28. Kyle
KYLE
Sleep wasn’t happening tonight. Not with Kyle’s brain running a mile a minute after such a tense evening.
Sloan must have felt tense, too, and had chosen to have a few too many drinks, her eyes bright, her face flushed by the time Jeremy had dropped them off.
Anna . . . had let Brandon drive her home.
Kyle groaned, feeling bad about that, even though his guilt was slightly ridiculous. He hadn’t asked Anna to be there tonight, after all, or done anything to encourage her since that ill-advised tongue swapping over eight months earlier.
That didn’t mean he enjoyed watching anyone feel bad.
But watching Sloan shrink further into her seat each time Anna had flirted with him had forced him to make a decision. And that, in the end, had been a surprisingly easy choice.
So . . . what does that mean?
He pushed the covers to his bed aside, then flipped on the light on his nightstand. He felt the need to do something , but he couldn’t decide what it was yet.
Maybe set up a calendar countdown to how many days he’d be putting himself through the torture of living with a woman he was sexually attracted to despite the complicated situation.
He needed to stop ruminating on this.
Sloan couldn’t be the center of his thoughts at all times.
He had plenty of other things he needed to work out, and not just his love life—or lack thereof.
Maybe he needed to come up with a plan for what lines of work might be acceptable, given the fact that he’d turned down a perfectly good and well-paying job offer today from his interview several days earlier.
Which, if my family knew about, they might kill me for doing.
His gaze flicked over to the dresser where he kept Granny’s urn and her final letter. Sloan had given it to him after dinner tonight, and he’d put it there, but it felt weird having her ashes in his room.
Maybe that’s what he needed to do. Finally put her to rest the way he should have done months ago.
But he also wasn’t going on any adventures anytime soon.
And something about the thought of letting her go, especially when he’d just gotten the urn back, felt strangely wrong.
He’d been relieved when Sloan had told him Granny wasn’t lost in police impound hell, but . . . now what?
Another thing my family would harass me about.
Hell, there wasn’t much his family would be happy with him for. He recognized the concern on Elle and Liddy’s faces when they’d hugged him good night before leaving the bar. And he hated, hated, being the one everyone was worried about.
He needed something. Something that was his own. Something that he was naturally good at.
Something unrelated to Sloan.
He reached for his phone. Scrolling through his text messages, he found Davy’s number and typed something out before he could overthink it.
Kyle: So, if an ex-Travelog YouTuber were to, say, start their own channel about something like “Top Ten Locations for Rock Climbing in Tennessee,” etc.—how would that fare with signed non-competes?
Three dots appeared immediately, like Davy had been holding her phone when his message came in. Which was impressive, considering she spent most of her time in London, and it was after midnight.
Or maybe she was already up for the day. She was annoyingly a morning person.
Davy: They can stop you from cloning Pathways. They can’t stop you from being a human being who talks about the outdoors on the internet.
His mouth twitched.
Kyle: Meaning?
Davy: Change the format, change the angle, and don’t call it the same thing. Worst case, get a lawyer to slice the clause down to something sane.
A sliver of excitement went through him.
Maybe Tomas had been right, and he’d dismissed his idea about revamping the show into something else because he’d been too bitter.
Kyle: So . . . not Pathways 2.0, but something adjacent, just not too similar?
The phone rang in his hand.
“How’s my favorite producer doing?” he answered in a saccharine tone.
“You want to do ‘Top Ten Climbing Spots in Tennessee’? Great. That’s not a cinematic travel series. That’s a list show. Different product,” Davy said, clearly chewing something. “Sorry—eating breakfast. What has your knickers in a twist in the middle of the night?”
He grunted, pushed a few pillows onto his headboard, then leaned back. “I need to do something with my life, Davy. And I don’t know what it is.”
“Had enough time watching your nieces grow up and being there for every family holiday like you used to complain about not getting to do?”
His jaw worked. “I’m not complaining—”
“No, you’re restless. But if you want my advice, it’s not a job thing, it’s a you thing. Still, that’s not what you called me about.”
Ouch.
She cleared her throat. “You can do your own YouTube show if you want. I’d advise you to keep it as different from Pathways as you can at first, but you’ll be in the building phase for a while.
