Page 20 of Worthy or Knot (Serendipity Omegaverse #3)

Twenty

CHARLOTTE

R ain hits the windows of the rental in a steady rhythm that soothes my nerves, acting in total opposition to the mess my socials have become since I fell asleep last night.

The overcast sky leaves the kitchen and living room with long shadows, but I don’t bother to turn on any of the lights as I pad across the space to the coffee maker.

It’s one of those single-cup machines, so I drop one of the pods into the top and double check the water level before grabbing a plain white mug from the cabinet above.

As the machine goes to work, my phone vibrates again, this time with a message from Kirsten.

You didn’t tell me your match was rich rich. Oh my god.

Even as I send her a quick reply, another notification from Instagram pings.

Oops?

So are you leaving the company?

No. Why?

Well you obviously don’t need the money now.

Because I got into ballet for the money…

And your weekend meet up went well. Clearly.

Before I can decide just how much to divulge right now, she sends a picture.

It’s a screenshot of one of those awful gossip websites that treat speculation as fact.

It’s Cole and me, his arm around my waist as we walked one of the many walkways along the water yesterday after leaving Pike’s Place.

He’s smiling, his eyes locked on me. The angle of the shot doesn’t show my face at all.

Under the photo, the headline reads: Cole Fallon attempts to hide new Council Match. Trouble in paradise already?

Gagging, I drop my phone onto the counter and silence the entire thing. My skin itches with all the notifications.

Several of my fellow dancers in the company spend the off season—and the few days off during the season, too—cultivating a social media presence.

Mostly day-in-the-life vlogs and offering a behind-the-scenes point of view of being a ballet dancer for the largest group in the country.

It’s not something I’ve ever been interested in, though.

That amount of attention is too unnerving for me.

Instead, I pad my income by offering yoga and pilates classes at a small gym down the street from our apartment.

Having two partners that split the bills also helps.

Another notification lights up my phone, and I groan. Every single person who has hoped to go viral clearly has no idea what that really means.

“You all right?” Megan’s voice precedes her.

I hold up my phone in silent answer. She frowns and takes it from me, swiping open one of the messages from Kirsten. Her eyebrow rises as her face pales.

“These are from yesterday?” she asks, though I’m not entirely sure why. It’s obvious enough by my outfit that they are. “How did they even…”

She trails off and sets the phone down.

It’s another screenshot. The grainy picture of me making out with Cole on that bench fills the screen. I quickly lock my phone, forcing the screen black.

“He warned us cameras follow him,” I say. He’d warned me again while we were out, on that very bench.

I pour in milk and some of the chocolate syrup I’d gotten with Cole yesterday while passing time waiting for the boat to be ready. There’s probably a picture of that just waiting for me to be tagged in, too.

“I thought he was exaggerating,” Megan admits after a long minute. “I guess I underestimated how many people would be parasocial freaks.”

My lips curve, just a bit. “What, you’ve never looked up what your favorite contestant on Love Island was doing after the show?”

Her nose scrunches as she grimaces. “Absolutely not, and you know it. I don’t know how you stomach shows like that.” She pretends to gag. “And I guess I didn’t realize he was quite that famous. I mean, are people that obsessed with the Hilton kids?”

I shrug. “I don’t think so. But think about the amount of people who know every single sibling and child in the royal families of Europe. Most of them will never be working royals or anything, but they still draw a crowd whenever they’re in public.”

Megan purses her lips. “Owning a massive financial conglomerate is not the same as being the cousin to the King of England.”

“Isn’t it?” I ask lightly. “Isn’t capitalism the throne America bows before?”

Megan grimaces again before sighing. “Fine, you have a point.”

“And it doesn’t help that his mom has made it her mission to put all three of them in the spotlight,” I offer.

She brushes by me and grabs a mug of her own, dropping a new pod into the coffee maker and setting it to brew. “You’ve talked about it with him?”

I shake my head. “No, it hasn’t come up.”

There’s been so much press around his parents’ dissolution, it wasn’t hard to find tons of conflicting info.

One of the consistent threads, though, was how much Sienna Fallon had worked to cultivate her children’s public personas.

Cole less than his sisters, but there’s only so much avoiding the media you can do when someone else is pulling the strings.

No wonder he was so hyperaware yesterday.

And yet, he’s managed to keep the fact that he’s bonded to Marcus completely hidden.

If there were even a whisper that he might be bonded, it would be everywhere.

A bachelor poised to inherit his parents’ multi-million dollar fortune that’s already got a following of fans?

There’s no way the gossip sites would be able to resist. It would send their ad revenue through the roof.

“Oh God, where we live isn’t going to get doxxed, is it?” Megan turns away from her coffee, her face pale and her eyes wide. “Or my job? I’ve seen what some healthcare workers deal with on social media when people figure out where they work.”

“We… might,” I admit after a minute. “It’s probably something we should ask him about.”

Megan mutters a curse and then chugs half her coffee. “I’ll let my management know things might get… well, even more wild than our ER already is most days.”

My phone buzzes again. With a sigh, I dump out the rest of the coffee and put the mug in the dishwasher.

“We only have half an hour before we have to leave for the airport,” I say. “Are you extracting Marcus or am I?”

Megan finishes her coffee and stretches her neck.

“I’ll do it. Let me get ready, first, though. Give them as much time as we can.”