Game of Hearts

by Jerry Cole

  “Game of Hearts”

  M/M First Time Gay Romance

  Jerry Cole

  © 2017

  Jerry Cole

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18.

  Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life. If you’re not sure where to start, see here: http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com/safe-sex-resources/.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.

  Edition v1.01 (2017.08.19)

  http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com

  Interested in FREE M/M Romance Books?

  Thank you for downloading my book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Without readers like you, I wouldn’t be able to do what I love. As my way of giving back, I started the Jerry Cole Reader Club & you are invited to join.

  Benefits Include:

  10+ Free M/M romance books, most are exclusive to the club

  Updates on my latest releases

  Discounts on new release ebooks at launch (up to 65% off retail!)

  It’s also your chance to connect with me. No spam, I promise! Membership is free. No obligation to buy anything & unsubscribe anytime. You will receive your free eBooks immediately after subscribing, sent via email.

  Click Here to Download Your Free eBooks!

  Download these books & more for free today!

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Authors Note

  Books by Jerry Cole

  Chapter One

  Bjorn Falk knew that he was a disappointment. Maybe his family would look at him differently with this tournament, but even a few hundred thousand dollars may not be enough to get his family on board with his career choice. Even though he was had only asked for financial assistance once since he had moved out at eighteen two years ago, he doubted that his parents would ever take him seriously, even if he ever managed to earn millions. Which was a stretch.

  Regardless, he was already well on his way. He had earned far more money than his mother ever had. His father, on the other hand, was still trying to talk him into going back to Sweden and getting a tertiary education for free. Or, at least for less than he would have to pay in America; Bjorn really didn’t understand how it worked. His Swedish wasn’t at a level that would allow for academic study, anyway. Only the kindest of people would even call it acceptable.

  His family had moved to America when he was only seven, and while he tried to practice the language a little bit, there was hardly any opportunity. Nowadays, he only spoke Swedish when his father called. When Bjorn had turned ten, his father had started making remarks about the way he was speaking in Swedish, saying that he sounded like an American, so Bjorn decided not to speak to him in Swedish again. He knew that his dad understood English, and he was trying to avoid further criticism.

  He didn’t need any more of that; with a name like Bjorn, he was already seen as an outsider by almost everyone. His looks helped, and he knew that the bullying would have been a lot worse if he had been Black or Latino. The blond hair and huge blue eyes seemed to endear him to parents, which seemed to endear him to their children. He had been relieved, back then. He was still relieved now, but he was also a little horrified.

  Pink pushed past him into the hotel room and interrupted his train of thought. “This room is nice,” Pink said. He slammed his bag down on the bed and then he threw himself on it. “Are we sharing a bed or—”

  “No,” Bjorn said. “There’s like, a bed that slides out of this one, whatever it’s called.”

  “Such a shame,” Pink said.

  Bjorn threw a pillow at him and rolled his eyes. Pink was always flirting with him, ever since he had first joined the team. Pink was straight as an arrow—at least, as far as Bjorn knew—but he still needed to keep himself entertained. Pink, whose real name was Matthew, had no problem playing pranks on the rest of the members of the team, even when those pranks weren’t particularly kind. If he had been anyone else or even a little tiny bit worse at what he did, then the rest of the team would have gotten rid of him ages ago. The countless meetings they had about Pink always became mute and unimportant the moment that Pink brought them closer and closer to a championship.

  In no small part, his skills were what had finally gotten Bjorn and the rest of the crew to this tournament. His skills were going to make them rich.

  “Al,” Pink said, cocking his head. Bjorn’s username was Allegiance, and almost nobody called him by his proper name. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m just finding all this a little hard to take,” Bjorn replied. “Aren’t you?”

  “Nah, man,” Pink said, flipping his long black hair back over his shoulder. “This is what we’ve been working for. Seriously, you should be doing victory laps around this hotel. You’re the elite, Al. You’re earning money off playing video games. What else can you ask for, really?”

  “I don’t know,” Bjorn replied, setting his own bag down on the floor and sitting next to him. “The assurance that all of this was worth the great sacrifice of my mental health?”

  “Always such a bright spot on an otherwise gray day,” Pink replied.

  “Shut up,” Bjorn said, throwing another pillow at him. “Do you know what the itinerary is for today?”

