Chapter 8

8

Beck

Leaving my penthouse isn't an option Sunday morning. In fact, leaving the Copper Valley area isn't an option for the foreseeable future. Every meeting I was supposed to have in New York, California, and everywhere in between has been canceled or will be covered by someone else on my team.

My invitations to public appearances have all been revoked.

All of them.

I'm on the world's shit list, waiting to see if that video Sarah posted will do anything to redeem even a fraction of the reputation I built on hard work, luck, and lots of hours hanging with kids at hospitals, schools, and in third world countries where another of my foundations helps provide clean food and water.

Of everything I do, my favorite part is helping the kids. I loved my childhood, and I've always wanted kids. Hell, I am a kid. But since we made that decision to sign that contract for a record deal for Bro Code, my life's been heading in a direction that convinces me more and more every year that it won't happen.

It's been five years since the second—and last—woman told me I was going to be a father. In both cases, paternity tests proved them wrong, but that was enough for me. And I haven't dated a woman since that I've been able to fully trust.

So having everything on the verge of falling apart now, when I have a bank account big enough to buy a small country, and when my businesses could operate almost on auto-pilot to keep funding more charity work like the foundation with Vaughn?

This sucks.

It's too early to call Vaughn again to grovel some more—do not get on a pro athlete's shit list when he's a reformed street kid who's now basketball's poster child for projects related to children, at least not if you want to form a joint foundation with him—so I'm hanging out in my small weight room, sparring with Davis.

My old neighborhood buddy and former bandmate lives an hour or so outside the city, doing some real job with the nuclear power plant down there at the Virginia-North Carolina border that required him to go to college after the band split up, but he came up for Ellie and Wyatt's engagement party last night.

"That tweet could've been worse," he says as he aims a right hook at my ribs. "You could've said it to an old dude."

I grunt and aim a right hook right back. "That would've actually been funny ."

"Knock, knock, you got your clothes on?" Ellie calls from somewhere outside the weight room.

"No, we're both naked, and your brother's sucking my dick," Davis calls.

"In that case, I'm bringing a camera," she replies.

He blocks my sucker punch aimed at his gut, and he bounces back as Ellie appears in all the mirrors around the room. "Ew, put your shirts on," she says with a grin.

I use mine to wipe my face before heading toward her. "C'mere and give your favorite brother a hug."

"Touch me and die."

"Touch her and die," Wyatt agrees behind her.

Pretty sure he could take me—he's mostly a rocket scientist for the Air Force, but he takes being in the military seriously, and in addition to being brilliant, he also flies jets to test them out, which makes him badass in my book—so I settle for bending over and holding out a fist to Tucker, who's standing between them. "Hey, little man. You have fun at your party last night?"

"The grown-ups talked too much," he tells me.

"Yeah, and that never ends," I agree.

"You know your phone's blowing up on your kitchen counter?" Ellie says to me.

"What phone? I don't have a phone." Shit. If I missed a call from Vaughn, I'm probably dead.

She gives me an exasperated smile, then ruffles Tucker's hair. "Uncle Beck has a Pac-Man game here."

"No way!"

"Yep. Right through that door."

That's all the invitation Tucker needs. He's darting to my game room across the hall before I can tell him I also have Donkey Kong in there.

"Don't break it," Davis mutters with a smirk under his beard and man-bun while he pulls on a black T-shirt that matches the ink up and down his arms.

"He can't break it," I say.

He, Ellie, and Wyatt all exchange glances, and Davis is the only one looking amused.

"Dude. Shit. Did you guys break Pac-Man at my house in Shipwreck?" They were out at my favorite little getaway in the Blue Ridge Mountains this past week for the Pirate Festival. Yes. Pirate Festival in the mountains. It's a thing.

"Relax," Wyatt says. "We didn't break Pac-Man."

"Mom sent cinnamon rolls," Ellie adds quickly, and dammit , they're hiding something.

But cinnamon rolls are the magic words.

My mother makes the best cinnamon rolls on the entire planet. I've flown home overnight from Australia before just to be there when she pulled them out of the oven. When we were kids, everyone knew when she made cinnamon rolls, because you could smell them baking all the way down to the end of the street at the Wilsons' house, and she always made enough to feed an army, because that's how many kids would show up on the doorstep looking for Saturday morning cinnamon rolls.

But when I head for the kitchen, Ellie blocks me. "Tell me you're not pulling the Hollywood fake relationship thing with my neighbor," she says in that deadly tone of voice that suggests there's one right answer and one wrong answer that will result in a titty twister to end all titty twisters.

But it still doesn't stop me from fantasizing about Sarah, which I've been trying very hard not to do all morning.

Those eyes. Those intense, wary eyes. And don't get me started on the curves hiding under her clothes.

She has me fascinated. Which is dangerous, because I know she has secrets.

"What? Fake relationship with Sarah? No. You know me better than that."

She crosses her arms and demonstrates how much she's learned about being a mom in the year since she and Wyatt started dating seriously.

Shit, she's good at that don't give me your bullshit glare.

"What?" I ask again.

"The apology video?" she prompts.

"She wanted to spread the word about giraffes. I wanted to apologize. Win-win." And my growing belief that it was that simple, that she's not interested in anything else, is both refreshing and frustrating, because I think I like her.

"Have you talked to your team this morning?" Ellie asks.

"Hey, nudie dude, your brains are here," Davis calls.

"Was he always this not-funny?" I ask Ellie.

"Were you always this sensitive? That was hilarious. And I take it that's a no to talking to your team yet."

"It's Sunday. I told them to take the day off." Not that they listened, because we're in crisis mode, but it was a nice dream.

"At this rate, I'll take a Sunday off in three years," Charlie says. She stops in the doorway too and looks me up and down, her no-bullshit meter also clearly pinging high today. "You're not answering your phone."

"You want one of my mom's cinnamon rolls? They go great with bad news. Did I miss Vaughn?"

"No, and it's not all bad news."

That means it's mostly bad news with a side of sunshine. "New plan. Cancel all my appearances for the next month, and I'll go into hiding in Shipwreck while we tell people I'm in rehab."

"Everyone who invited you to appearances for the next four months canceled them already. We're at a point of having to make up an event for you to have an appearance at if you're ever going to be seen in public again."

"So…we just need to spread the rehab rumors?"

"It's astonishing to me that you run a billion-dollar fashion empire with this kind of attitude," Ellie says.

I grunt. It won't be a billion-dollar fashion empire for long at this rate.

"He's a lot smarter when we're in Milan or Paris," Charlie tells her. "Being home turns him into a teenager who just wants to play video games again."

I'd argue that that's not fair, except it's true. "Home's for kicking back and relaxing. I work four hundred eighty-seven days of the year, so when I get my twenty-six to relax, I relax . Work hard, play hard."

"Until you fuck up hard," Charlie points out.

"Video didn't work?"

"Worked too well."

Ellie glares harder.

Charlie gives me the you're so screwed smile.

And I realize that whatever's going on, cinnamon rolls won't solve it.