“Already did,” she says, still smirking. “It’s gorgeous. It’s hot. It’s intimate without being bare. It’s everything I wanted. But also…” She tilts her head. “You good?”
The question hits me harder than all the teasing.
I swallow. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Good. Call me if you start spiraling over Mr. Ferris Wheel.”
“I’m not spiraling.”
She raises her brows like she’s already planning the group chat announcement for my funeral.
“Goodnight, Covie.”
She hangs up before I can argue.
Silence floods the room.
I sit up slowly, hugging my knees to my chest, staring at the paused frame of Everest’s face still glowing on my laptop. He looks so open, so earnest, so… not part of my world.
And yet he stepped into it like he belonged there.
I close the laptop, but his expression stays burned behind my eyelids.
For the next hour, I pace. I clean my makeup brushes. I open my phone, stare at Everest’s message, close it again. I make tea. I forget about it. I reheat it. I spill half of it on myself.
Every time I try to breathe, the same thought drags across my mind like a nail:
What if I tell Lorna I can’t post it? That I’m backing out of the calendar?
The idea should horrify me, feel like career suicide. Instead, it feels… right.
I picture the video going live—thousands of subscribers watching Everest touch me, kiss me, whisper my name like it belongs to him. I imagine comments dissecting his body, his face, the way he moans. I imagine fans thirsting over him.
And something inside me snaps tight.
I don’t want them seeing him like that. I don't want them claiming pieces of what happened in that gondola.
Something about it feels too raw, too private, too ours.
God. Ours.
I sink onto my bed, bury my face in my hands, and force myself to breathe.
“It’s not about him,” I tell the empty room. “It’s about privacy, safety, and professional boundaries.”
That’s a lie.
I want to protect him, yes. But mostly? I want to keep that version of Everest for myself.
The one who looked at me like a real person. Not a fantasy, or a screen.
Tonight, watching the footage, I wasn’t CottonCandyKisses. I was Cove and Cove is the one he kissed.
I flop backward on the bed, staring at the ceiling, my stomach flipping like I’m still in that Ferris wheel gondola.
I reach for my phone slowly. My fingers hover over the keyboard. I write something sweet. Delete it. Try for something sexy. Delete that too. Finally, I type:
Cove: The boss lady approved it. So it will go live by the end of the month.
