The Founder (Trillionaire Boys' Club Book 7)

by Aubrey Parker

  Again. Speechless.

  Quieter now. “She hasn’t written about you, has she?”

  “No.”

  “So, she can keep her mouth shut if she wants to. She does have a filter if she knows that something is important. Or is important to her.”

  Something clicks inside me. I’ve checked her sites. I’m on her email lists. I’ve been waiting for my turn on the chopping block — for the day Evan becomes the new Steve, ripe for public ridicule. But I’ve heard nothing beyond that silly stuff about “Ray.”

  I wonder what that means.

  I’m afraid I already know.

  “Like I said. Maybe it’s for the best because maybe having her in your life and business is too big a risk. Maybe she is too much of a wildcard like Callie thinks. But fuuuuck, man!” Hampton makes an exaggerated gesture, all arms and scrunched face. “If you ask me, your Type-A ass needs a wildcard!”

  I let that settle. Unfortunately, it feels right. I don’t see how this happened. I was using Hampton as a sounding board. I certainly never expected good advice. Who would have thought Hampton Brooks, who magazines have called “The Slumlord of Clothing,” would turn out to be such a sage?

  “I fucked up, didn’t I?”

  I don’t need an answer. Still, Hampton nods.

  “And not just in the argument. The whole thing. End to end.”

  “End to end.” Hampton is nodding slowly, solemnly, as if I’m now realizing a truth that’s been in front of my face for years. “I know you, man. You never really let her in. Maybe you took her to your place, but how much did you tell her about your past? Maybe you took her out, but how much did you hide her from the world?”

  “I didn’t think she’d want the attention.”

  “Her? Or you?”

  Dammit. He’s right. I thought I was creating business intimacy, because I was too slow to realize there was another kind at stake. I wanted to keep things low-key, but to Becca it probably looked like I was ashamed, keeping my toy in its box.

  We sort of fell into a relationship. I sort of fell into caring for her, and her for me. Before I knew it, she deserved another side of me, and a glimpse at what I normally hide. We became lovers accidentally. Only now I realize how much I really loved her.

  “Shit,” I say. It’s all so obvious now.

  “Shit indeed,” Hampton echoes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  REBECCA

  MY ATTENTION IS DISTRACTED, LIKE always. I’m trying to focus on my various websites and LiveLyfe pages, wondering if I left my webcam on from the earlier show for my fans. It’s hard to get excited about anything. Steve’s Tiny Dick isn’t doing it for me; working on the Make Guys Do Shit For You site isn’t doing it for me; tweaking the LiveLyfe ads that were so successful before I started ignoring them is vastly uninteresting.

  I can’t do a single damn thing. Why am I like this? I have no center. No idea how I’ve survived this long, how I’ve paid my bills and supported myself when I swear sometimes I can’t figure out how to tie my shoes.

  An ad pops up. I swat it away. Stupid intrusive things.

  I browse for no reason. I do some research on education, both on the web and on LiveLyfe. There are lots of LiveLyfe pages about different paradigms in education, but I browse with scorn. None of these people’s ideas are half as brilliant as what Evan had in mind.

  I don’t even know if I’m supposed to be excited about this stuff. Evan and I broke up, but I don’t know if he officially fired me. Or if I can be fired, since I’m a consultant and only took a job inside LiveLyfe because I didn’t want to sit there while Evan pondered his Big Idea.

  Am I supposed to give that million back?

  I probably should. I’m not earning it now. I haven’t heard from Evan, and I won’t after I’ve blocked all his calls and set all those email filters. I have no idea if he’s tried to get in touch. And I can’t bear to think about him. Not right now.

  I ponder this while browsing education research, thinking about Evan, anyway.

  My eyes water a little.

  But then the pop-up ad returns.

  I turn melancholy into hate.

  I hate those ads!

  This is a great way to reset my attention. It’s a new kind of LiveLyfe ad, and I can’t stand it. I kill it.

  Stupid LiveLyfe.

  Stupid Evan, for letting it happen.

  Stupid Evan, trying to change the world through education.

  My mind goes out, surfing the pages and mulling all the different approaches people have considered to change modern education. I feel pieces of me defocus and settle into the ideas on a visceral, gut-deep level. I find myself reading more and more — and then at some point, I’m reading about artificial intelligence. I have no clue how Evan wanted to marry AI and educational changes or if he was even serious, but I see the logic.

  I’m digging this project.

  I wish I could still participate. Build it side-by-side with Evan. I imagine us—

  No. I shake my head to clear it.

