His Online Lover by Tessa Kelwyn
His Online Lover
Description
Gordon Hayes has been in love with his best friend for three years. Three years of gym sessions, shoulder slaps, and watching Simon chase women who aren't him. Simon is straight. Aggressively, obliviously, painfully straight. And Gordon has never told anyone he's gay. Then Simon won't shut up about a girl he met in a VR game-full neural immersion, every sensation real. She's funny, fearless, and gets him like nobody else. He's falling hard. The girl is Gordon. Behind a female avatar, Gordon finally has everything he wanted: Simon's attention, Simon's vulnerability, Simon's heart. The only cost is that none of it belongs to the man Simon actually knows. But full immersion means full sensation, and when Simon starts pushing for more-private servers, no restrictions, a relationship that feels realer than anything Gordon's experienced-the line between fantasy and deception begins to blur. Then the game stops letting them leave. Trapped in a deadly tournament with no logout and only one way out, Gordon must fight beside the man he's deceiving-knowing that survival means facing a truth that could destroy them both. In the real world, he was invisible. In here, he's everything Simon wants. But every lie has an expiration date.
Chapter 1
Apr 2, 2026
Gordon’s POV
The bench press is where I lose myself every time.
Simon lies back on the padded surface, wrapping his fingers around the bar with that easy confidence he brings to everything.
I position myself behind him, hands hovering beneath the weight, ready to spot. This is the deal we've had for three years now—five days a week, ninety minutes of what he calls "bro time" and what I call exquisite self-inflicted torture.
"You ready?" I ask, keeping my voice flat.
"Born ready." He grins up at me, and I hate how that stupid phrase still makes something twist in my chest. "Let's go heavy today. I'm feeling it."
He pushes the bar up, and I watch—I always watch. The flex of his shoulders under strain, the way the muscle fibers shift beneath sun-darkened skin.
His shirt rides up on the third rep, just a strip of stomach, a trail of hair disappearing into his waistband, and I catalog it like I catalog everything else. Filed away in the archive I keep and hate myself for keeping.
"Slower on the descent," I say, because coaching him is the only safe place for my voice to go. "You're rushing."
"Yeah, yeah." He controls the next rep, arms trembling slightly at the bottom of the movement. "Better?"
"Better."
His cologne mixes with fresh sweat in the space between us, and I breathe it in without meaning to. I've memorized the scent by now. Could probably identify it blindfolded in a room full of strangers. That knowledge sits in my gut like a stone I can't digest.
Eight more reps. I count each one, a meditation exercise in not looking at the way his chest expands with effort, the slight grunt he makes when the weight gets heavy. When he racks the bar, he sits up and shakes out his arms, grinning.
"Your turn, lightweight."
We swap places. His hands hover beneath my bar, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his palms. I push through my set with mechanical precision, focusing on the burn in my muscles rather than his proximity.
It's easier when I'm the one working. Gives me somewhere to put the tension.
"Nice form," he says when I finish. "You've been putting on a definition, man. Another few months and you might actually look like you lift."
"Wow. Thanks for that."
"I'm serious!" He laughs, clapping my shoulder as I sit up. The touch lingers a half-second longer than necessary. It always does with Simon—he's tactile like breathing, casual contact woven into every interaction. He has no idea what it does to me. "You're getting there. Slow and steady, right?"
"Right."
We move through the rest of our workout in a familiar rhythm. Shoulder press, cable rows, tricep pulldowns. Between sets, Simon fills silence like it's his job—work gossip, a new protein powder he's trying, some guy at the front desk who gave him an attitude about his membership card.
I respond in the right places, laugh when I'm supposed to, maintain the performance that's become second nature.
Then he nudges my arm. "Hey. Two o'clock. Check it out."
I follow his gaze across the weight floor to where a woman is doing hip thrusts. Blond ponytail, athletic build, shorts that leave little to imagination. She's focused on her form, completely unaware of Simon's attention.
