Chapter 21
NOAH
Two days after the broken coffeepot incident, three things had become undeniable.
One: Xavier was still a massive dickwad and seemed to be going out of his way to piss me off any chance he got.
Two: We were going to win the first round of Clik Games by a landslide, largely thanks to my near-death encounter. The Cliks alone were enough that even if all the judges voted us last, we’d still win.
Three: I couldn’t keep avoiding Miles. Especially after the fan photos of Minho came out from our bubble-tea trip. Apparently nothing got past the Team Olympus fans—the Acolytes—because within a couple of hours of the photos being posted, the internet was blowing up about my hat.
Minnie’s hat.
Apparently it was one he wore a lot, which made sense since he was a global brand ambassador for Portia Levinge. But the fact that it was a hat he wore a lot meant that it was automatically identified as being his hat when I was wearing it.
“Are you sleeping with Minho Park?” Miles asked in a scandalized voice when I finally called him back. “You know he was fired from his K-pop company for live streaming while fucking his boss’s daughter, right? Given your recent history with online porn—”
“Shut up,” I hissed, not wanting to hear his judgment. “I’m not fucking him. Did you forget that I lack the correct anatomy to keep my identity crisis in place?”
“So they all still think you’re a guy?” Miles scoffed with disbelief. “I call bullshit. They have to have worked it out by now, but maybe they don’t want to offend you by saying something.”
I frowned, considering that possibility. Had they worked me out? No, surely Skye would have told me if that were the case.
“Okay but you’re not denying something is going on there,” Miles pushed. “If Minho knew you were you, would this be a thing?”
Would it? Yes…but also no? Minnie isn’t attracted to Norah Sparkle or even Noah Fearly the girl. He’s into the shorter than average guy on his team.
“Irrelevant,” I muttered, squashing the sour feelings of rejection those ideas stirred up. “It’s not a thing. I just borrowed his hat to hide my identity; it’s not a big deal. Why is no one losing their shit about me wearing Ace’s sunglasses?”
As soon as I said it, I cringed. Miles still hadn’t told me what his grudge against Ace was about, but without fail, the mention of the Team Olympus leader got under his skin.
A frustrated sound escaped him, and I had no doubt he was about to launch into a lecture about how I needed to terminate my contract because no amount of money was worth selling your soul, so I quickly ended the conversation in the most grown-up way possible.
“Sorry, Miles, my phone is on one percent battery and I can’t find my charger so if I cut out—” Then I pressed end call and turned my phone off with a grin. He’d done the exact same thing to me dozens of times, so it was just karma.
Stuffing my phone into the pocket of my hoodie, I headed downstairs to join the guys.
Staff had been all up in our grills for the last forty-eight hours straight, and we finally had a day off.
My skin was thanking me for the makeup break.
Silly me for thinking the boys just had perfect glass skin naturally.
Approaching the top of the stairs, I slowed my steps as Ace’s low, angry voice reached my ears. His office and bedroom were farther along the hall, but Minnie and Z’s room was right there and the door was open an inch.
“…knew exactly what you were doing with that hat stunt,” Ace was saying, and I froze where I stood. He was talking about me.
Minho scoffed in response. “As if you didn’t give him your limited-edition Deity sunglasses first. You can’t get mad at me just because no one noticed that.”
“Oh, fuck off, Min. I was doing something nice for Eight because he was squinting so hard. You were marking your territory. Big difference.”
I had officially stopped breathing. What even was air? I sure as fuck didn’t need it, not if it might get me caught listening in on a very interesting conversation revolving around me.
“You’re reading way too much into an innocent gesture, Ace,” Minho drawled dismissively, and my heart dropped out my ass. “It’s just fan service, like Leight told us to do. I’m not even attracted to guys. It’s Tor you need to be keeping an eye on. Have you seen his sketchbook lately?”
Wait. What? Hold the fuck up. That was… No, but fans didn’t see us kiss nor did they see that moment when he cornered me in the hallway. So how could he claim fan service on that? But why the fuck was he dragging Torin’s sketchbook into this conversation?
Unless… Did he think the fan service was more believable if one of us was genuinely infatuated? Was he playing me for the Cliks?
My guts twisted, and I decided I didn’t want to hear any more.
I definitely didn’t want to be caught listening, either, so I forced my feet to start moving once again and continued downstairs to seek out Skye.
