Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
He couldn’t resist sleep for long, though. Not when the endless miles rolled past in hypnotic patterns, and Brendan was a calming presence at his side, casual and easy behind the wheel. Sometimes Brendan’s complete stoic calm hurt, this thing that made Cillian wonder if he would even be a footnote in Brendan’s memories in five years.
But sometimes it just made the world seem…
Survivable.
If Brendan wasn’t bothered, it wasn’t anything worth bothering with.
That last thought stayed with him as he finally drifted off. Cillian didn’t wake again until the sun left his face and neck hot, and he winced as he opened his eyes, squinting against the sharp stab of brightness. Morning—and to their left the day was ablaze with the bright colors of the Pacific, throwing back the sunlight in scintillant blue, stretching on into eternity. The trees around the road had shifted, more scrubby things, pines, the occasional great redwood; the air was sharper, light with the tang of the sea.
Yawning, Cillian glanced over at Brendan; he looked…more relaxed somehow, drifted off in some quiet contemplative place with his eyes on the road and his shirt collar teasing against his throat in the wind.
“Morning,” Cillian mumbled, rubbing at one eye. “Where are we?”
“Northern California.” Brendan glanced over at him. “Not far out from our destination. Sleep well?”
“Mmmhm. Better. What about you? Aren’t you tired?”
“I can sleep when we get there.”
“Where is there?”
“Home,” Brendan said simply, and Cillian frowned.
I don’t understand, he thought, but kept his thoughts to himself.
Because northern California wasn’t a publicity stunt date for the benefit of the paparazzi. The tabloid vultures wouldn’t even know where they were.
And Cillian was trying not to think too hard about that, when it probably didn’t mean a thing.
To distract himself, he fished his phone out and checked his notifications. A few texts from Maxwell letting Cillian know he expressly disapproved of this trip; a check-in email from his agent wanting to know how he was getting on. Six new voicemails from his mother, and the visual voicemail app said at a glance they weren’t an emergency, weren’t really anything but her fussing at him to come home again. A few hundred thousand Twitter, TikTok, and Insta notifications he never read, but…
He stole a glance at Brendan, then tapped Twitter to take a peek, scrolling idly through his notifications, skimming when there was no way in hell he could catch up but—oh. Oh. He laughed, pressing his fingers to his mouth.
“…Brendan? They’re calling us #HotBreCi. Or sometimes #HotBrekki. Like…hot brekkie? Hot breakfast? Is that what that is?”
“Oh…God. That’s awful.” Brendan let out a groaning laugh, shoulders shaking. “That’s so fucking awful we need to break up soon to make it stop.”
Fucking awful.
Break up soon.
Make it stop.
God, fucking stop that. Stop those…little jolts of pain.
Stop wanting.
And stop breaking his own heart.
He smiled weakly. “At least they didn’t try something like #TellLau or #Lautte—you know, like latte?”
“…I will throw your phone in the Pacific. Stop. Stop trying to re-hashtag our hashtag.”
Cillian laughed. “You don’t like social media that much, do you?”
“I’m over forty and easily annoyed, so the only place for me on social media is either in a knitting group or a rabid conspiracy theorist cult swearing the 5G made me magnetic and caused me to develop alien DNA.”
“Don’t forget flat earth.”
“…phone. In the Pacific. Put it away.” Brendan shot him a sharp, amused look. “Once we get there, no phones until it’s time to come back to the city.”
“Is that another of your house rules?”
“It’s another of my sanity rules.”
“Okay, okay.” Cillian started to swipe Twitter off—then froze as a notification caught his eye, someone @-ing him and Brendan both in a threaded conversation.
please. he’s a rice chaser riding lau’s coattails, and lau’s a gross geriatric pedo perv.
And another one…and another and another, different users but they all…
lol do they know how stupid they look together
gold digger. sleeping his way to the top.
I don’t know why y’all stan CT I heard he did a bunch of really gross shit in GCs back in the day
“I did not!” Cillian spluttered. A sick feeling twisted in his chest and stomach “I’ve…I’ve never been in anyone’s group chats!”
“…you’re reading the comments. Never read the comments.” Brendan pulled one hand off the steering wheel and held it out. “Phone.”
“But—”
“Phone.”
Cringing, Cillian dropped his phone into Brendan’s hand. Rather than pitch it out to the ocean, though, Brendan just tossed it over his shoulder, sending it rattling down to get lost in the things piled in the back.
“Don’t go down that path,” Brendan said. “Because sooner or later you’ll forget who you are because you’ve been outvoted about who you should be. What did they say?”
“I…that…that I’m a rice chaser and a gold digger and…and basically a starfucker. And there’s some rumor that I did something gross in someone’s group chat? But I’ve…never…? There were those anon kink chats, but I never did anything, just listened and asked questions to learn, I don’t…I didn’t…?”