  “Yes, it’s on my phone, hold on,” Pink said. He dug his phone out of his pocket, swiped his thumb over the screen and started to read aloud. “At four o’clock, there’s a social with the rest of the teams. Mandatory, so don’t think you can just stay here.”

  Bjorn groaned.

  “
There’s a party afterward,” Pink said. “Though I doubt it’ll go on for too long. We have to be up early tomorrow, because that’s when the competition starts. The group stages start tomorrow at (TIME), that’s all going to be televised. Then in a couple of weeks—”

  “The hard part,” Bjorn said.

  “Or the good part,” Pink replied. “Depending on how you look at it.”

  Bjorn nodded. “I can’t believe we got this far.”

  “I can,” Pink said. “We’ve been working really hard. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love you guys and everything, but I miss having my own apartment. The fact that I’ve had to share a house with you has been the worst part of all this.”

  Bjorn rolled his eyes, remembering all the times that he had had to tell Pink to put his dishes away or do his chores. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  “What are you going to do when we win?”

  Bjorn chuckled. Pink’s confidence, as admirable as it was, wasn’t catchy. There were so many hoops they still had to jump through. Bjorn would have been happy making it just past the qualifiers. “I’m going to get my own apartment,” he replied, knowing that he shouldn’t argue with Pink. “So that I don’t have to deal with your shit, either.”

  Pink laughed. “I don’t blame you,” he said. “Okay. Why don’t we have a nap and then go downstairs? We can socialize a bit with the other teams before we have to start, y’know, performing. I know we’re going to meet big teams, so we should probably get some beauty sleep before that happens.”

  “Because how well-rested we look will impress them,” Bjorn quipped.

  “Because it’ll threaten them,” Pink clarified. “Honestly, it’s like you never listen to me.”

  “I try my best,” Bjorn replied. He kicked off his shoes and lay down on the bed. “I’m going to have that nap. You can sleep on the pullout or—”

  “Yeah, as if I was going to let you kick me out,” Pink replied. “Scoot over. I’m sleeping right here.”

  Bjorn groaned, but he did as he was told. He fell asleep so quickly, he didn’t even have time to think about the fact that Pink was right there.

  Chapter Two

  Mickey downed a glass of water after taking the last of his painkillers. He had never liked crowds, and tournaments made him anxious and often gave him headaches, no matter how often he went. He had never expected to make professional gaming his career; it had kind of just fallen into his lap, the same way hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorships had. Growing up in the northeast of England, Mickey’s aspirations hadn’t been nearly as lofty. Like his brother, his plan was to work in a call center, maybe get a degree in history. Mickey liked history, and the pay bump would have been nice. Then he had met Synchronism when he was playing a game of World of Heroes. Synchronism had been good—at least, good enough that Mickey kept inviting him to play games with him, something that rarely happened with strangers. Then he had found out that Syn, whose real name was Johnny, lived in Durham. That was a short train ride from where Mickey lived with his parents.

  After they had met up, they had become close friends. They had also started recruiting people to their team. Syn was good at management, which was a blessing, because Mickey was only good at strategy. World of Heroes was a fairly new game to the world of professional e-sports, which was probably why they had been able to fly through the qualifiers and the semi-pro tournaments back home. The game was, in theory, easy. There were two towers, one on each side of the map, and each team, which consisted of four heroes, had to get to the other one first. It was a little like chess. Each hero had their own skills and drawbacks and Mickey had studied them until he could recite them in his sleep. Even then, Mickey knew that it was a matter of luck and not a matter of skill that his team had become the de facto one that everyone thought about when people talked about World of Heroes.

  His looks hadn’t hurt. He hadn’t believed it at first, until people that weren’t in the e-sports world were asking him to model watches and sweaters, and all sorts of stuff to which he never thought he would have had access. He had never considered himself good-looking, and it was a struggle to see it now, even as he appeared in tabloid spreads. He had been an overly tall, lanky kid, with pretty bad posture and even worse skin. Adolescence had been difficult for him, but the moment he turned nineteen, everything changed. It was, in no small part, due to the gym that opened near his house. He didn’t have a lot of friends in real life, and as much as he loved his parents, he didn’t want to see them all the time. His skin got clearer and clearer, leaving marks only behind his ears. His posture got better, and the moment that he became semi-professional, he started getting offers to be in catalogs and websites. He took them, at first thinking it was funny, then realizing that it made him a nice bit of money.

