Chapter 20
NOAH
The actual rage that filled my body while arguing with Xavier was shocking even to me.
It was suffocating, choking me to the point I thought I was actually going to pass out if I didn’t get the fuck away from him and his stupidly inflated ego.
Otherwise, I was in serious danger of stabbing him straight in the sexy hazel eyes with a kitchen knife.
“Hey, Noah,” Skye called out, running up the stairs to catch up as I stormed back to our room in a blind rage. “Are you okay?”
I clenched my jaw and said nothing until we were back inside the safety of our bedroom with the door shut. “Can you fucking believe I used to have a massive crush on that absolute slug of a human being? What the fuck was I thinking?”
Skye blinked at me a couple times, not at all following my train of thought. Which, fair, he wasn’t a mind reader. “Seriously? Huh…I sort of thought you were into Minnie or Z. I never would have picked—”
“Not recently! Ugh, I meant ages ago. When I was like seventeen or eighteen. Not now. Jesus, Skye, keep up.” I grinned, seeing the funny side of this whole mess already. Then I realized what he’d said. “Wait, why would you think I was into Z?”
Skye shrugged. “You legit turn pink anytime he touches you, and the other day when he was drawing on your arm, you asked if anyone was hippopotamus.” He stared at me with a pointed look. “You meant hungry. You wanted to know if anyone was hungry.”
My jaw dropped. “I didn’t even notice that.” But I did remember him drawing little flowers over the palm of my hand while we were watching Torin and August play Street Fighter on the living room TV.
Skye grinned. “I notice you didn’t deny the allegation about Minnie, though. Interesting. Very interesting.”
My face heated and I turned away before I could incriminate myself further, making myself very busy searching for clothes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grumbled, pulling out my outfit choices.
“But seeing as Xavier ruined my chances of coffee this morning, I need to go out and get some. You coming?”
“Coffee? Or bubble tea?” He was the one who’d introduced me to bubble tea in the first fucking place, so it was a genuine question.
I frowned, thinking. “Both? Can we get both?”
“Sold. Give me five minutes to get dressed. Do you wanna ask Ace to drive?”
“Why? He doesn’t even like the sweet bubble tea. He gets that low-sugar crap.” I wrinkled my nose in disgust and Skye laughed.
“Yeah, but neither of us can drive, and I don’t wanna wait for the driver because he’ll be ages at this time of day.”
He had a valid point. Skye and I had both realized about a week after I joined the team that neither of us had actually learned to drive well enough to take our license test. And now, with drivers taking us to all the places for official events, it just didn’t seem important.
Skye disappeared into the bathroom, so I quickly got dressed and hauled ass down the hallway to check if Ace was up—ideally before Xavier came back upstairs and reignited our argument all over again.
There was no response when I knocked on their door, though, so I tried Ace’s office next. Initially, I thought he wasn’t in there either—since his desk chair was empty—but right as I was closing the door I noticed a human-sized lump on the sofa. Was he sleeping? Crap, I shouldn’t wake him.
“I’m awake,” he mumbled before I could sneak out fully.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I whispered, wincing. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” he replied in a voice that definitely sounded sleepy. “What’s up? Who was fighting?”
I bit my lip, moving closer to sit on his office chair. “Uh, that was me and Xavier. I was coming to see if you wanted to get coffee and bubble tea with me and Skye, but I can ask one of the other guys. You go back to sleep, Boss Man.”
Ace gave a husky chuckle, pushing himself to sit up. “Coffee and bubble tea? Both?”
“Yes,” I replied with a playful smile. “Both, please. I want to try more bubble tea flavors, but I also need coffee because Xavier broke our coffeepot before I got any.”
Ace groaned, scrubbing his hands over his face and hair. “Fucking Xavier,” he mumbled. “Okay, give me a minute and I’ll take you guys out. Maybe later we can do some driving lessons.”
I hummed a noncommittal sound, because it wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned teaching me and Skye how to drive, but neither of us were particularly motivated.
Leaving him to wake up, I returned to my room to tell Skye, then headed downstairs.
