Page 18 of The Influencer

“Give me a break already. We’ve been dancing around this for a year. Go on a damn date with me. You know we’re good together.”

“Yeah, but…” I put his hand back on him where it belongs. “I don’t do ‘together.’”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Trust issues.”

“You don’t think you can trust me?” he pouts. “Come on… You called. I came. Literally.”

I try to smile, but I need to get him out of here. “I’d make a terrible boyfriend. We know this.”

“Ugh. I’m not asking you to be my boyfriend, I’m just asking you to give more a chance.”

“But I like it like this.”

“You ever think you care more about your fans than you do the actual people in your life?”

I roll my eyes and get out of bed. Kyle does not qualify as a “person in my life.” After turning off the cameras and lights, I pull my shorts back on. “It’s a job. I don’t know what to tell you. I mean, I enjoy it. You’re a perfectly good guy, but I’m just not in a place in my life where I can do a relationship. I’ve got too much going on.”

My schedule is packed, not to mention Gideon’s next tour begins at the end of November. I’ll be out of town for a year. Relationships aren’t happening. Collabs and hook ups are all I have time for, and I’m totally fine with that. While I’ve never been in one, relationships sure seem like a lot of work. And at my age? What’s the point?

Kyle sits up and swings his long legs off the bed, popping off his condom and ditching it in the trash before finding his clothes. “I get it,” he says, sounding all pathetic and defeated. “Maybe one of these days.”

“Sure, yeah, give me a few years.” I offer, even though I have no intention of dating Kyle then either.

“I’m hoping I won’t still be waiting around for you in years. OnlyFans isn’t my end game, you know?”

“Ow, put the claws back, baby.”

He glares at me, but there’s actual pity on his face, and I make my own expression a mask of indifference. I won’t like what’s coming here. “I’m trying to finish law school. I have plans. I want a life. What do you want, Jade?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Uh-huh. Right.” He nods toward one of the cameras. “This one’s fifty-fifty.”

“Of course,” I say.

“And don’t charge less than thirty. That blow job was good, and we both know it.”

“It was.” I nod in complete agreement.

He takes a few grudging photos with me that we can use to tease the collab online before I walk him out. We don’t kiss goodbye.

5

asher

I could say I don’t know what I’m doing here. I could also say I was high or out of my mind when I was messaging with Jade the other day, but I know exactly what I’m doing here, and I can’t spend one more second in that apartment with Liv without losing my shit on her.

While I get that forcing myself on her is wrong on every level, her attempt to force marriage on me is cruel in its own right. How am I supposed to know what I want out of life when I haven’t experienced so much of it? I went from a basement gamer to Adam Haas’s brother to Olivia’s boyfriend so fast my brain hadn’t even had time to fully develop. And yeah, I might be hedging my bets a little here by not breaking up with her before I see what’s out there, but I don’t see going to a gay bar as being unfaithful.

Not totally anyway. I’m not gonna do anything tonight. I just want to check it out. Look.

Jade is surprisingly easy to spot. He’s probably five-ten and over six feet in heels, which makes him one of the taller men in the club, and his hair is like a gold beacon. The hot pink mesh bodysuit he’s got on?

Well… it draws the eye.

Lots of eyes.

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