  Enough to keep the lights on when it came to the team, anyway. Before he knew it, there were sponsorships and a manager that wanted them to all live in a house down in London. Mickey had never lived outside of Newcastle, and living down south was not something that had ever crossed his mind. Then again, being in America when he was barely twenty-two, in line to earn a million dollars from playing a video game—that had never really crossed his mind, either. He had already earned enough from playing World of Heroes that he would never have to work again, not if he didn’t want to. But a million dollars was nothing to scoff at, and his team was counting on him. Plus, Mikey’s presence was emblematic. He was one of the first and most important figures in the e-sports world, and long after he retired, he was probably going to be called on as some sort of pundit.

  But he couldn’t think about that now. He threw the plastic cup into a bin along with the now empty bottle of painkillers.

  All he could think about was the fact that there was a huge crowd, and he would have to deal with all of them. He didn’t mind fans most of the time. The team needed them. The competition was also important, but he didn’t like dealing with them nearly as much. Other teams took the game far too seriously. Then again, other teams weren’t already financially secure because of World of Heroes. He pinched the bridge of his nose as he continued advancing through the crowd in the lobby, shaking hands with people he had already met once or twice.

  Each introduction or greeting took a few seconds. He didn’t stop until he saw a guy sitting there. He was surrounded by people Mickey had never seen. They were each wearing a hoodie with a green and black logo on the front, so they had to be a team that had newly qualified. His gaze glazed over everyone until it settled on one guy in the back, smiling at something on his phone. His hair was a light blond that went down to his shoulders, curling at the tip. His eyes were huge and light, also, framed by thick curly eyelashes.

  “Who is that?” Mickey whispered to Syn, who was standing next to him and doing his own greetings.

  “Who?”

  “That,” Mickey said, pointing at the guy who had just caught his attention. “The cute one. With the blond hair.”

  “Oh,” Syn replied. “The one next to the dude with the long black hair? That’s Allegiance. Good defense player, first time they’re here. He’s someone to watch out for.”

  “Yes,” Mickey said, cocking his head. “I can see that.”

  Chapter Three

  “Okay, but do we have to go?” Bjorn asked for what was probably the twentieth time.

  “Look,” Carl said. He was the only one in the team that insisted that they call him by his real name, probably because his username was that stupid. Nobody wanted to be addressed as Fork. It had almost stuck until he had freaked out, and they only used it to tease him now. Very rarely. Freaking out Carl wasn’t as fun as freaking out anyone else on the team. “You can either come with us, or you can stay here with this loser.”

  They all looked at Pink, whose forearm was over his eyes as he slept soundly.

  “This is important,” Carpenter said. “Seriously. We need to socialize with these people, we need to get to know them, y’know? Like if we’re going to come here next yea
r, an important part is networking.”

  “Ugh,” Bjorn replied. “Fine. But I will come back in, like, an hour or two.”

  “All you need to do is make an appearance,” Carl replied. “Look, you’re the prettiest one of all of us. You need to show up, okay? We’re supposed to be showing a united front or whatever.”

  Bjorn cocked his head and looked at a sleeping Pink. “What about him?”

  “We don’t want him to represent us,” Carpenter replied. “Do you?”

  Bjorn rolled his eyes, laughing and getting off the bed. “He’s going to get mad if we’re not here when he wakes up.”

  “Maybe, but he can just go downstairs,” Carl said. Pink could sleep through anything, but he was always cranky when he woke up. “Unless you want to wake him up.”

  “Nah, it’s cool,” Bjorn replied, shaking his head. “I think I’ll live. Okay, so if I go, it will only be for a little bit. Got it?”

  “Yes, yes,” Carpenter said. “We know you’re terrible at parties. Can we stop begging you now, though?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Bjorn replied. “Sorry. Just give me a minute.”

  He got off the bed and walked into the bathroom. He looked okay, and it wasn’t as though there were a lot of people to impress down there. All of the girls that were at the tournament were someone’s wife or girlfriend. But Bjorn liked pretty girls; in fact, they were his weakness. That was one of the reasons that he had been hesitant to go to this tournament in the first place. A party without girls, as far as he was concerned, wasn’t a party at all. He tousled his hair, watching his reflection in the mirror, then he straightened up.

  Maybe there were groupies there. He laughed at the thought of e-sports groupies before he walked out of the bathroom to join the rest of the guys.

  ***