A cautious look into the kitchen told me Xavier was nowhere to be seen, so I let out a breath of relief as I continued through to the garage.
Ace’s car was a BMW M3, and I slipped in the back, leaving the front passenger seat for Skye when he came down a minute later.
“What if we can get iced coffee with boba in it?” Skye pondered as he buckled himself in.
Before I could tell him that was a fantastic idea, the back door opened and Minho slid into the vacant seat beside me just a moment before Ace got into the driver’s seat with a heavy yawn.
“Hi…?” I said by way of greeting to the deadass, half asleep version of Minho slouched beside me.
“Coffee,” he mumbled, leaning his messy hair against the headrest and closing his eyes. “I heard we have none.”
Fair. “Sorry, that’s a little bit my fault.”
Minho cracked one eyelid, meeting my gaze as Ace drove us out of the garage. “Nah, that was all Xavier. Bro has anger issues.” Quirking one corner of his lips, he reached out and placed his hand palm up between us. An open invitation.
I could have ignored it. Pretended I didn’t notice and kept my hands to myself. But I didn’t…
The moment I put my hand in his, my heart rate doubled and my breathing shallowed.
His fingers curled up, intertwining with mine and holding tight while his lush lips curved into a smile.
His eyes were closed again, seemingly going back to sleep while we drove, but his thumb stroked the side of my hand.
It wasn’t a wildly scandalous touch by any means.
We’d held hands in the exact same way dozens of times before because Minho was an incredibly touchy kind of guy.
This time felt so incredibly different, though…
since we’d kissed. Like I was hyperaware of every point of contact between our hands, and my insides twisted up like they were on a roller coaster with no safety harness.
Maybe I did need to clear the air with him. Unless, of course, this was his way of agreeing with my adamant denial? We could just pretend it never happened and continue as we were? That made sense.
I released a long breath, relaxing into my seat a little more while Ace and Skye chatted about the reactions from our Clik Games entry, which had gone live at midnight.
I’d still been awake and spent way too long reading the comments before Skye turned the bedroom light off and growled at me to sleep.
“Have you spoken with your sister, Noah?” Ace asked, glancing at me in the mirror. “Your family is probably not thrilled if they saw our Byte upload.”
I shrugged, averting my gaze out the window. “Yeah, she’s pissed.” Which was true, but technically I hadn’t spoken to Miles directly. He’d just left me a bunch of missed calls and a dozen or so panicked text messages which only stopped when I replied right before the Byte went live.
Admittedly my reply was a curt: I’m fine, chill, bro. But it was enough to get an equally curt response telling me that he was never speaking to me again. Which we both knew wasn’t true.
Minho gave my fingers a squeeze, arching a curious brow when I glanced over at him, but I just shook my head to let him know I didn’t want to elaborate. Skye sensed it, too, smoothly changing the subject to some of our competitors’ entry Bytes, but Ace kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“Coffee,” Ace announced a few minutes later, pulling up in front of a cute little French patisserie, “and bubble tea.” He pointed across the street, where a grinning cartoon cat drinking boba decorated the front window of a shop. Boba-Kitty. Cute.
“You’re like a wizard, Ace,” I exclaimed in surprise, because I’d definitely figured our double request was asking too much.
Excited, I scrambled out of the car and then dithered on the pavement.
Which did I want more? Fucking Xavier had to go and break the fucking coffeepot and put me into this impossible situation, didn’t he? What an asshole.
The memory of my teenage crush on him made me cringe internally. Clearly, I was shallow as hell when I’d put his posters up all over my room because the guy had the personality of an overtired grizzly bear.
Skye made the decision for me, grabbing my hand and dragging me across the road to Boba-Kitty, while Ace and Minnie swaggered their sexy asses into the patisserie. Once inside the bubble tea shop, though, I was delighted to find that Skye wasn’t even joking about coffee boba.
We collected our orders, then crossed back over to the patisserie, where Ace and Minho had grabbed an outdoor table. They both wore caps and sunglasses, neither of which I’d remembered to grab on my way out of the house. Damn it.
