Chapter 32
HOLLIS
Iwoke up with Juno draped across my chest like she belonged there. Her breathing was slow and deep. One arm was thrown across my stomach, her leg hooked over mine.
I watched her sleep. And for once, I didn’t immediately reach for my phone. Didn’t think about orders or emails or the seventeen things waiting on my to-do list.
I just lay there, watching her sleep.
She looked different. The little furrow she usually wore between her brows had almost completely smoothed out. Her lips were slightly parted. Her hair was a golden disaster across my pillow, and she’d never looked more beautiful.
Shit.
I think I’m falling in love with this girl.
The thought sucker punched me.
I stared at the ceiling and let it sink in. Love. After barely knowing each other for two months. After only dating for three weeks, much of which was spent apart. That was insane. Love took time.
But this didn’t feel like lust. Lust I’d had plenty of. Lust was familiar territory. The spark, the chase, the fading interest. That was my pattern. The one I’d warned her about. With every other woman, there had always come a moment when the newness wore off and I started looking for the exit.
With Juno, I kept looking for more. More of the way she challenged me on everything from marketing strategy to the best songs.
Three weeks in and the restlessness hadn’t shown up.
Not even a whisper of it. I just kept thinking about the next thing with her.
Places I wanted to visit. Things I wanted to experience with her.
Instead of an exit, I was looking at the future.
I couldn’t tell her. Not yet. It was way too fast and saying it out loud felt like tempting fate.
What if I was wrong? What if this was just the high of great sex and the thrill of finally being with someone who didn’t bore me?
I needed to sit with it. Kick the idea around for a while.
Make absolutely sure before I put something that big between us.
Except I’d never once in my life wondered if I was in love with someone. The fact that I was wondering now felt significant.
Juno made a small noise and burrowed closer, her hand sliding across my stomach. My whole body stiffened, including one part in particular.
But she looked so cozy. I didn’t want to wake her. I carefully eased my arm out from under her. I rolled away and moved just a touch faster than a snail to keep from jostling her. I pulled on my sweats and padded into the kitchen.
Coffee first. I started a pot and scooped protein powder into both mugs.
It was one of the few things I consumed that had earned Juno’s official seal of approval, which was saying something.
If there was one thing I’d learned about her in these past few blissful weeks, it was that she hated processed food with the fire of a thousand suns.
The dietitian in her never took a day off.
She read labels. Scoffed at most of the so-called health food on the market.
So breakfast needed to be the real deal.
I pulled eggs from the fridge, separated the whites, and chopped bell peppers, spinach, and tomatoes while the pan heated. Goat cheese went in last, crumbled over the top just before the fold. It smelled amazing. I tossed in some fresh basil because I knew she liked it.
I was sliding the second omelet onto a plate when I heard her behind me. I turned around and nearly dropped the pan.
She stood in the doorway wearing one of my T-shirts and absolutely nothing else. It hit her mid-thigh, the neck slipping off one shoulder, her hair wild, her face still soft with sleep. She looked rumpled and gorgeous and like every fantasy I’d ever had.
I’d rather eat her for breakfast. Screw the omelets.
“Good morning,” she said, voice husky with sleep. She wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her face into my chest.
“It is now.” I set the pan down and kissed the top of her head, breathing her in. “Sleep okay?”
“Mmm.” She tipped her face up to me. “Somebody wore me out last night.”
I kissed her and briefly considered abandoning breakfast entirely in favor of carrying her back to bed. She must have read my mind because she pulled back with a grin.
“Food first. I smelled tomatoes, and I need to confirm it’s real.”
“It’s real.” I handed her a mug. “Egg white omelet, fresh veggies with goat cheese.”
She took a sip of the coffee. “It smells amazing.”
We took our plates out to the deck. The ocean was calm with a few people already on the beach. Juno sat in the lounge chair, balanced her plate, and took her first bite. Her eyes closed.
“So good.”
I could get used to mornings with her in my shirt, on my deck, eating my cooking with the ocean as the backdrop. A picture-perfect start to a lazy Sunday. No plans, no phones, nowhere to be.
Which reminded me.
“So, slight change to the lazy part of our Sunday.” I set my fork down. “I have to meet with your dad this afternoon to hammer out the details for the burger launch. Marketing timelines, production schedules, the whole thing.”
She looked up from her plate. “On a Sunday?”
“His idea. He wants to move fast. The sooner we get it to market, the sooner we own the space before somebody else cracks it.”
“I know, I know.” She sighed dramatically, stabbing a piece of tomato. “The one day I finally get you all to myself, my own father steals you.”
I laughed. “You’re jealous of your dad.”
“A little bit, yeah.” She pointed her fork at me. “He gets you all afternoon and I get you for breakfast. The math is not in my favor.”
“Hey.” I reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, letting my fingers trail down her jaw. “For what it’s worth, he doesn’t look nearly as good bottomless in one of my shirts.”
She burst out laughing, nearly choking on her coffee. “Oh my God. He better not.” She shook her head, still laughing, and shoved my shoulder. “You’re naughty. Finish your omelet.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I picked up my fork and watched her settle back into her chair, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, my shirt slipping off her shoulder again. My mind ran through a list of excuses I could use to get out of the meeting. Unfortunately, it had to get done.
Eventually she gathered her plate and followed me inside. I took the dishes from her and set them in the sink, then pulled her back against my chest.
