The Route to You

1. Kyle

KYLE

“Your sister called.”

Kyle Winnick barely registered the voice of his producer and friend, Davy Mehta, from the other side of the trailer bathroom, where he balanced on one foot, trying to pluck the miniature cactus spines out of his heel with tweezers.

Perfect. One more thing to add to the résumé—amateur foot surgery.

He winced, dropped one spine into the sink, and pushed the door open. “Did you get the glue?”

Davy looked him up and down like she was assessing whether he could be safely transported without a stretcher. Then she handed over a bottle of white school glue. “We should pack it up and take you to the urgent care.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are. In the meantime, I’m going to have to write this up in a report for Antony, and he’ll insist you sign something saying you were offered—and declined—proper medical care.”

Kyle twisted off the orange cap. “This is urgent care. I learned this in Scouts.”

“You learned wilderness first aid in Scouts,” she corrected. “Not arts and crafts.”

He squeezed a generous amount of glue into his palm. “Same skill set. Different aisle at Walmart.”

“Great. I’ll just write in the incident report that you were offered professional medical attention and chose . . . Elmer’s.”

“Put it under alternative medicine .”

He examined the cactus spines. They were mostly just a pain in the ass—quite literally—rather than actually painful. Like a splinter. But he still had three more days of shooting left in the Mojave, and if he took off for an urgent care, it’d push them off schedule by at least a day.

A day he couldn’t afford.

He slathered a thin layer of glue on the spines in his foot, careful not to push them in any further.

Davy peered into the bathroom, then scrunched her nose. “Didn’t you land on that cactus on your arse?”

“Yes, but my feet were involved.”

“While wearing basketball shorts and flip-flops.”

Freaking moron. “Also yes.”

“I just want the record to show that nature tried to stop you, and you ran at it.”

He smirked. “You’re the one who wanted me to build my career on hold my beer. This is just brand consistency.”

“You know what? You do you. What you do with your glue is not in my pay grade.” Davy shook her head and turned away, hugging her clipboard to her chest.

“Hold on a sec.” Kyle lowered his foot from the sink, keeping it in the air so as not to bear weight on it. “Help me to the bed so I can put glue on my backside. I need gravity, dignity, and about five minutes bare-assed without interruption.”

“You lost dignity the moment you said glue .”

Together, they shuffled through the back hall, Kyle hopping. “So, which sister called?”

“No idea. Howard relayed it to Tomas, Tomas relayed it to me, and somewhere in that chain of command, the message lost every piece of relevant information. But apparently, it’s important.”

Kyle grimaced. “Great. That’s never a good sign. Could you find out more? I told my family I’d be out of cell phone service for a few days.”

“I’ll grab the Starlink phone from video village,” she said. “Anything else you need while I’m there?”

“Nah, I’m good. Tell Tomas he owes me, though. Possibly a whole new lower half.”

“You’re the ass who threw yourself at a football in a cactus field.”

“For the team.”

“For the highlight reel.”

Davy helped him onto the floral-print bedspread of the trailer he’d been calling home since the film crew had arrived at the desert five days ago. Seven days of intensive shoots exploring the best, unique locations in the Mojave for the show that had turned him into a YouTube star— Pathways.

“You’re lucky Antony didn’t insist on filming your DIY medical care. Your viewers would eat that up,” Davy said as Kyle settled onto his stomach, legs dangling off the bed.

“Don’t go putting any ideas in his head,” Kyle said.

“Oh, while I have you. I hate to bring it up again, but we need to talk about the Cabo shoot.”

Kyle groaned into the bedspread. “I already told you. My family is really upset about that. I can’t do it.”

“I get it,” Davy said gently. “I don’t want to do it either, and my family doesn’t even celebrate Christmas.

But it’s not Antony’s call anymore. The company’s change of hands messed everything up.

I’ll keep fighting it, but it’s their first big request under the new contract.

They’re not going to love you saying no. ”

Fucking contract. While Pathways had been in control of the Travelog Channel—a small UK-based firm that helped bankroll YouTubers like him—he’d had a lot more flexibility. But a major telecom company, Helixnet, had bought them out, and they had strict rules and an even more rigid contract.

And it wasn’t like he could afford to walk. People assumed he was rich because his face was everywhere lately. In reality, he was just very well-traveled and aggressively overworked.

He grimaced at her. “Can we talk about this when I don’t have cactus spines in my ass?”

She gave him a chagrined look. “Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to take advantage of your compromised state.” She took one step, then stopped and turned back with a devilish smile that made him immediately suspicious. “Actually, I changed my mind. I do have one more thing to ask you.”

A groan left his lips. “And what would that be?”

“I, uh—I need to borrow you. As a date. To a wedding.”

He raised a brow. “What about Amy? Doesn’t she want to go?”

Her fingertips twitched at her side. “My parents are going to be there.”

Ah. Got it. He wasn’t sure if Davy had even told her Indian parents about her girlfriend or whether they all knew and had just mutually agreed not to discuss it.

“It’s an old family friend from Connecticut, and I want to go see him, but I don’t want to spend the entire weekend fielding questions about when I’m getting married. So, I figured if I take you as my date, my parents won’t bring it up as much.”

“All right. I’m in.” He reached for the glue.

