13. THE ONE WITH THE 48 HOUR CONTRACT
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Comment: There’s no way they’re not dating… or at the very least fucking!
Comment reply: No one looks at someone the way West is looking at Hex if they’re NOT fucking…
West’s stare drags from the floor to my eyes.
Slowly. So fucking slowly, like he’s drinking up every inch.
I think my body temperature rockets a hundred degrees by the time his blue eyes land on mine. Light trickles through my kitchen window, illuminating him in a morning glow.
As if the man needs any help looking heaven sent!
“Joey,” he grunts my name like he’s physically pained. “That’s your shirt now. I can’t compete with how fucking delicious you look in it.”
“West, this is serious. Stop.” I tell him, but know damn well I need to take my own advice because if he keeps staring at me like that, I might take the shirt off and let him bend me over the couch right—no!
Nope, back to the doxxing. You got doxxed. You have a social media crisis to deal with.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” He rubs his temples with a thumb and middle finger.
God, his hands are big. All his rings are back on, and I can almost feel the bite of the cold metal against my throat again.
“I never thought… I obviously knew…” He bites his lip, nerves spiking as he tries to figure out how to approach this.
“During the show I had no idea who you were. It wasn’t until after that I realized your identity wasn’t public knowledge.
It never even crossed my mind that something like this could happen.
The Witch City thing was a play on Salem being so close.
Never thought you’d actually live here…” His eyes soften.
“I can only imagine how you feel right now.”
How do I feel?
It’s numbing, knowing millions of people now know who I am under the mask I’ve hid behind for three years… and I haven’t even looked at the notifications on my end yet. “How many tickets did you have left before selling out this morning?”
West squints. “Overall?” He squints one eye and looks up, counting in his head. “Somewhere between 300 and 500. Some are pretty small venues, so there could be a ticket or two left while others might be around twenty to fifty. Enzo manages everything for me and has all the exact numbers.”
“What are ticket prices and how much are you being paid per show?” I ask.
He gives me a suspicious look, asking why? without speaking.
“I want to see something,” I deadpan.
He gives me the numbers and the math does itself. “So roughly, with a fifty-fifty door split you made around ten grand overnight?”
He nods. “Yes, give or take and on top of what I’ve already made from previous sales.”
I ask a bunch more questions about pay schedules, additional tour stops, higher rates based on demand. Before I consider something so ridiculous, I have to know everything. My decision is in the details, like it always is.
“You don’t have to make a lifetime commitment. Come with us to the shows in Portland this weekend. It can be a trial run.” How West is so calm when he says that, I have no idea.
“And do what?” I start pacing. “Pretend to be in a fake relationship with you on the internet to make money? Run your social media?” I walk from the fridge to my couch and back, rambling. “Hex is a hobby! I run social media departments, not individual accounts.”
I see West freeze, but the ice thaws quickly and a lightbulb goes off above his head.
His reaction makes me realize what I said. I backpedal as fast as possible, because that isn’t happening. Now or ever. “That was a hypothetical, never going to happen, question, West.”
“But you’ve seen the comments, people want to know if we’re—”
“We’re what? Fucking? Dating? We’re not,” I point out.
“We did. Fuck,” he says casually like he’s not fazed one tiny bit by what we’d done into the early hours of the morning. “What’s a little fake dating to sweeten the deal?”
What was I thinking? This would never work! “West,” I sigh, leaning against the couch.
“Fine, no fake dating!” He holds his hands up, sinking into a chair at my dining room table. He looks too comfortable in my apartment. “You can call Hex a hobby all you want. People with hobby accounts don’t post on schedule for three years without missing.”
“I don’t want to be a career influencer,” I tell him. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for people who do it—I know how hard it is to maintain, but I’ve always liked being on the other side.
“You don’t have to be.” West shrugs, standing to cross the room.
“You can run mine and maintain whatever anonymity you want. I don’t want to make this all about me or anything that happened between us last night.
” He pauses not too far from me, flexes his fists, and then clears his throat like he has to fight away the same thoughts I’ve been having all morning.
“I want this to be about both of us making money. You can choose to monetize HexedHeroine if you want… but that’s not what I’m offering you.
” West fiddles with one of his rings, spinning it around his finger.
“I need someone to do that for me. I need to continue to have these viral moments and sell out shows. I’m clearly not doing enough on my own.
That video didn’t go viral because of me. ”
I shake my head. “That’s not all true. Sure, it got pushed through the bookish algorithm because of me, but the people buying your tickets aren’t just readers.”
Frankie’s voice plays in the back of my mind: this could be life changing for you too.
If I let it…
Hasn’t my life changed enough in the last twenty hours? Did the universe really have to throw this at me too? How am I supposed to figure out what I want—what I need—when I’m not even sure what any of this means for me yet?
I could reclaim my identity. But what even is my identity?
Am I really Hex deep down, or am I the perfect-corporate Jo I became while trying to convince Dylan’s family I belonged in their pristine, high-society world?
Am I both? Can I be both? Do I want to be both?
“It’s only two days, Joey.” His words yank me out of a spiral before I can lose myself to the anxiety threatening to take me under.
The ice around my bones breaks, and I crack a fragmented smile.
“Two days.” I say it as a statement, not a question.
“Forty-eight hours,” West confirms. “I think that’s all the time you’ll need to fall in love with me.” He winks, biting his lip playfully.
I’m fucking obsessed with how much he does that.
He continues while I force my eyes from his mouth. “Kidding, of course, but it might be long enough to realize you can make more money in two months with me than you did all year at Vyce Talents.”
I glower. “How do you know where I used to work?”
“I called you after Enzo showed me the video. It went straight to voicemail. You blocked me in record time.” His grimace looks kind of real.
“My phone died,” I say quietly.
“Oh, thank God,” he laughs, putting a hand over his heart. “I can live with you not thinking I’m funny, but blocking me after the sex we had? I’d never recover.”
I puff a barely amused laugh.
Don’t be so uptight. Frankie’s words are a broken record in my brain.
My whole life has been planned since I was nine.
I knew exactly what college I wanted to go to and exactly what I’d need to get in—what my GPA had to be, weighted and unweighted.
How many hours of community service would look best. What extracurriculars would make me stand out.
I graduated high school with my Associates from a local community college.
I did everything according to plan and got accepted with a full-ride scholarship, which led to grad school and another full-ride, and then eventually the great jobs…
And all that was to prove my mother wrong.
If she were still in my life, she'd be eating the words I’d heard her tell Grams before she walked out: “So what, she failed first grade! Who cares? If she’s anything like me and you, she won’t even graduate high school.”
At the end of the day, I don’t currently have a backup plan, and this is a way to ensure my rent is paid for at least a couple more months.
Live a little.
But if this is a business transaction… “I have one, well, two conditions.”
West nods. “Name your price.”
“No sex, and no fake dating.”