You are your own brand, luckily, so it shouldn’t be hard to lock down some sponsors for your first few episodes.
People will know and recognize your face.
You’ll need gear, probably a skeleton crew to get things going.
College kids these days know more than most about iPhone and DSLR filmography, vlogs, and all, so they’re not a bad place to start.
They’ve been cutting and editing short-form video for social for years now. ”
“I feel like I should be taking notes,” Kyle said, his brain beginning to buzz—both with possibilities and overload.
Davy sighed. “I’ll try to email you something. Long and short of it: get brands on board, start building now, and don’t poke the bear that is Helixnet. Your noncompete is only for twelve months anyway, and then you’ll have more freedom.”
“What about buying the IP from Helixnet?”
“Do you have a million dollars sitting around?”
“No,” he said, releasing a short, frustrated breath.
“You know, you might consider asking Sloan to try to clear your name in that whole January debacle. Don’t know if Helixnet would want to pick the show up again—probably not, because they’re risk-averse—but someone might. Then buying the IP becomes a them problem.”
He drummed his fingers against the mattress.
Truth was, it had crossed his mind now that Sloan had come back into his life to ask her about that—why she hadn’t tried to set the record straight.
Sure, the kidnapping charges had been dropped, but after that, everything about the story had simply vanished from the news.
This left the impression that Kyle had been mixed up with Sloan in a salacious way. “I’m not sure how it would go over,” he said cautiously.
“Look, it’s worth a shot. I know it would mean having to probably go out and find Sloan, but you could start with her dad’s company.”
Fuck. He hadn’t told her yet. “Yeah . . . about that . . .”
“Oh, that’s never a good intro.”
“Sloan moved to Nashville recently. And I’m renting a room from her.”
“Oh, come on,” Davy muttered. “You really don’t want to do yourself any favors, do you?”
“We’re not romantically involved—”
“Look, you do you, but I promise you, if Sloan tries to correct the narrative about January, the first thing Evan will do is try to spin it to his favor. If he finds out you’re living together, game over.
Your reputation takes another hit, and that IP will look even less appealing to another party. ”
“So, yeah, for now, maybe just an email with anything helpful.”
Davy laughed. “Got it. Anything for you, Kyle Winnick.”
“Have I told you I love you recently?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Davy sighed. “Don’t be a stranger so much. I miss our adventures. But I guess the whole thing with the wedding wasn’t all in vain—I finally got the courage to tell my parents about Amy. And it’s going okay, so that’s nice.”
Kyle smiled, leaning his head back. “Pretty okay is good.”
“You taking care of yourself? Isla and I had lunch the other day, and she said she hadn’t heard from you much recently, either.”
Isla. One more person he needed to do a better job of keeping up with. He’d gotten really close with Callum’s sister after Elle and Quinn’s wedding in Costa Rica. But now that Liddy and Callum were married, Liddy was closer to Isla than he was, which made her feel more like another bonus sister.
And the last thing he needed right now was another sister.
“Tell her I’ll call her. Better yet, tell her to stop being a bum and come out to Nashville and see me.”
“You know, there’s this handy service called text messaging that will allow you to do that yourself, right?”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Thanks, Davy. I appreciate the advice, as always. Go back to your absurdly early breakfast.”
“It’s almost six in the morning here. Go to sleep.”
Kyle was still smiling when he hung up. He hadn’t expected to feel so much lighter after the conversation, but he did. Getting a show off the ground would be a challenge, of course, but it was better than jumping into a job he hated.
He flipped the light off and lay back, his body starting to unwind. Talking to Davy had gotten his mind off the earlier tension with Sloan, at least.
A loud thump in the hallway, followed by an “Oof,” cut through the stillness.
Sloan.
Kyle jumped out of bed and opened the door to his room, poking his head out. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the hall, he saw her, back against the wall, legs half curled under her. A puddle of water glistened on the carpet beside her, empty glass still in her hand.
He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “You know, most people just drink water. They don’t wrestle it to the ground first.”
“Ass.” She glared up at him, her mouth twitching.
Kyle tipped his chin toward the glass in her hand. “Did it at least put up a fair fight?”
She smiled—slow, a little crooked, her eyes glinting even in the dim light. “It did. Things got a little wet.”
Yeah, I walked into that one.