I needed to talk, and he was my only friend.
So unfortunately he was going to have to suffer through some girl anxiety.
What I didn’t expect was to find a gorgeous girl in lingerie plastered all over the enormous flat-screen TV against the wall.
“Whoa,” I exclaimed before I could catch myself. “Um… what?”
Xavier, Skye, August, and Z all snapped their heads my way with varying degrees of guilt and panic, like they’d been caught with their dicks in hand. Then a cold sweat broke out down my spine. Was that what they were doing? Watching porn together and…
“It’s a CB-Live,” Skye quickly explained, his face pinker than mine when I was caught drooling over Z. “Cat Kay. She’s on one of our competitor teams.”
I nodded vaguely, studying the girl who seemed to be doing some kind of outfit-of-the-day, but it was just lingerie and various pairs of heels. Now that I was paying more attention, I noticed the stream of live comments scrolling up the left side of the screen and grimaced as I read a few.
“Wow. She’s definitely got a type. Is this her usual style of content?” Because I’d done a lot of research on our competitors, and I was sure she usually did cutesy baking shit, not thirst traps bordering on Adults Only content. The comments were going feral for it, though.
“No, it’s not,” August answered, his expression grim and tense. “Sakura tipped us off about this and we wanted to, uh, see for ourselves. Apparently some of the other teams are getting some heavy pressure from their management to step it up.”
I wrinkled my nose as the girl on the screen struck another suggestive pose under the guise of showing off her shoes.
“And this is what they’ve gone with? Are those views higher than she normally gets?
” I gestured to the view count in the top corner, displaying a constantly changing number somewhere in the ten thousands.
Z shrugged. “Marginally. Read some of the comments, though. She’s got some of her usual audience really pissed off. This will harm her overall ranking, for sure.”
I watched for a few minutes, mostly reading through the comments and finding Z was totally right. One commenter in particular was offended enough that they were threatening to do horrible things to Cat Kay if she didn’t stop her stream.
The girl on-screen browsed through the comments every now and then, answering questions and laughing flirtatiously at the more suggestive ones, but it was easy to see her smile slip when she silently read the hate-filled comments.
Fuck, it made me want to reach out and tell her to turn it off or ignore the haters, or… Screw it.
I pulled out my phone and searched the username displayed on the screen, clicking into the CB-Live.
“Uh, what’s Little Dude doing?” Xavier asked, gesturing to the big screen, where it showed that NoFear had entered the room. “Bro, we logged in under a burner account so it wouldn’t cause shit between the fan groups. You can’t go—”
“Shut the fuck up, Xavier,” I muttered, already typing out my comment. “I really don’t give a rat’s ass about your fans.”
He made a spluttering sound of outrage. “My fans? I’m not worried about mine.
You should be more concerned with your own, because right now you’re very publicly watching a competing ClikByter in her underwear.
Your fans will either hate her because they’re not her or hate you because you’re cheating on Minho.
Either way, Little Dude, you’re fucked.”
“Who’s cheating on me?” the gorgeous man himself asked, swaggering into the room without a care in the damn world, Ace following close behind with a fucked-off expression on his handsome face.
Minnie draped an arm over my shoulders, and I resisted the urge to shake him off. No sense in showing him how hurt I was by a conversation I shouldn’t have even heard. “Me, apparently,” I muttered, hitting send on my message of encouragement to Cat Kay.
“Ignore the haters, Cat. You look beautiful, and it’s no one else’s business what you choose to do with your platform.
” August read aloud when my comment appeared on the big screen, then he grimaced and shook his head.
“Fuck, bro, you really woke up and chose anarchy today. Mr. Leight is going to castrate you over this.”
I rolled my eyes and stuffed my phone back in my pocket.
“Whatever, it’s not like I commented ‘great tits, can I motorboat them?’ like some of those viewers have.
You guys are so fucking dramatic.” Sliding out from under Minho’s arm, I turned my back on the TV and made my way over to the kitchen, where I found Torin leaning over the counter, drawing something in his sketchbook.
“Hey, Tor,” I said hesitantly, curiosity flooding me as I remembered Minnie’s cryptic comment about Torin’s sketchbook. “Can I see what you’re drawing?”
His gaze jerked up and he slapped the book shut. “Ah, nope. Just absentminded doodling. Are you hungry? I was going to make enchiladas for dinner.”