Page 144 of The Revenge Game

Each time she appears, her smile gets more worried, her hovering more obvious.

I spend my time scrolling through Andrew’s messages like they’re some kind of digital form of self-torture.

My thumb hovers over the reply button before I catch myself. Again. And again. And again.

Every message he sends me just cuts deeper.

I love you, Justin.

Somehow, while I was pretending to be someone else, I was the most real I’ve ever been with anyone.

I want you. I want you and me and Tabitha and Cassie. I want us. There’s nothing I want more.

I try to distract myself, but my form of distraction—Googling Andrew Yates—perhaps isn’t the best idea.

Because Andrew Yates isn’t just in the tech industry. He’s apparently its ghostwriter. The brilliant mind whose fingerprints are everywhere but whose face is rarely seen. His Wikipedia page stretches longer than my entire résumé, yet thePersonal Lifesection consists of exactly three sentences and no photos.

Reading articles about him is even worse. The tech blogs treat him like he’s some kind of coding messiah operating from behind a curtain.The Invisible Architect Behind NovaCore’s Revolution.The Genius Who Built An Empire While Avoiding The Spotlight. They speculate about hispathological privacyandenigmatic presencelike he’s some kind of tech Banksy.

His net worth makes me feel dizzy.

But it’s the rare personal profiles that completely gut me. The ones that talk about his intensely private nature, how he’s married to his work.

Then I find this tiny college newspaper interview from MIT, where Drew talks about how he started coding in high school to create a safe space when the real world felt too hostile.

And shame rears inside me yet again.

Because I was the one who made his world hostile.

I click on a video showing him on an industry panel at a rare public appearance, and the sound of his voice explaining complex concepts makes me grip my phone until my knuckles go white. Each word he speaks hammers home exactly how much brilliance I tried to dim back then.

I remember how I tried to boost his confidence, telling him he should try to step up from an entry-level help desk technician job.

God, he must have been laughing on the inside when I suggested he was capable of bigger things, knowing he’d already achieved more than I could imagine.

But then I think of Andrew’s face on the banks of the Thames when he told me how much he loves me.

Does it actually change anything to know he’s a tech tycoon?

I already knew he was brilliant. Does it matter that the rest of the world caught onto that fact before I did?

Drew’s name appears on my screen, along with the tiny icon showing the length of his latest voice message. My finger hovers over the notification before I quickly lock my phone, shoving it under my pillow like I’m a teenager hiding contraband.

That makes eighteen voice messages he’s left me in total. Not that I’m counting.

I don’t want to listen to his messages because if I hear his voice, my resolve will crumble like my mother’s always did. I’llforget every reason why this is a bad idea and book the first flight back to London just to see his face.

I spend the night tossing and turning, my phone burning a hole through my pillow.

The next morning, Mom takes one look at my face, which probably resembles something between a zombie and a kicked puppy, and obviously decides enough is enough.

“If you drop me at work, you can have the car for the day,” she says. “It might do you good to get some fresh air. Maybe you should catch up with some of your old friends?”

Old friends. Right. Connor’s still in town, running his dad’s car dealership. Tad coaches the JV football team.

The thought of seeing them makes me feel like I did when I last tried on my old letterman jacket. Something that used to fit perfectly but now just makes me feel like I’m wearing a costume. What would we even talk about? How we used to make some kid’s life hell because we were too scared to face our own issues?

But I don’t want to prompt any more maternal scrutiny, so I agree to her plan.