Page 130 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
It’s Asher.
I’ve finally grown used to his silent approach. He’s standing close. Too close. He’s blocking the view from the living room with his body.
“Your pulse is racing,” he whispers.
“She knows,” I whisper back. “She has to know.”
“She doesn’t know,” Asher says calmly. “She’s projecting her own narrative. There’s a four percent chance she guesses the truth.”
“It feels like a hundred,” I hiss.
Asher looks down at me. His blue eyes are intense. He reaches out, his fingers brushing the back of my hand. A forbidden touch.
“Endure,” he whispers. “Twenty-four hours. Then we launch. Then she leaves.”
“And then what?” I ask.
“Then,” Asher says, his voice dropping, “we stop pretending.”
“Hey!” Harper calls from the living room. “Where are the napkins? And why is Asher cornering you? Is he reciting digits of Pi again?”
Asher pulls back instantly.
“Yes,” Asher calls back. “I’m explaining why paper napkins are inefficient.”
He walks back out.
I close my eyes. I count to ten.
Twenty-four hours. Just twenty-four hours.
The office is a hive.
Normally, the office is completely dead on a Saturday. Today, the floor is vibrating. Fifty developers, ten marketing interns, and a nervous PR team are running on caffeine and adrenaline.
The countdown clock on the wall reads: 14 Hours: 00 Minutes.
We’re in the final sprint.
I’m standing at the whiteboard in the main conference room—now dubbed the War Room—mapping out the social media rollout.
“Okay,” I say to the team. “At ten, the influencers post the ‘I Found My Tribe’ videos. At eleven, we drop the founder profiles. And at midnight, the app goes live globally.”
“Are we sure about the profiles?” Sarah from PR asks. “The Phantom Trio reveal? It’s risky.”
“It’s time,” Ethan says from the head of the table.
He’s wearing a black hoodie, sleeves pushed up. He looks tired but electric. “People trust faces. They don’t trust shadows.”
“Speaking of faces,” Owen says, walking in with a tray of coffees. “Guess who’s here?”
The elevator doors open.
Harper walks out. She’s wearing a Mosaic t-shirt she must have cut and styled herself, paired with a leather skirt. She looks like a mascot.
“Morning, team!” she yells. “I brought donuts! And moral support! And chaos!”
“Great,” Ethan mutters. “Just what we need.”