  The pop-up returns. Now it’s trying to piss me off. I looked into these things before, and one of the coolest if most obnoxious features of the new LiveLyfe ads — other than a refined ability to hyper-target the audience — is an aggressive kind of retargeting. It lets you pester the hell out of people with a ladder of offers. Your first ad to a group of people might offer your product for $50. Then if people don’t respond, you can send them another: “Okay, how about $40?”

  This time I look at the ad closer before swatting it: Learn how AI will change education forever, and why people who ride in the front of limousines are smarter than everyone else.

  It can’t possibly say that.

  But it does.

  I close the ad. Another one pops up immediately.

  This one just says, No, seriously.

  I’m intrigued. I don’t know how the ad is so perfectly targeted to what I’m newly interested in and my preferred chauffeuring style, but I’m fascinated by its persistence. I remember the cost of ads going way up for behavior like this. LiveLyfe knows that bothering its users too much will just piss people off, so the most aggressive ads are priced accordingly. Discourages the fly-by-night shysters.

  Hating myself a bit for falling for shenanigans, I click the link.

  But I’m not taken to a course or blog post about AI and education, let alone one meant specifically for front-seat limo riders. The link takes me to a live stream. Someone is sitting in front of a camera, looking ready for a lecture. The same thing I do for my fans on my page, only this page seems to be much more popular. My eye always goes to the viewer count, because I want to compare it to my own.

  The count on this page is in the hundreds of thousands. Almost half a million people are watching this live broadcast, eagerly waiting.

  I’m so shocked by the link’s direction and the large number that at first, I don’t see what the camera is showing.

  It’s Evan. I recognize the art hanging behind him. That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. It isn’t his office or his apartment high atop the USB tower. It’s a co-working space a block away. We went there together a few times to hash some stuff out. He knows that I love it there.

  Evan shuffles onscreen. He seems to notice something on a different part of his screen. He gives a tiny nod as if to say, Okay, now that whatever-I’m-looking-at has happened, we can finally get down to business.

  My heart is pounding. I don’t particularly want to look at Evan right now. My soul is in agony whenever I do. I left a piece of myself behind with him. It’s still out there, calling to me. I didn’t know how I’d changed until the new part was gone. I was a different person with him. A better person.

  Turn it off. This isn’t good for you. Nothing has changed.

  But as Evan begins to speak to his half-million viewers, I can’t turn away or even flinch.

  I hear my heartbeat in my ears. I feel it like a hammer in my chest.

  What is this? A new fea
ture announcement? A press conference? Onscreen, Evan looks so dire. You’d think for an announcement he’d be more ebullient.

  “My name is Evan Reese Cohen. You know me as the founder of LiveLyfe. With luck, someday, that won’t be the only way you know me. I’m 27 years old. And I have a secret.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  REBECCA

  STARK AND STRAIGHT-FACED. YOU’D think this was an introduction at an AA meeting. Or perhaps a confession.

  My eye goes to the viewer count. It’s above a half-million now. Something sent this thing viral, but what?

  I have a secret.

  My mind reels. I never saw many secrets in Evan. He’s close about his personal affairs, but not deceptive.

  What did he do?

  Movement on the side of my screen. A new ad in the same series: Keep watching.

  I finally get it. The ads are from Evan. He’s hyper-targeted the audience for the aggressive series so tightly that I’m the only person who’s seeing the ad. He couldn’t reach me through phone or email or PM, so he’s reaching me the only way he can. It’s how we met. In a dorky way, if we’d made it, LiveLyfe ads might have been our song.

  “There’s a rumor that I was at the Hill of Beans in my Austin office building last Tuesday. According to people who claim to have been there, I caused a scene.”

  I wait. Breath held.

  “It’s true. But it wasn’t entirely my scene.”

  My pulse rate doubles. Me. He means me.

  I wait for him to say, A disgruntled ex-employee. A consultant who didn’t work out and got fired. A loudmouth who sneaked her way into learning insider information at LiveLyfe and then spilled it to her friends.

  And that’s when I understand what this is: a quickie public relations move meant to get ahead of bad press. Steve blabbed. He told someone what I told him — the private, confidential stuff about the employees inside LiveLyfe — and someone trumpeted that news to the world.

  This is Evan’s attempt to step up and address a coming scandal.

  I’m about to watch LiveLyfe burn, under attack from interest groups determined to pry it open and tell the world that information isn’t safe at LiveLyfe, that all your personal data is for sale.

  It’s the fire I started, just like Evan was afraid I would if he let me off the leash inside his company.

  No wonder Evan looks so nervous. He’s in deep shit.

  Damn my big mouth.

  This is my fault. My fault.

  But instead of explaining me as a crazy employee, Evan says, “A woman. Someone I didn’t know until recently, who has turned my world upside down. Her name is Rebecca Presley.”