“What flavor did you get this time, Chicken?” Minho asked when I slid into the seat opposite him.
I grinned, stabbing my cardboard straw through the lid with a satisfying pop. “Coffee, of course. With a mixture of brown sugar and coffee jelly.” I took a sip and hummed happily at the sweet concoction.
He watched me over his lowered sunglasses with a bemused smile, then stole the cup from my hand to take a sip himself, holding eye contact with me as he did so.
It was downright fucking pornographic, and there was no other way to describe it.
My lips parted in shock—and arousal—as he released the straw from his perfect lips and licked a stray droplet from the tip.
What the fuck was that?
“Noah, you good?” Skye asked, jolting me out of the eye-fuck I’d somehow ended up in with Minho. My cheeks must have betrayed me because Skye smirked knowingly. Dickhead.
I cleared my throat, taking my drink back and slouching in my seat. “Yep. Good. It’s just really bright out and I forgot my sunglasses.” I stuffed my straw back in my mouth and hoped like hell they’d just let it go and change the subject.
“Here.” Ace took off his sunglasses and put them on my face with a lopsided grin. “Those suit you, Eight.”
Minnie pursed his lush lips thoughtfully, then took off his Portia Levigne Couture cap and settled it on my head. “Probably not a bad idea for you to be incognito, Chicken. We don’t need you starting any crazy fangirl riots with that pretty face.”
I would have rolled my eyes at him, but thanks to Ace’s sunglasses, the gesture would have gone unnoticed, so I just sipped my drink and stole bits of Ace’s blueberry muffin whenever I thought he wasn’t paying attention.
The boys chatted a bit about the upcoming judging panel for Clik Games, and then all of a sudden, a high-pitched shriek startled me so hard I choked on a boba pearl and somehow knocked the dumb cardboard straw clean out of my cup.
“Oh my God!” a girl exclaimed, oblivious to my agony. “You’re Minho Park! Or is it Park Minho? Um, I’m a huge 1-4-3 fan. Can I get you to sign my photocard?”
I laughed between coughs, clearing the boba from my throat while three young girls in tiny skirts gathered around Minnie, close enough to almost obscure him from view.
To his credit, though, he handled the fans with grace and charm, signing their photocards and smiling as they gushed about their favorite songs, and then smoothly deflected when asked about his departure from the group.
Very diplomatic. Extremely sexy. I was falling way too hard.
“I feel bad for taking his hat now,” I murmured to Ace as the girls continued to shower Minnie in compliments bordering on the embarrassing. “He was incognito for a reason.”
Ace grinned and shrugged. “Nah, no such thing with him. His fans would be able to pick him out of a lineup in a body bag.”
“Should we…” I gestured to the girls who were taking what seemed like their tenth selfie with Minho. He seemed to sense my eyes on him, even through my borrowed sunglasses, and shot a grin my way.
“Girls, I’m so sorry, we have to get going,” he apologized, pushing back from the table and smoothly dodging around them while the rest of us grabbed our drinks and headed for the car.
Thankfully, his fans were polite enough not to follow, but right as I was about to hop in, I paused and pouted down at my drink.
Minho leaned in closer, his hand resting ever so lightly on my lower back. “What’s wrong?”
“I dropped my straw,” I grumbled with a dramatic sigh, climbing into the backseat of Ace’s car with defeat. No point in circling back to the shop for another one now that Minho’s photos were probably already being slapped all over fan sites as we spoke.
But still…I’d only had half my drink, and there was no way I could drink it without a straw. I wasn’t an animal.
Ace must have seen my mental gymnastics, because he disappeared out of the car for a minute, then returned with a whole handful of straws, handing one back to me with a teasing grin. “I’ll keep some spares in the glovebox, just in case.”
That struck me as almost overwhelmingly sweet…or a commentary on my likeliness to drop my straw again in the future. I’d stick with sweet, because it made me warm and fuzzy inside as Ace smiled at me in the rearview mirror.
Shit, he was pretty…
Why did Miles hate him so much?