father’s reaction.

I’d never really talked to him about my personal life, and he’d been gone before I had the chance to tell him about any first crushes.

Indeed, the topic of “men” had always been a bit taboo between us.

“Is he aggressive in bed like he is everywhere else?”

Ugh.

What kind of question was that?

I blushed and dropped the pen I was holding onto the floor. Alyssa giggled delightedly as I bent down to pick it up.

“What are these questions you’re asking me?

” I answered, trying to keep my tone low but appropriately threatening.

Of course he was , was what I wanted to tell her.

He was aggressive, rough, and passionate.

But I wasn’t going to say any of that to Alyssa, because it was private.

The things I shared with my fucked-up not-a-boyfriend belonged to him and me alone.

“And what about it ? What’s he working with?” She stretched out her hands to indicate an average penis length and my eyes went wide.

Has she lost her mind?

I gave her a perplexed look, and she stifled a laugh as she drew her fingers even farther apart and…

“He’s well-endowed, yes. Now knock it off.” I slapped her wrist to put an end to the lewd gestures. Then she touched the end of her pen to her lips and shot me a mischievous look.

“Try not to fall in love with him. He’s a peculiar guy with a complex personality.

” Alyssa had suddenly grown serious again, and she looked at me with concern.

I couldn’t blame her. Neil was incapable of forging connections with most people.

Logan and Chloe were the only real people who existed for him, and he kept his heart locked up in a tower too high to climb, almost insurmountable.

“What’s worse is that he’s always getting into trouble. I mean, he hangs out with the Krew and you see how everyone here is afraid of them. They’re a pack of animals, and he’s their leader,” she murmured, horrified, and I found myself agreeing with her entirely.

Of all of Neil’s friends, though, Jennifer was still the one I hated the most. I hadn’t forgotten what she’d done to me. And yet she was Neil’s preferred choice among all his lovers because she was shameless, wicked, and most of all blond.

I shook my head and kept answering Alyssa’s questions, trying not to think about Krew Barbie, because even picturing her awful braids or sexy-yet-vulgar body made me feel anxious and ill at ease.

Instead, I tried to focus on the unsolicited but still helpful advice that Alyssa tried to give me at the end of class.

According to her, I was much too good and naive a girl, and my personality wasn’t suited to someone like Neil. He was a person with a forceful, intractable character; he was clever and calculating.

Experienced and shrewd.

And I knew that better than anyone.

***

Later, at home, Alyssa’s words continued to echo through my mind as I sat in the living room with Logan. He was munching on his favorite cereal despite the fact that it was well into the afternoon.

“Neil isn’t a boy, Selene. He eats innocent girls like you for breakfast. You need to be a woman to be with him, someone capable of standing up to him.”

And then, “Learn how to deal with him, or he’ll end up grinding you down like one of his cigarette butts.”

“I can see the gears in your brain whirring at an impressive speed,” Logan observed. He was sitting on the sofa with his leg stretched out in front of him, per doctor’s orders. He was supposed to rest and take painkillers for at least three weeks before resuming his normal activities.

I didn’t answer and just lifted my glass of juice to my lips. I wasn’t sure if I could tell Logan the true reason for my torment. I opted instead to change the subject slightly.

“Alyssa knows about the situation with Neil,” I said. Logan abruptly stopped chewing and watching the rerun of a basketball game, turning to stare at me with an indecipherable expression on his face.

“And she gave me some advice,” I added awkwardly, hoping he wouldn’t ask about it in detail because Alyssa had also given me some sex tips that I’d rather not recount.

“You already know how I feel about that.” Logan sighed.

“Neil’s a unique sort of person.” And he was, he truly was.

He was a riddle that was nearly impossible to solve.

“You can keep it casual with him, Selene, but there’s no future with him.

I’m only saying this because you don’t seem like…

” He looked at me, a small, sweet smile flitting over his lips.

“You don’t seem like the kind of girl he usually surrounds himself with.

You put so much feeling into everything you do, so you need to be careful and never forget that he’s different from other people. ”

I knew perfectly well that Neil wasn’t a boy who needed a little coaxing and a fix-him-up mindset to get him to bond with someone. He wasn’t just hostile to love; he refused, from the outset, to admit that love even existed.

My train of thought was interrupted by a glance from Anna, who was busily polishing the silverware.

Her attention had been drawn by Logan’s sincere speech.

Here was a woman who had known Neil since he was a child.

She was the one who advised me not to judge him but to try to understand him.

To learn how to interpret his silent language and figure out what he was saying even when he had no intention of exposing himself to me.

However, that was considerably easier to say than do.

I shook myself and changed the subject again, spending a couple of easy hours hanging out with Logan.

We were both trying to distract ourselves: him from his accident and me from my worries.

Later, Chloe joined us, but instead of getting in on our conversation, she just fell asleep next to her brother, lulled by what she called “this boring game” on the TV.

When it finally ended, Logan made a grimace of pain, which I noticed immediately.

“Logan,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder, and he shook his head reassuringly at me.