"You know what they call that exercise?" He waits for a beat, grinning. "The bun-maker. Because she's clearly a baker." He gestures at her glutes. "Those are professional-grade buns. Award-winning. I'm talking about the blue ribbon at the county fair."
The joke is terrible, genuinely awful. He's looking at me with that eager, expectant expression, waiting for approval like a golden retriever who's just fetched a stick.
I force my mouth into the appropriate smirk. "She's hot. You should go talk to her."
"Nah." He shrugs, turning back to the cable machine. "Not my type. Too..."
"Too what?"
"I don't know. Too obvious, I guess? Like, she knows she's attractive. You can tell."
He adjusts the weight stack, considering.
"I like someone more... confident in a different way. Athletic, sure, but not just about the body. Someone who can keep up with me mentally, you know? Who gets my jokes even when they're bad. Especially when they're bad."
He's describing me. He's describing exactly me, and he has no idea, and the irony sits in my chest like a stone I can't swallow around.
"Sounds like a specific type," I manage.
"Maybe." He starts his set, and I spot him more out of habit than necessity. "Speaking of which—have you ever tried that VR game I told you about? NeuralScape?"
"I've been playing." The words come out carefully neutral. "It's intense. The full immersion thing is pretty wild."
"Right?" His eyes light up, and he racks the weight early just to talk about it. "Dude, the sensation feedback is insane. I did a combat match last week and I could feel my heart actually racing. Like, my real heart. The tech is next-level."
He pauses, and something shifts in his expression. Something I've never seen before. "I've been playing with this girl. Kira."
"Yeah, you mentioned her."
"We've been running 2v2 matches together for a few weeks now. She's..." He stops, looks away. And then Simon Hale—loudest person in any room, immune to embarrassment, shameless about everything—actually blushes.
The color creeps up his neck and spreads across his cheekbones, and I stare at it like I'm watching a miracle.
"She's what?" I prompt, voice carefully steady.
"She gets me. Like nobody else, man. We'll be in the middle of a match, total chaos happening, and she just knows what I'm going to do before I do it. We don't even have to talk sometimes. And when we do talk..."
He shakes his head, smiling at something I can't see.
"She makes me feel like I'm actually interesting. Not just fun or whatever. Actually interesting."
The tenderness in his voice is a knife sliding between my ribs. I've known Simon for three years. I've seen him date, flirt, charm his way through countless women. I've never heard him sound like this. Not once.
"Sounds serious," I say.
"I don't know what it is." He catches himself, straightens, and the blush fades as he claps my shoulder again. "But hey, you're still my best bro. You know that, right? Nothing changes that."
The reassurance is meant to comfort me. Instead, it cuts deeper than any rejection could.
"I know," I say. "Same."
We finish the workout. We part in the parking lot with the usual fist bump, the usual "see you tomorrow," the usual casual ease that costs me everything and costs him nothing. I watch his truck pull away before I let my face fall.
The drive home is silent. My apartment is silent. The rooms reflect nothing of who I am—beige walls, minimal furniture, a space designed to be invisible.
I shower without feeling the water. I eat without tasting the food. I move through the motions of being alive until I reach the one room where I'm allowed to actually exist.
The gaming room is small and dark, blackout curtains sealing away the outside world. I sit in the haptic chair, pull on the neural gloves, and lift the headset from its charging dock. The weight of it is familiar now—comforting in a way I don't want to examine too closely.
I put it on. The darkness dissolves into light, into code, into a new world rendering itself around me. And when I look in the virtual mirror, Gordon is gone.
Kira looks back at me instead. Dark hair, sharp features, confident posture. Everything I bury in daylight, standing in plain sight. She smiles, and I feel my real mouth curve with her.
A notification pulses in my peripheral vision. Message from SimonTheGreat:
Hey. You free? Want to run some matches?
My finger hovers over the accept button. I know I should stop this. I know where it's heading, know the lie will eventually collapse, know I'm building something beautiful on a foundation of sand.
I accept the invite anyway.
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His Online Lover
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