Page 26 of Red Flags Only

“We’re good, Jupiter.”

Chapter Fifteen

Spicy chicken nuggets make everything better.

Lyra

“Ordering delivery when everything in this town is, at most, a twenty minute bike ride away is a total waste of money,” I remark as Jove shoves a one-hundred dollar bill at the terrified teenager on my porch, snatching the Wendy’s bag from the poor kid’s hand.

“Good,” Mr. Rich responds, flicking my door shut.

Right. Of course. My bad.

Jove rejoins me at the couch, where I’ve been sitting squished up in the corner, legs tucked neatly against my chest as we converse. Or. While he converses, mostly, and I wonder how I ended up in my living room with arguably the most avoided man in town. Arguable only because his brother also lives here.

As he settles back into his corner – way on the other side of the couch, bless all – my question is answered in the best of ways.

“I got a couple of twenty piece spicy nuggets for us to share and a cheesy cheddar burger for you, fries, and all of the sauces so you can do yourthing,” he says, nose wrinkling as he digs through the bag, setting each item on the coffee table carefully before snagging two little plastic pots of honey mustard for himself. The rest of the sauces heleaves for me so that I may have the joy of dipping my nuggets in every single one of them to create the Ultimate Sauce, a joy Jupiter mistakenly believes is horrendous.

He knows me so well, all the way down to my not-quite-on-the-menu burger order and my frankensauce love. Knows andremembers, ordering food without any input from me when I had escaped to the bathroom twenty minutes ago to have a minorwhat the flagmoment alone. And he got it all correct, despite the fact that we’ve never once eaten together.

“I wanted to discuss something with you,” he says as he divvies up the nuggets, ten for me and thirty for him. “A bit of a scheme, really, that I think would be mutually beneficial.”

“A mutually beneficial scheme?” I ask, sliding my legs into a criss-cross position as I take my nuggets, opening a line of sauces on the coffee table beside me, which Jove slides closer to us for easy reach. “I literally just got accustomed to you being you. Sort of. Do you think we’ve graduated to schemes already?” We haven’t even graduated to the same side of the couch.

Jove hums. “Well, we are lifelong best friends. I heard lifelong best friends scheme together all the time. It was in the training modules.”

I shove a multi-dipped spicy nugget in my mouth and chew slowly to buy some time.

He’s not wrong, exactly. But. I do not want to end up in jail. Or an FBI watch list. Or that tv show where they deep dive into the seedy underbelly of small town America.

My nugget time runs out.

“What sort of scheme?” I ask, throwing up orange cones and caution signs in my head.

“The sort of scheme where you help me research for books, and I help you by being big and scary to anyonewho would hurt or take advantage of you.”

My nerve endings light, excitement making me bounce.

Jove and his brother are the duo behind the pen name Rouge – like the last name Ithoughtthey had – a wildly successful, award-winning dark romance author who happens to write my very favorite books in the entire world. Not because I’m biased or anything. And definitely not because they’ve named several main characters after me, parsing my name into bits and pieces until the options ran out. Nope. It is, in fact, because the writing is superb, the characters are hilarious, and the romance isswoon.Red flags everywhere, just like we want in our fictional men. Emphasis onfictional.

A bookshelf dedicated to my collection of Rouge books, all signed special editions courtesy of the authors themselves, lives in my bedroom. Framed character art breaks up the different series, as well as themed bookmarks and candles and plushies and literally any other merch you could possibly conceive. No corner of the internet remains safe from my credit card when it comes to Rouge-inspired merch. I will find it, and I will buy it.

The opportunity to help Jove with research now is like… It’s like my last name.Gold. I’d give my left foot for any involvement in the production of one of Rouge’s books.

“Yes,” I blurt. “I’ll help.”

Jove’s mouth twitches at my enthusiasm before he shoves a handful of fries in it. Plain. Not a single, tiny bit of sauce on them.

Wild.

“You’ll help?” he asks. “You don’t even know what sort of research I need done.” His eyes track the movement of my shoulders as I wiggle, buzzing.

“Whatever you need,” I assure him, then gasp. “Doesthis mean I’ll get early information about what you’re working on?” Usually he’s a steel trap when it comes to his current projects. Something about spoilers being bad for the environment? Total nonsense. I think he just likes to torture me.

The only information I have on what he’s working on right now is that he’s suddenly started saying “flag” in replacement of his favorite cuss because the book is, for some reason, about Flag Day.

His whole body shifts, twisting toward me on the couch, and then heleans.

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