America's Geekheart (Bro Code #2)(17)

“Relax,” Wyatt says. “We didn’t break Pac-Man.”

“Mom sent cinnamon rolls,” Ellie adds quickly, and dammit, they’re hiding something.

But cinnamon rolls are the magic words.

My mother makes the best cinnamon rolls on the entire planet. I’ve flown home overnight from Australia before just to be there when she pulled them out of the oven. When we were kids, everyone knew when she made cinnamon rolls, because you could smell them baking all the way down to the end of the street at the Wilsons’ house, and she always made enough to feed an army, because that’s how many kids would show up on the doorstep looking for Saturday morning cinnamon rolls.

But when I head for the kitchen, Ellie blocks me. “Tell me you’re not pulling the Hollywood fake relationship thing with my neighbor,” she says in that deadly tone of voice that suggests there’s one right answer and one wrong answer that will result in a titty twister to end all titty twisters.

But it still doesn’t stop me from fantasizing about Sarah, which I’ve been trying very hard not to do all morning.

Those eyes. Those intense, wary eyes. And don’t get me started on the curves hiding under her clothes.

She has me fascinated. Which is dangerous, because I know she has secrets.

“What? Fake relationship with Sarah? No. You know me better than that.”

She crosses her arms and demonstrates how much she’s learned about being a mom in the year since she and Wyatt started dating seriously.

Shit, she’s good at that don’t give me your bullshit glare.

“What?” I ask again.

“The apology video?” she prompts.

“She wanted to spread the word about giraffes. I wanted to apologize. Win-win.” And my growing belief that it was that simple, that she’s not interested in anything else, is both refreshing and frustrating, because I think I like her.

“Have you talked to your team this morning?” Ellie asks.

“Hey, nudie dude, your brains are here,” Davis calls.

“Was he always this not-funny?” I ask Ellie.

“Were you always this sensitive? That was hilarious. And I take it that’s a no to talking to your team yet.”

“It’s Sunday. I told them to take the day off.” Not that they listened, because we’re in crisis mode, but it was a nice dream.

“At this rate, I’ll take a Sunday off in three years,” Charlie says. She stops in the doorway too and looks me up and down, her no-bullshit meter also clearly pinging high today. “You’re not answering your phone.”

“You want one of my mom’s cinnamon rolls? They go great with bad news. Did I miss Vaughn?”

“No, and it’s not all bad news.”

That means it’s mostly bad news with a side of sunshine. “New plan. Cancel all my appearances for the next month, and I’ll go into hiding in Shipwreck while we tell people I’m in rehab.”

“Everyone who invited you to appearances for the next four months canceled them already. We’re at a point of having to make up an event for you to have an appearance at if you’re ever going to be seen in public again.”

“So…we just need to spread the rehab rumors?”

“It’s astonishing to me that you run a billion-dollar fashion empire with this kind of attitude,” Ellie says.

I grunt. It won’t be a billion-dollar fashion empire for long at this rate.

“He’s a lot smarter when we’re in Milan or Paris,” Charlie tells her. “Being home turns him into a teenager who just wants to play video games again.”

I’d argue that that’s not fair, except it’s true. “Home’s for kicking back and relaxing. I work four hundred eighty-seven days of the year, so when I get my twenty-six to relax, I relax. Work hard, play hard.”

“Until you fuck up hard,” Charlie points out.

“Video didn’t work?”

“Worked too well.”

Ellie glares harder.

Charlie gives me the you’re so screwed smile.

And I realize that whatever’s going on, cinnamon rolls won’t solve it.





Nine





Sarah



Mackenzie shows up shortly after noon with peace offerings in the form of caramel corn and takeout burgers. And because I would’ve posted the video by now myself anyway—maybe edited, maybe not—and I still haven’t told her the truth about where I grew up, I let her in and hug her tight.

“Why are there two black cars with scary looking men parked across the street?” she asks me.

“Security. In case I get doxed. Charlie set it up.”

“Doxed?”

“Doxed. When the crazies on the internet find someone’s address and post it so weird stalker people can come by to see if Beck Ryder’s really my boyfriend.” I roll my eyes like it’s no big deal, but the internet is a scary place with scary people sometimes.

Can’t deny that I was grateful to get Charlie’s message this morning that they’d put extra security in the neighborhood as a precaution.

Especially after I logged onto Twitter to see how bad it was when I got home a couple hours ago.

Currently fifty-fifty, with half the world wondering if Beck Ryder’s apology was sincere enough to result in me crushing on him, and the other half of the world in total chaos arguing still over whether Beck or I are the uglier, stupider, assholier, or more desperate of the pair of us.