Page 50 of ClickBack

I look at him. “I won’t.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

He holds my eyes until he believes me. Then the grin returns, and he sprays champagne down the front of my shirt.

“You couldn’t give me a second?”

“You had all game.”

He is laughing before I get the bottle turned toward him. Cole moves out of the way, too late to save himself, and somebody shoves goggles into my hand. I put them on. For once, I am happy to be another man in the room getting soaked while my brother celebrates.

Graves stays near the doorway until Mom calls his name from outside and tells him to stop standing there looking like he plans to write everybody up. Von hears her and goes after him. Graves gets one hand up, uselessly, and I laugh so hard I have to lean against the lockers.

Later, when I reach into my pocket, the lining is wet. My phone lights, shudders through a few streaks of color, and goes black.

I wipe it on the driest part of my shirt. Try it again. Nothing.

Graves sees what I am doing and holds out a towel.

“Power it off,” he says.

“It handled that.”

I dry it carefully anyway. The unfinished answer to Giselle bothers me more than the ruined phone. I was about to tell her something good. Now I am standing beside a locker with champagne in my shoes and no way to finish the sentence.

“Let me use yours.”

Graves unlocks his phone and hands it over. I open the keypad before remembering that I don’t know her number. She entered it herself Saturday. I have looked at her name since then, never the digits beneath it.

“Last name?” he asks.

“Dawkins.”

We search. There are names, pages, women I have never seen. Nothing I can confidently identify as hers. We never exchanged social accounts. I think about calling Replay and asking somebody to reach her through Rae’s party booking, then put that idea away. She gave me a way to contact her. Sending employees after her family’s information because I broke my phone feels like a poor substitute.

Cam says he will get a replacement arranged. Until then, he and Sterling can reach me through Graves. Mom is beside me. Von is across the room. The people who manage most of my life are suddenly easier to reach than the woman I wanted to tell about it.

At the hotel, I set the phone on a towel. I tell myself this is a problem that will be solved in the morning. Before I turn out the light, I pick it up one more time, looking for any sign that I can still get her number out of it.

The screen stays black.

Chapter 9

Jarrett

The replacement phone is waiting with the concierge when I get home. Graves hands me the envelope in the elevator and watches me open it. The screen fills with the messages I missed while everybody assured me my old phone would be working again soon.

Giselle’s is three days old.

“Call her,” he says.

“It’s almost midnight.”

“Then apologize before it becomes tomorrow.”

The doors open on my floor. I get out, and he keeps the elevator. For once, I have no objection to his last word.