Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Chad always looked effortlessly good. Like a male model every single day.
Had Chad hurt his feelings?
“Omigod, is that a pout?” Johnnie-boy asked.
“Yo, I think Ducky’s tilted,” Kai chimed in, interpreting his confusion as anger.
“I gotta go. They’re calling me.” Ducky decided there had to be more to the story. Chad wasn’t the kind of guy to go hard at anyone’s expense except for his sister, Chloe.
“Hey, Reeves is back,” Kai blurted a second before Ducky touched a finger to the screen to disconnect the call.
He’d figure it all out later. Right now, he was going to eat the first real food he’d had in a month.
He finished shrugging on his suit coat and looked around for Dallas. He stood close to a table where Greer sat, guiding him over with a wave of the arm.
“I think I want one of those Singapore Slings,” Ducky said, taking the seat across from Greer.
“You earned a double,” Dallas said, sliding in next to Greer.
“I damn sure did.” He reached his hand across the table for a quick knuckle touch. They all earned this carb-filled dinner.
Darkness and dread filled the space around Chad as he scrolled down the feed from their live event earlier in the day. It was the middle of the night, and he was up, wide awake, wondering how things had gotten so out of control. Talk about the power of being canceled in the same amount of time it took to snap a finger. He wasn’t sure most of these people even knew what he had said to cause such a ruckus, or if they knew who Ducky was, but his simple comment during a moment of surprise had morphed into an ugly monster, growing legs, feet, arms, two heads and a tail…all on its own.
If this feed was any indicator, Chad had been charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced for his heinous crimes against humanity. He was what was wrong with the world today and needed to be erased from any future narrative about Ducky—whatever that meant.
The Wilder public relations department was in hard problem-solving mode, working on Chad’s behalf, trying to repair his accidental blunder. Had they only live streamed on Twitch, it might not have been so bad but because they’d been public on Wilder’s search engine, his gaffe had blown up like an atomic bomb.
He swiped up the phone screen and leaned his ass against the edge of his father’s kitchen counter where he stayed any time he came to California. Who knew how long he stood there reading the comments on the now trending hashtags #ChadWilderhastogo and #IstandwithDucky. His heart sank and his stomach roiled.
He hadn’t meant to imply The Game Awards were trying to pull one over on their audience when he said that wasn’t Ducky on stage or that Ducky couldn’t have pulled off such a good performance, or good looks, or whatever they accused him of. He’d just been surprised. Stunned. Truth be told he’d been sexually bowled over. He’d never been so attracted to anyone in his life. Not in his entire life, and Ducky had set that bar damn high already.
Why was he explaining this to himself again? He needed Ducky to know.
Except Ducky had gone radio silent. Chad left the feed and went to text messages. He’d sent six messages, the first three were immediately after he walked back into the event room to find he’d missed Ducky’s call. The last three were to explain why he said what he said. By explain, he didn’t tell the whole truth about being so sexually charged by Ducky. Just that he’d been surprised. He’d hoped to stress there was nothing sinister or nefarious intended.
Ducky had always responded before, so why hadn’t he now?
Chad shut off his phone and tossed it on the counter behind him, plunging the room into complete darkness. A yawn built enough to slip out, and he scrubbed his palms down his face in frustration.
He reached for the refrigerator door, needing a can of water, wondering if there was any chance for sleep tonight. His fingertips brushed against something soft, startling the shit out of him. He recoiled his arm away, almost losing his balance as he tried to get away.
“I wasn’t quiet,” his dad said, amusement in his voice.
Chad’s heart thundered against his ribcage as he dropped his head between his shoulder blades, absorbing the scare. “I was distracted. You scared me.”
The way his father chuckled made him doubt the plan to scare wasn’t somewhere in the mix. The refrigerator door opened, and the light filtered into the dark kitchen.
“A water?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“Nah,” he said and decided to leave it right there. He took the offered water.
“The coverage still got you down?”
Chad rested back against the counter, now across from his father, and flipped the top, taking a long drink as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. People told him all the time that he and his father were cut from the same cloth. Moments like these were where he saw the similarities. Same height, same body build. Chad was lucky his dad had taught him the wonders of athletics. And the bedhead. The thick dark tresses stood on end just like his.