Her face lit up. “It’s in January, in Vail. You obviously don’t have to stay with me and really, feel free to do whatever you want while you’re there. As long as my parents see you at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding, they’ll be hap—”

“Davy?”

She gave him a questioning look.

“You have about ten seconds before I moon you and reconsider going.”

“Message received,” she said, backing toward the door. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Once she was gone and the trailer door had closed, Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose. One of the gaffers had tried using duct tape earlier—resulting in a leg waxing job he hadn’t consented to—but the little spines hadn’t wanted to budge.

Here goes nothing.

Kyle gritted his teeth, pushed his shorts down over his hips, then wiggled out of them. He’d known that flip-flops and shorts were a bad idea. Unfortunately, “bad idea” had basically been his brand the last three years.

Antony liked him to play up the goofy, not-too-bright Southern persona. The loose cannon. The guy who made bad choices so the audience could feel better about theirs. Not that he minded—he’d enjoyed the rush that came with dangerous decisions that also provided a paycheck.

His fans liked it, too.

So here he was, about to glue his own ass.

He was definitely a long way from that computer engineering degree he’d abandoned when this took off.

Sighing, he squirted glue onto his palm and spread it everywhere that still stung.

He finished with the glue, then examined his hand, which was already beginning to dry.

When he was younger, he’d spread the glue on his hand, then peel it off to try to horrify his older sisters into thinking he was peeling off a layer of skin.

They’d played along because they were both older than him, squealing and running away to satisfy him. Made him feel like a comedic genius.

God, he missed them both. Missed his nieces. His parents. Granny.

His schedule had been slammed this year, between filming for the show, accepting collaborations and guest spots on podcasts, and everything else.

He’d earned so many points for travel—more than he’d ever dreamed as a kid whose big vacation usually meant a once-a-year camping trip at the nearby state park.

Turns out, living out of a suitcase lost its charm somewhere around month nine.

His family had been more than a little annoyed with him because he’d missed so much the last year, too.

And when they’d found out that Helixnet had booked him for a Christmas in Cabo special right after this Mojave episode and he’d be missing the holiday this year, his sister Liddy had called him in tears.

He’d promised to get out of it somehow, but he probably wouldn’t. He’d moved three things already this year.

And he couldn’t make it up to his family, either. Not after missing Charlotte’s baptism and Granny’s big birthday bash already this year.

So maybe he deserved to be lying here on a trailer bed with glue slowly drying on his cactus-splintered ass cheek.

The trailer door creaked open.

Damn, that was fast. “Davy, you screwed me,” he called out. “You left the damn door to the bedroom open and I’m stuck like this.”

No answer. Just footsteps.

Then . . . laughter.

Scowling, Kyle swiveled his head to see a group of young women in the hallway, phones up, filming.

His stomach dropped.

“Oh shit. What the hell are you doing here?”

He grabbed the bedspread and flung it over his backside as they scattered, shrieking with laughter.

“Get the fuck out of here!”

He hobbled after them, dignity in critical condition. How in the hell had they found him here? He wasn’t that famous.

He reached for the door they’d left open, and his foot caught on the bedspread.

As his body tipped over, he still tried pulling his leg out, but it was hopelessly tangled. Gravity did the rest. He tumbled from the trailer, hands outstretched, but that didn’t keep him from face-planting in the rough sand.

He came up spitting, lips covered with fine grit, and vaguely aware of the cell phone cameras still pointed his way, even as the women kept running.

“Yeah, you’d better run,” he called out, annoyance thick in his voice. Maybe a younger version of him would have found the humor in this, but now he was bare-assed in the cold December desert sun, and his body smarted from the fall. Assholes.

Granny would find this whole scene hilarious when he relayed it to her next time they spoke—he could imagine her hearty chuckle. Thank God she’s not here to see this.

Elle had warned him about the price of fame.

His sister had spent several years being recognized as a country music artist before she’d been able to start to fade into normalcy again.

Fame had been brief and overwhelming to her, and she was grateful to be inching closer to a place where she could take her two daughters to the playground without being assaulted by cameras.

Kyle had only just started experiencing some of the discomfort that came with being recognized. And as he peeled himself from the desert sands, shivering, he finally got it.

He ripped the dried glue from his foot and sucked in a breath with a hiss, then examined the spine-covered glue. Well, at least it worked. Landing on the sand might not have helped with the spines on his backside, though.

Digging his toes into the sand, he stood and wrapped the comforter around him as the roar of an ATV approached. Davy. Her long black braid shone in the sun as she bounced toward him. She came to a stop a few feet away, a grim look on her face as she gave him a once-over.

“This is not where I left you.”

She hopped off the ATV and started toward him, cell phone in hand.

“Long story.” He nodded toward the phone. “You get my sister?”

Davy nodded and extended the phone toward him. “She’s on mute.”

Kyle took it and pressed the mute button, squinting as he looked back toward the trailer. Sunlight bounced off it, blinding him. “Hey . . . which of my darling sisters is trying to reach me in the middle of nowhere?”

A sniff came through the other side, grounding him. “Kyle, it’s Elle.” Her voice sounded thin and tired.

Sad.

He stiffened. “Elle, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Gran.” Elle cleared her throat, her voice sounding more distant by the second. “She’s . . . she’s gone.”