Glitched Play by Kristin Lee

USA Today bestselling author Kristin Lee brings you her signature emotional romance about falling for the one person who already knows your heart—even when you’ve never seen their face.

Ten years of letters.

Two secret identities.

One love story waiting to be opened.

BLURB:

WITT
I built a billion-dollar gaming empire. Now I’m doing something no one has done before—turning e-football into a professional sports franchise.
Building the technology is easy.

Making people care? That’s the problem I can’t solve.

Then Maci Hart walks into my office with ideas for packed arenas, fierce rivalries, and fans invested in every win.

She’s exactly what I need.

Somehow, she becomes the first person in ten years who makes me stop thinking about the girl I’ve never seen. My anonymous gaming partner and pen pal who disappeared ninety-two days ago.
And somehow, Maci is making the silence she left behind a little less noticeable.

I hired her to make people care.

I never expected her to make me care.

And why does falling for her feel so damn familiar?

MACI
Third time’s a charm.
I finally landed my dream job, and my boss is Witt O’Ryan.

Billionaire gaming genius. Youngest member of a football dynasty. Brilliant, complicated, unintentionally funny—and somehow even harder to figure out than the games he creates.

Helping him turn e-football into the next must-watch sport should be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Except somewhere between working beside him, living under the same roof, and discovering the man behind the billionaire, Witt becomes something I never planned for.

He understands me in a way almost no one ever has.

And the closer we get, the harder it is to ignore the feeling that I’ve known this connection before.

I just never knew his name.

TROPES:

🎮E-Sports Billionaire
🏈Famous Football Family
💌Anonymous Pen Pals
🚫Hidden Identites
🩵He Falls First
🌞Quiet X Sunshine
🧩Neurodivergent Hero

EXCERPT

I should look away. Instead, I count.

Three shades of green.

Most people think eyes have one color. They don’t.

The outer edge of Maci’s irises is darker, almost forest green. Closer to her pupils, the color softens into moss, and when the outdoor lights catch them just right, tiny flecks of gold appear like someone dusted sunlight across the surface.

I’ve never noticed that before. Why? Because looking into someone’s eyes is uncomfortable, and painful. Yet, I can’t stop looking into hers.

My nerves prickle and my stomach does this weird flip flop thing.

With one of the balcony doors pushed open, I can still hear the faint sound of glasses clinking together. Somewhere behind me, someone laughs loud enough to turn heads, but not mine. For some reason I can’t stop looking into her eyes.

The band shifts into another song, and applause rises from the opposite side of the room where another adaptive gaming demonstration has just finished.

I hear all of it.

The conversations.
Shoes against polished marble.
Air conditioning.
Ice settling inside crystal glasses.

My brain catalogs every sound without permission.

Except now, there is only Maci.

She’s looking at me with the same expression I imagine I’m wearing.

Confused.
Curious.
Almost… hopeful.

Time behaves strangely. I know only a few seconds have passed because somewhere in the back of my mind, the analytical part of me is still counting. But those seconds stretch until they feel suspended, as if the rest of the ballroom has slowed to accommodate whatever is happening between us.

My chest tightens in a way I don’t have language for. I instinctively search for an explanation, the same way I would troubleshoot a line of code or diagnose a failing system, but there isn’t one. There are no variables to isolate. No formula to apply.

I’ve kissed women before. In college, because that’s what everyone else seemed to do. A few dates after Synatrix became successful, people suddenly became interested in the billionaire instead of the awkward guy who preferred gaming to parties.

Those kisses all shared one thing in common.
I never remembered their eyes. Never looked into them.
I remember restaurants. Conversations. Perfume. The expectation that I was supposed to enjoy myself. But I couldn’t tell you if a single one of them had blue eyes or brown.

Yet somehow, in less than a minute, I know Maci Hart’s eyes better than I know my own.
That realization settles over me.

Looking into her eyes isn’t leading to intimacy.
It is intimacy.