I leaned my head against his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the steady rise and fall of his breath. The air between us felt charged, like the moment before a storm—expectant, waiting.
The tide rushed in, lapping at my toes, but I didn’t move. Neither did he.
I wanted to kiss him again. The thought had been creeping in all night, sneaking up on me like the tide inching closer to shore. But now that I was here, pressed against him, I was too afraid to move. Too afraid that if I did, I’d ruin whatever fragile, uncertain thing was forming between us.
Because this wasn’t just some fleeting, vacation-fling kind of attraction. It wasn’t just curiosity.
It was something I actually wanted.
And that terrified me more than anything.
The plane ride home was considerably more comfortable than the last. I didn’t need much to get comfortable, but Noah, the diva that he was, settled in much better this time.
We had a row of three seats to ourselves, and we settled our things, plus a variety of airport snacks, onto the seat between us.
The rest of the press trip had gone smoothly. Dinner, photos, and long, drawn-out goodbye speeches. This morning, we enjoyed one last breakfast as I lamented over not having a permanent butler to deliver me breakfast each morning.
My phone began to light up with notifications. Generally, I ignored them or kept my phone on silent, but I had already decided to pass the flight time by rotting my brain on social media sites.
“What is happening?” I muttered to myself as I unlocked the phone.
When I opened Instagram, it nearly combusted on itself. Truthfully, I was losing track of my follower count because it increased every time I opened the app. Since I wasn’t an influencer, I didn’t check my profile too often, but it was getting tempting to check frequently.
Now my follower count stood at 100,000. Crazy to think that just one week ago it was a fraction of this. The first surge was due to the viral video, but what led to it now?
“Noah,” I said and received a raised brow in response. “Did you just get a bunch of followers, too?”
“Not sure,” he said absentmindedly. “Too busy trying to understand why all my comments and DMs are asking why I’m not single any—oh.”
“Oh?”
He held up his phone in front of my face. My first thought was that he needed a new screen because his was cracked in the corner, but that was quickly overshadowed by the photo on the screen.
Us. Kissing. By the pool.
I was the one who instigated the kiss, but I didn’t expect Opal Serenity to post it to their feed so fast. Not when there were hundreds of other photos taken during the weekend that they could have posted instead.
The caption readThe resort pool provides the perfect ambiance for couples to relax together.Posted ten minutes ago.
My eye twitched. I slowly banged my head against the seat in front of me. “I wasn’t ready for this to happen yet.”
The middle-aged man in the seat turned around to glare at me. “Excuse me?—”
“Sir, I’m in the middle of a crisis,” I pleaded. “Please let me have this.”
He looked at me like I was crazy—maybe I was—but he turned back around.
And oh, poor Noah. He must be freaking out. Anonymous girls on Instagram were terrifying. If I had to choose between fighting an army of wrestlers or an army of anonymous Internet girls, I’d choose the wrestlers.
His whole brand centered on being the center of the female gaze. If everyone thought he was taken, that would ruin his image. Normal girlfriends probably weren’t okay with their boyfriend posting shirtless selfies for all the world to see.
I could fix this.
“Noah, I am so sorry,” I said once I had damaged my forehead enough from the banging.
His brow furrowed. “Why are you sorry?”
“I have a plan. When we get back to Chicago, you can announce our breakup. Tell the world you ended things with me. Then you can go back to being the single bad boy of Instagram, and maybe I’ll get some pity points out of it.”
