Chapter 7
NOAH
It occurred to me after the team manager left that I had no idea where the practice room was that I was meeting Minho in. Eventually—after several minutes of searching and opening doors—I gave up and returned to the kitchen to seek help.
Ace was still there, sitting at the island with Zeth and Xavier, and hopped up quickly to show me the way. Thank fuck, too, because I’d have never found it on my own.
“The house originally had a shitload of guest rooms and useless spaces like formal dining,” Ace explained as he led the way upstairs, “but we hated having to drive everywhere for practice, rehearsal, filming…so we converted some spaces. Here.” He opened the double doors at the end of the first-floor hallway, where I’d assumed the master suite was located.
Instead, he revealed a dance studio, complete with a fully mirrored wall and hardwood floor.
Minho was already there, sitting on the floor and stretching his hamstrings by grabbing his own toes.
In two corners of the room, tripods were set up with cameras, but none of the producers or staff were anywhere to be seen.
“That was quick,” Minho commented, looking up at me as we approached. “Did you call him a dick to his face or hold back?”
Ace’s brows shot up, and he gave me a puzzled look. “Was that an option?”
I bit back a smile. “It’s always an option. Your lovely manager was just offering some words of encouragement. Also, apparently fans think we’re cute together.” I met Minho’s gaze as I said that and tried really hard not to react when he grinned.
“Nice.” He extended a hand for me to high-five and I obliged, the smack of our palms echoing through the room. “It’s because we’re both pretty as fuck, dude.”
I snickered, unable to help myself while Ace grumbled something under his breath about fan service.
“Ace is just salty because if he gave the Acolytes what they actually wanted in their fan service, he’d be shifting his platform to CB Adults,” Minho teased, shooting Ace a smirk before turning his attention back to me.
“Fan service is basically giving the fans what they want. It’s playing into their rumors and speculations, most of which are wildly inaccurate and almost always involve sex, secret relationships, or kink in some way. ”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m well aware what it is and that Team Olympus is basically built off of it with all the casual nudity and flirty camerawork.”
“Shirtless isn’t nude,” Ace corrected, seeming unbothered by my judgmental tone. “We’re very good at following the terms and conditions of the platform.”
Minho gave me a curious look, then pushed up off the ground and pulled his phone from his pocket. He hummed under his breath while scrolling a folder of what looked like sound samples, all thirty seconds each. Perfect ClikByte short-form length.
“Okay, hmm, let me find something with easy choreography,” he murmured, searching the options he’d saved.
Ace moved to peer at his screen, and the two of them pondered a couple of possibilities while I twiddled my thumbs and looked around the room.
The cameras on the tripods weren’t turned on, and my shoulders relaxed dramatically with that realization.
Sure, they’d have to film eventually, but maybe my awkward learning phase—where I tried to act like I didn’t know what I was doing—could be kept private.
Eventually the guys decided on a clip, and Minho plugged his phone into the sound system to play the thirty-second trending sound.
“I’m guessing your algorithm has you on a different side of ClikByte from me,” Minho said with a lazy smile, his head bopping lightly with the tune. “So you probably don’t watch a lot of these.”
I shrugged, not wanting to make things too hard. “You might be surprised.”
“Okay, sick. You staying, Ace?” Minho stretched his shoulders as he shot the question to our white-haired team leader.
Ace cast a curious look my way, then nodded. “Yeah, I’ll stay. Noah can’t possibly be worse at these dance challenges than me, so it’ll make him look better by comparison.”
Minho rolled his eyes, and I scoffed. Maybe they weren’t constantly flooding my scroll, but I’d dedicated a shitload of time into researching the whole team.
Sure, Ace wasn’t a natural talent with dance like Minho was…
but he was no bumbling fool, either. And what he lacked in skill he made up for with sex appeal by filming nine out of ten Bytes shirtless.
“All right, let’s do this. We can do a few practice runs before turning the cameras on.” Minho clapped me on the shoulder and gave an encouraging squeeze before moving over to the mirror wall to run through the admittedly very simple dance sequence.
The second he started patiently teaching the kind of choreography I could have learned as a six-year-old, I lost the ability to fake it.
When he gestured for me to follow the steps he’d just demonstrated, I executed the full thirty-second sequence with confidence and grinned at the expression on both their faces.
Then instantly regretted it when Minho’s eyes narrowed with suspicion and zeroed in on my feet. I wore the men’s sneakers that had been added into my boy wardrobe so he couldn’t see anything damning, right?
“You could have said you knew how to dance sooner,” Ace grumbled, raking his fingers through his hair. “Maybe I don’t wanna join you two after all.”
“No take backs,” I replied with a laugh, actually enjoying myself again, just like I had in the morning with Skye on the trampoline, before Roy showed up. “And I could have, yes, but did you ever ask?”
Ace pursed his lips and nodded. “You have a good point, Eight. We made assumptions.”
Minho was still squinting at me with curiosity, so I quickly scrambled for a plausible explanation.
“My sister was a competitive dancer,” I lied with a lopsided shrug, “but she also used to have really bad stage fright and anxiety, so I would practice with her for all the competitions and shit. I guess I picked up a few things along the way.” Which was true…
if Miles and I swapped positions. He actually had done that for me when we were little.
Until I grew into my own confidence and he hit puberty—it was too embarrassing to do jazz and ballet with his baby sister.
“Huh, that’s kind of adorable,” Minho murmured, nodding. “What’s her name?”
“Her name?” I repeated, briefly confused. “Oh, my sister. Millie.”
“Careful,” Ace warned with a smirk. “Minho can’t be trusted around sisters. You should have seen the fight when Xavier caught him flirting with his sister, Rachel.”
Minho threw his hands in the air with frustration. “I didn’t know she was his sister, and she lied about her age! Fuck, you guys will never let me live that one down.”