“Come back tonight,” I said.
“You’ve got yourself a deal.” She rose up on her toes and kissed me, slow and sweet, tasting like coffee and goat cheese and everything good. “Don’t let my dad keep you too long. I saw you first.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.”
After she left, I pulled myself together, showered, and pointed my car toward the Young at Heart offices.
I made it downtown in record time. The building was nearly empty.
A security guard waved me through after checking my name off a list, and I rode the elevator up alone, still riding the high of the morning.
Dan was waiting in the conference room with two large coffees and a spread of mockups already covering the table.
He handed me one of the coffees. “Thanks for coming in on a weekend.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting a year for a meeting like this.”
We got to work. The design team had put together six packaging concepts for the burger.
We spread them out across the table. Two of them were immediate no’s.
One looked like a frozen diet dinner from the nineties, and another had so much green on it, it practically screamed this will taste like lawn clippings.
That was exactly the stereotype we were fighting.
“This one,” I said, tapping a design with a clean butcher-paper look and bold black lettering. “It looks like real food. Not a science experiment.”
“My favorite too.” Dan pulled it closer. “People eat with their eyes first. If it looks like something they’d actually crave, they’ll give it a shot. If it looks healthy, we’ve lost them before they ever take a bite.”
We debated fonts. We debated whether “plant-based” should be front and center or smaller, under the product name. I argued for keeping it prominent, owning what it was instead of hiding it. Dan agreed but wanted the word “burger” to be the biggest thing on the box.
“Burger first,” he said. “That’s the promise. The plant-based part is the bonus, not the headline.”
“B Well Prime Burger,” I said, testing it out loud. It had a nice ring to it.
By mid-afternoon we’d narrowed it down to two finalists and mapped out a rough timeline. Focus groups in three weeks. Production ramp-up after that. Launch inside ninety days if everything broke right. It was finally happening. I still couldn’t fully wrap my head around it.
Dan leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “You know what’s funny? I can’t remember the last time I had a fast food burger.”
I laughed. “Same.”
“And here we are betting a small fortune that our burger tastes better.”
“I eat junk food here and there,” I admitted. “I’m not a monk. Pizza after a long night, chips at Micah’s place when we’re watching a game. But fast food burgers specifically? I generally avoid them. They always sound good in theory and then I feel like garbage after.”
“That’s the market we’re going after,” Dan said. “People who want the burger experience without the regret.” He pulled his laptop around and clicked open a document. “Speaking of which, check out the announcement our PR team released today.”
I read through the press release. Young at Heart is thrilled to announce a partnership with B Well on an amazing new no-meat burger, coming soon. It went on to highlight the success of B Well Balance and the mission both companies shared.
“This is great,” I said.
Dan smiled, and there was something almost boyish in it. “There’s already decent buzz, Hollis. People have been speculating since the commercial dropped about what’s next. Industry blogs are watching you. People really pay attention to what you’re up to, which is great for business.”
That still surprised me sometimes. I’d spent so long trying to prove I wasn’t just a famous last name that I hadn’t fully processed the moment I’d become a name people followed on my own.
We kept at it for another couple of hours, going over retail targets. Then we talked about the shakes, which were finally starting to roll out of the refitted bottling plant. Around five, my phone buzzed against the table.
Juno: How’s my father treating you?
I smiled down at the screen like the idiot she always turned me into.
I typed back: Demanding. Relentless. Reminds me of someone. I miss you.
Her reply came fast: Miss you more.
We wrapped up a little after six. I headed out into the early evening. The sun was dropping toward the ocean, the sky going orange and pink over the city.
I was exhausted. And I was starving.
Somewhere on the way home, Dan’s offhand comment circled back around in my head.
I can’t remember the last time I had a fast food burger.
Neither could I. And now I was genuinely curious.
We were about to bet big on the idea that our burger could compete with the real thing.
I’d taste-tested it against every plant-based competitor on the market.
But against an actual, honest-to-God trash burger?
The kind millions of people ate every day?
I needed data. Research. Due diligence.
A familiar sign appeared on the right. Curly’s, the national chain with the cartoon pig mascot and the curly fries my brothers and I used to beg for on road trips. I parked and went inside. The place smelled exactly like I remembered—fried everything.
A teenager with a headset took my order with the enthusiasm of someone counting the minutes until his shift ended. I got the signature burger, nothing fancy, no customizations. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. The flagship product, exactly as the average customer got it.
I took my tray outside to one of the plastic tables on the patio. The evening was perfect with a warm breeze blowing the smell of grilled meat around the area. A couple sat two tables over sharing fries, and some guy ate alone in his car with the windows down.
I unwrapped the burger. It looked smaller than the commercials. Flatter. The bun had that squished quality, and the lettuce was wilted.
I took a bite and chewed, letting myself actually taste it instead of just inhaling it. It was fine. Salty. A little sweet from the special sauce. The meat was thin and kind of flavorless on its own. Most of the taste came from the condiments, and the cheese was doing a lot of heavy lifting.
I took another bite. Then another.
No. Our burger was better than this. Not “better for a plant-based burger.” Just flat out better.
Ours had an actual bite to it, a char, a crust. Better flavor, too. Someone could eat one of our burgers with no mayo or ketchup and still enjoy it.
We weren’t going to just compete in this space.
We were going to own it.