For The Win (Gamer Girls, #6) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,119

words hurt.

All this time, she'd tried to tell herself that sticks and stones broke bones, but words couldn't actually hurt her, and yet every day she realized that was a lie. Bruises healed. Breaks mended. Cuts could be sewn up. Words, though? They tore out tiny pieces of a person's soul. A little confidence here, a bit of trust there, and it all added up to change her.

But so did Braden's encouragement. So did Psyc's kiss. So did Riley's respect and Knock's friendship. Everyone at the table gave her a little something to patch the holes that had been cut from her soul, and they filled them with a little light. Her lips curled into a smile, but across from her, Cynister leaned closer.

"She's watching out for you, you know. Dez? She said she's not going to let anyone break you."

Rhaven looked up to meet his strange eyes. For a moment she paused, because they no longer looked frozen. Cold, sure, but Cynister had been wearing a smile more than the scowl she was used to seeing on him.

"I kinda get the impression she's not the only one," Rhaven told him.

He smiled. Not a forced smile, or a weak one. The man simply smiled and looked back to his screen. "Nope. Teamwork is overpowered. It's how we all get what we want." And his eyes jumped over to the woman beside him.

Zara was leaned back in her chair, clearly out of the tournament, but she heard. "Focus, Cyn. Momma needs a new pair of shoes."

"Or a honeymoon," Cyn teased. "Pizza delivery doesn't really pay enough for more than some horse ranch in Texas."

And then the game began loading. Rhaven wasn't ready. She'd been watching Cyn, so the screen change caught her by surprise. With a gasp, she grabbed her keyboard and mouse, clicking to get the loadout she wanted. Once that was safe, she pulled on her headphones and adjusted the volume just as the game released her into the world.

Grey skies hung overhead. Razor wire lay on the ground in lines of coils. Dust and smoke billowed up, but Rhaven's character was in some kind of hole. Considering that this whole tournament had a World War II theme, she was willing to bet this was either a foxhole or a trench. So, slowly and carefully, she made her way to the lip at the edge of the wall and peeked over.

Sure enough, the view before her looked like scorched earth. Bodies lay torn and broken across the landscape. Not player's bodies, but virtual elements built into the world to add ambiance. A haze hung along the ground, no more than knee high, so it wouldn't do much to obscure a person, but it did make her second-guess whether or not the lumps in the distance were other players' heads looking around like she was, or if those were rocks or something.

Then someone got brave and jumped out of their trench. Immediately, muzzles flashed on the other side of the map, at least three of them right in Rhaven's line of sight, and the player dropped. Yep, this was going to be brutal. Leaving a trench was a death sentence. Not leaving one meant that no one would get killed off. So what was the answer? Each of these maps had required the players to think just as hard as they played, so what was the trick for this one?

Crouching back down to keep her head out of view, it hit her like a ton of bricks. Jumping and crouching were the most commonly used stances, but not the only ones. Kneeling was possible. So was lying prone! In the safety of her trench, Rhaven quickly opened up her settings, found the option for prone, and bound it to the caps lock key.

If she was wrong, she'd be out before the final round and might as well kiss her contracts goodbye. If she was right, though? Her entire goal was to get noticed. She wasn't even picky about who wanted her to represent their product. She needed the paycheck so she could start over. They wanted a gamer who could gain some respect.

So, hopping out of the hole, she hit the key to go prone, and landed right in the fog. From there, she had to crawl to move anywhere, and it certainly reduced her movement speed, but it seemed she was on the right path. Those rolls of razor wire were set just high enough for her to crawl