Andrews respected him, which said a lot. That woman had no problems with calling people out for their bullshit. Then there was Braden.
Something had happened in Denver. Dez wasn't sure what, but Braden no longer ranted about Psyc being a dick. His hatred had become respect. No, Dez wasn't going to ask, but she had a funny feeling it all revolved around a woman. Braden had caught the girl. Rhaven was living with him now, and it looked like they had no plans to change that. But wouldn't that make Braden dislike Psyc even more?
Yeah, Dez still didn't understand normal relationships. Hers was beyond fucked, but it worked for them. Chance said he'd been clean for years, but only in the literal sense. She knew he looked. Since she did too, she couldn't fault him for that. It was when he touched that things got a little blurry around the edges.
Because Chance still liked to touch. He pushed back hair, slid a hand around someone's waist, and other things. Dez was simultaneously jealous and not. She didn't think he'd leave her. She wasn't worried about him having sex with someone else or falling for them. Nope, the only part she was jealous about was that she could never be that casual about her contact. She'd tried. For so long, she'd tried to accept that it wasn't torture, and yet she still detested casual contact.
Chance understood. Instead, he made Rhaven blush, got Amy giggling, and played around with Sam - but he only did that with the Flawed team. And if he was really struggling, Braden stepped in. Watching her best friend flirt with her boyfriend? Yeah, that was not something Dez had ever expected to enjoy, but she kinda did. The real question would be how Rhaven handled it.
She should probably talk to the girl, explain that it was more a case of handling an addiction than anything else. Unfortunately, Dez didn't know how to bring it up. Just go up to her and say, "Hey, Rhaven, sometimes your boyfriend kisses mine, or pins him against a wall, or flirts with him so he doesn't slip up and fall back into his addiction." Nah, that wouldn't be weird at all. Especially not from the co-owner of the company.
So Dez decided that KoG was going to be her excuse for not dealing with it. Jason was so close to catching Soul_Reaper - and the man was clearly in a panic. That was why he'd been lashing out. After being careful for eight years, for him to make this many attacks - and mistakes - so close together? There had to be something happening on the back side.
And then Psyc began to tag comments. Just little moderator flags, but she could see them. Dez went to that sub-forum to see what he'd found, and her heart stopped. The first was someone challenging Soul_Reaper, saying their supposed leader never got his own hands dirty. That thread was vicious. Members ranted about the ones who'd been arrested, demanding to know if Soul_Reaper was so useless that he couldn't strike back on his own, and how they were the ones making a difference.
Another thread made it clear that the Kings of Gaming were starting to fall apart. That must be why Soul_Reaper was lashing out. His hold over these people was no longer total. The group had been created to attack women online. Revenge, it said, claiming that women were the ones doing the abuse, and they had a responsibility to stand up for themselves. Stupid rhetoric, but it landed with far too many young men. But while Soul_Reaper was trying to focus the hate against women in gaming, not everyone agreed.
There were sub-forums to request hits on a target. Ex-girlfriends were listed. Those would lead back to real people, so Dez noted them all, making a list that Jason could send to his supervisor. Others were smarter, listing only in-game or online handles, IP addresses, and such. Then there were the random hits. Far too many of those were marked as complete, and when Dez began to look, she felt her stomach turn in disgust.
Women assaulted in stores, punched in parking lots, hacked and their nudes leaked. Random women whose only crime was being female. Lesbians and trans women were listed far too often, as if this was some crime against these men. As if they honestly believed that the only reason women existed was for their pleasure!