Chapter 46
Dear me/ journal/ god.
Loch Ness and I started working on our project today.
We sat down and she did the drawings for the design while I made the list of materials and we talked about what I was going to say to my dad when I met him.
She helped me not be so nervous because she said that he’s probably going to be so nervous too and since she was going to be there with us she could just talk about herself if it ever got awkward.
She loves talking about herself a lot so I know she will be able to do it.
We didn’t tell my mom or anyone else about why we were doing the project. I don’t want to get her hopes up in case our invention doesn’t work and Alice promised to keep it a secret too.
I don’t like keeping secrets very much but sometimes you don’t have a choice. I only have one other one, but it’s really really big and it’s about Alice.
I’ll tell her one day I think. When I’m older like Adrien and not afraid of anything anymore and also on my way to becoming a famous soccer player who also runs the biggest gaming company in the world.
Until then no one else can know what it is. Not even you.
Alice
One of them was lying.
Or, more plausibly, both of them were lying.
Using my arm as a machete, I slashed my way through the forest and toward the voices, running well ahead of Gampy and my parents.
“No” was the first thing I heard.
“Kill it, or I’ll kill you” was the second.
“Adrien,” I snarled, so distracted that I overshot my next slash and almost lost an eye when the stupid fucking tree branch—literal tree branch—whipped back in my face. “Touch him again and I’ll hand-feed you limb by limb to a fucking wood chipper, do you hear me?”
“Alice?”
I perked up, jiggling around the corner toward his voice like a magnet. “What happened? You okay?”
“Morning, Lice,” my dead-to-me brother said.
Dominic smiled as I cupped his face in my hands, scanning it for signs of a freshly forming bruise. “I’m fine. I told you nothing’s happened. See?”
Nope. Lying.
I whipped around to confront Adrien just as Mom, Dad, and Gampy finally made the trek to the living room. Maxwell took flight the second he saw Dominic, landing on his shoulder with a happy chirp.
Ria stepped in front of me before I could bite her husband’s head off.
“Morning, Alice. Coffee?” It was posed as a question, but she shoved it into my hands before I could decline, eyes wide. “You’ll thank me later.”
An agitated, foot-tapping Adrien chimed in next. “You want to tell her? Or should I?” he asked Dominic pointedly.
“Tell me what?”
“What is going on?” Mom asked breathlessly while my dad graciously accepted two fresh mugs from Ria.
Dominic sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “An article was posted on Gorilla about… Actually, here. Probably easier if you just see for yourself.”
I was passed a phone. Mom was provided with another. Frowning, I scrolled… and scrolled… and… “Wait, what is this?”
Adrien, while pacing, bit out an explanation that was so nonsensical, I had to ask him to repeat it three times.
“What do you mean he won’t kill it? What does that mean?”
My brother threw a hand up as if to exclaim exactly!
“Dom?”
“Did you read the comments?” he asked. “They were all on his side when I checked earlier. Some of them were even talking about his philanthropic work.”
This irritated Adrien to no end. “Dude, I swear to god I’ll punch you again.”
“Wait, hold on.” I gestured between the two of them, “I really want to make sure I’m understanding what’s going on. Adrien is pissed… because Dominic won’t kill a so-called story that essentially clears his name from all the bullshit rumors that were spread about him.”
“That about covers it,” Ria said.
I was so fucking confused.
“But… why?”
My question prompted Adrien to look at me like the biggest insult to his intelligence was the fact that he and I shared half our DNA. “The fuck do you mean ‘why?’ Did you read the article?”
I glanced down at the screen again. Then back up at my brother, his frothing mouth, and the three veins jutting out of his thick forehead.
“You’re worried about Dominic? You called a family emergency…
because you’re worried this will go viral and he’ll get a bunch of hate? ” Was I getting that right?
“To put it fucking mildly, yeah, Lice, I am.”
My jaw dropped.
Two people in this room were lying. But it sure as shit wasn’t these boneheads.
I quirked an eyebrow at Ria while my dumbass brother and sleepyhead boyfriend persisted through their adorable little standoff.
Ria drew a heart in the air with her index fingers, mouthing “they love each other” at me.
Meanwhile, Gampy had very inconspicuously seated himself as far away from her as humanly possible, using the opportunity to snag a smoked salmon and caviar blini from the small breakfast spread while no one was watching. I suppressed a smile.
“You’re smiling?”
I sucked in my cheeks. Shook my head. “Mm-mm.”
One of my brother’s protruding veins was threatening to burst. “Alice,” he warned.
“No, I know. Not funny. It’s just…” I held up his phone, trying to be sensitive and hold back the laughter bubbling in my chest. “While it’s very sweet that you care this much about what happens to Dominic… this isn’t real. Like the article itself is fake.”
Adrien blinked. Mom and Dad frowned up at me, then down at the screen they were sharing, and after a short, early-morning-induced processing delay, Dominic fished out his own phone and started tapping.
“What?” Adrien huffed skeptically, shifting his weight to his other foot. “How do you know?”
Dominic chucked his phone aside before I could answer my brother, threw his head back, and covered his face with an exasperated “fuck me.”
“The URL literally has the word blog in it if you tap it to expand,” I said. “It’s a private blog page designed to look like a Gorilla article. It even says it’s redirecting you to a different website when you click the Home button. Who even sent this to you?”
You could hear his neck creak as it slowly turned in the direction of the food-sneaking culprit.
“Oh, Dad,” my mother whined, choosing to ignore the damning crumbs peppered across his moustache.
My dad huffed an exhausted chuckle and fell back onto the nearest couch. Ria hid the lower half of her face inside her sweatshirt.
“Why is everyone looking at me?” Gampy complained. “How was I supposed to know it wasn’t real? I’m a hundred years old, practically on my deathbed, or have you all forgotten?”
Mom lightly smacked his arm with a throw pillow while Adrien shoved both hands into his hair, cursing the sky as he twisted on his heel.
“How did you even manage to do this?” Dad asked, ignoring Gampy’s excuse.
We all knew him far too well to believe it.
Gampy didn’t even blink. “Ria and Jamie helped.”
My brother’s head snapped in his wife’s direction. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
There was no bite to his tone anymore, though. And I swear his mouth was starting to twitch at the edges.
“I told you I ship it,” she said innocently.
He bit his lip, nodding as he eyed her. “Later,” he promised.
“Gross,” I complained as Gampy pleaded with the ceiling, claiming that he was, and I quote, “ready now.”
“Dominic, honey. You were really going to let the article publish?” Mom asked, her eyes glimmering suspiciously as she regarded him.
Color spilled over his cheeks. He glanced away and scratched at the back of his ear like he was feeling shy. Fucking adorable.
Mom pouted, throwing a pleading look at her son.
Adrien sighed, hands resting loosely on his waist as he considered her. Then, finally, finally, finally, he caved and gave his blessing via a defeated nod.
It was mayhem.
Mom teared up as she pulled Dominic into a hug. Dad patted Adrien on the back before joining in. Gampy smuggled two more pastries while everyone else was distracted, and by the time my parents finally let Dominic go, his were the only dry eyes in the room.
Even Adrien got emotional.
To his credit, he tried to keep it in. Cleared his throat, wiped at his nose, looked at anything and everything but Dominic.
Then he accidentally caught a glimpse of Ria, and because she’d turned him into the biggest fucking sap on the planet, he yanked Dominic into a giant bear hug and said, with so much love that it made my mother start to fully weep, “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that? ”
And boy, oh boy, did the two bozos live happily ever after.