He grimaced in my direction. “Mistakes were made. I definitely deserved that black eye.”
I laughed, but at the same time my stomach was all in knots again.
Right when I’d halfway convinced myself that maybe he wasn’t into girls…
Wait—was that a good thing or a bad thing, while I was pretending to be a guy?
Fuck, I was confusing myself now. Then again, that reminded me of the whole scandal that saw Minho removed from his K-pop group after fucking the daughter of his record company’s CEO on live stream. Whoops.
As it turned out, Ace was more than an okay dancer himself. Even when they turned the cameras on to film our content, it wasn’t awkward and uncomfortable like Roy had made it earlier. It was just fun, something I never expected to have while being blackmailed onto this team.
In the end we filmed four different trending dance challenges and saved a whole stack of blooper reels, too.
Minho earned my trust in deleting the clip where I gasped and stared open-mouthed as Ace took his shirt off, but when I commented on his dirty delete, he looped an arm around my waist and joked that it would ruin our blossoming romance if I was gaping at Ace.
Fucking hell. Yes, I knew he was joking. Yes, I knew he was referring to Mr. Leight’s dumb fucking suggestion about us leaning into the fan service. Yes, I knew he didn’t actually think I was drooling over Ace’s incredible body—even if I was. But…it still got me all fluttery.
When we left the dance studio, I headed straight back to my shared room with Skye and locked the bathroom door securely behind myself.
I needed to shower, badly. Actually, what I needed was a nice long shower with my waterproof, battery-operated boyfriend, but my stupid, paranoid ass hadn’t even packed it.
Because how the fuck would I explain that if it was found?
Besides, I was way too anxious about being caught naked, let alone being caught flicking the lady-bean. Even if I’d been desperate enough to try it, the anxiety would never let me finish.
“This is fucked,” I whispered to my foggy reflection after getting out.
I stared at my blurred outline for a minute, trying to picture what the guys saw when they looked at me.
Whether they genuinely believed Noah was a dude…
and what they’d say if they ever found out.
Fuck. That thought hit me like a gut punch.
Somehow, I seriously doubt they’d be amused.
With that sour feeling riding in my chest, I quickly dressed in clean clothes—binder included—and rolled up my sweaty, dirty stuff to place in my hamper.
I’d do my own washing, to save any uncomfortable questions, but it’d have to wait until I had a full load or I’d be spending half my life in the laundry room.
Once that was done, I grabbed my phone from beside my bed, where I’d left it charging the night before. Skye had hurried me out of bed when I was half-asleep, and I hadn’t thought of it since. It wasn’t like I had any friends to text; Rich made damn sure of that a long time ago.
When I saw the list of missed calls and messages, I nearly turned the damn thing off.
As if sensing my thoughts, it lit up in my hand with an incoming call.
Miles.
“Crap,” I muttered, then drew a deep breath and answered. Because he was my brother, and I couldn’t avoid him forever. “Hey…you.” My paranoia that someone might hear me prevented me from saying his name out loud.
“Hey you? That’s all you have to say? Noah, what the fuck are you doing?
” My brother yelled down the phone so hard I flinched and moved it away from my ear.
Come to think of it, I needed to change his contact info in my phone, too.
His voice continued berating me from the speaker as I edited his contact to Millie.
“…don’t understand what you’re doing!” Miles was saying when I put the phone back to my ear.
I sighed heavily, not caring that he could hear me. “You don’t need to understand. Last I checked, I’m an adult, capable of making my own choices…both personal and professional. Clik Games is just good business, and you know it.”
“Oh, cut the crap, Noah. You’ve never given two fucks about the Games before. And Team Olympus? Are you on drugs?” He meant it as a figure of speech, but it still felt like a slap.
“That’s rich, coming from you,” I snapped before I could bite my tongue. His instant silence made me wince, and guilt damn near choked me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. How are you doing, anyway? How’s rehab?”
Miles gave a frustrated sound followed by a weak laugh. “Shut the fuck up. You’re such a brat, you know?” It was said with love, though, no malice or hatred. “Are you doing this because of me, Noah? Because I can’t—”
“No,” I quickly cut him off, lying my ass off.
“It’s just a good opportunity, and honestly, I need the distraction right now.
I need this…disguise.” Okay, that part wasn’t a lie.
I bit my lip, fighting back the urge to start crying.
I’d held it together for so long after finding out that Rich had been uploading sex tapes of me all over the internet, but fuck, it was hard. I was exhausted.
Miles was quiet for a moment, understanding me perfectly, just as he always had. “I’m so sorry, Sparkles. If I’d known…” He blew out a long, agitated breath.
“You’d have probably pushed him off that construction site yourself,” I half joked, swallowing back my tears, “and then you’d be on trial for murder, and we’d be a whole lot worse off right now. It’s fine. I handled it. And now I’m moving on.”
“With Ace and Xavier…” he said with clear disgust. “Noah, you can’t trust them. They’re not good people.”
I bit my lip, glancing at the bedroom door, which remained firmly closed. “I think maybe you’re wrong about that, Miles. But if you’re right, I guess I’ll have to find out for myself. I’ve got to go, tell Mom I love her.”
“Noah,” he groaned. “You’re such a stubborn shit. Just be safe, okay? And fucking hell, don’t let the fans find out you’re a girl.”
I chuckled. “I won’t. Make sure no one else outs me, okay?”
He grumpily agreed, then I ended the call and tucked my phone into my pocket.
Weirdly, speaking to Miles had given me a level of clarity I hadn’t known I even needed.
Blackmail might have been what pushed me into this team, but ultimately they were exactly what I needed right now: a fresh start as someone new. Not Norah, not Peaches…just me. Noah.