  Upside-down. I guess that’s better than Nuttier than a fruitcake.

  Evan swallows. He reaches off screen and takes a glass of water, raises it to his lips, and sips.

  “But there are also rumors that claim I was seeing this woman. Dating her. Those should have been self-evidently ridiculous because I’m a very private person. I eat at home, or with small groups in private dining rooms. I’d never date in public. There would never be rumors if I were dating, because I don’t expose myself like that. And if I was dating Ms. Presley? I certainly wouldn’t have been sitting in a Hill of Beans surrounded by other people — something the two of us did many times together. It was always business. That’s why I was so confident spending all that time in public.”

  I don’t know why I’m watching this. Is he about to throw me under the bus? Explain how the PR crisis I’m imagining is all my fault?

  There’s a heavy feeling in my chest. I want to be bothered watching Evan, but I can’t be. I still feel pulled toward him. And when his eyes meet the camera, I remember a day when I believed he felt pulled toward me.

  “Or at least, that’s how I saw things.”

  I sit up. The number of viewers is climbing.

  “The truth is that that second batch of rumors was also accurate.”

  My head lifts. Through the screen, our eyes meet.

  “I screwed up. I tried to maintain my privacy. To keep my personal life to myself. But I’m an idiot, and I didn’t see what was right in front of me. We were colleagues. Why wouldn’t we go out in public? There was nothing to it.”

  He looks down. His fingers move against one another, restless.

  “But there was something to it.”

  There’s a long moment of silence. My heart softens. A tear spills from my eye and rolls down my cheek.

  There was something to it.

  To me.

  To him.

  To the two of us, together.

  “My name is Evan Reese Cohen,” he tells the camera, “I was in love, and I blew it.”

  My hand goes to my mouth.

  I don’t know how to feel.

  Happy? Confused? Overwhelmed?

  I’m paralyzed. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.

  “I’m Evan Cohen, and if you come to the Vortex Co-Work Center right now, you can ask me whatever you want. I’m here alone. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about …”

  I hear the rest as a descending series of incomprehensible words, too faint behind me as I sprint for my front door.

  I’m here alone.

  Well, not if I can help it. He’s a block away. With luck, I’ll beat all the others.

  The crowds.

  The invasive, probing questions.

  Stuff Evan hates. Stuff I can maybe save him from. Because as pissed as I got when Evan said it to me, I want to take care of him, too.

  I’m out the front door, down the stairs, and onto the street before I realize I haven’t even put on any shoes. I was also trying a thing with my hair — and I’m talking way before my webcam show — and have a big, fat curler still above my right ear. I only now remember putting it there. I put one curler in, got distracted, then never finished. I obviously had the curler there throughout my entire show, and nobody said anything. God bless my fans — that’s how well they know me, that they figure one forgotten curler is just Becca As Usual.

  Fuck it. I’m running like a sociopathic child. I’m the least elegant thing you’ve ever seen. The least sexy reunion-in-the-making anyone has ever heard of.

  I go for the Vortex door, not seeing the old man reaching for the handle. I practically knock him down. He gives me a hard look as I turn to wave my apology. Because I’m looking backward, I don’t see the coffee table in the main area. I’m ass-over-teakettle, weightless in mid-fall, knowing this is going to hurt.

  The press and lookie-loos, when they show, will have even more to ask Evan about. Like, Who is this dead girl on the floor? and What the fuck is wrong with her?

  I see the ceiling tiles as I fall.

  Then something stops me. I look up to see Evan above me, shocked to have caught me. He’s blinking down at me. His look isn’t adoring, which is what’s supposed to happen when lovers run into each other’s arms. He looks confused, his face clearly saying, What the hell am I getting myself into?

  “Becca?”

  “Funny meeting you here,” I say.

  Now that I’m straightening, his face lights up. The shock is passing, and I see the other side of the expression he wore on the video. Nerves, not fear. Evan loves his privacy. Hates the public, and exposure. That had to be harder for him than sitting still would ever be for me.

  And now that we’re here together, his arms properly around my waist and our eyes meeting, I see those nerves becoming something else.

  Adoration.

  Relief.

  Poor bastard. He knew full well that he could have done all of that, and I might not even have come.

  “You’re insane,” he says.

  “Yeah, well, you have a stick up your ass.”

  There’s a noise from the street. I barely hear it. We’re in our own little circle.

  With his eyes on me, Evan says, “I love you, Rebecca Presley.”

  My smile is weaker than I’d hoped. I wanted to be a hardass just to mess with him,
but my heart is melting too fast.

  “I love you too, asshole.”

  The old man at the shop’s front yells at someone. Someone apparently even ruder than me.

  We both look back. People are starting to arrive. I don’t think they’ve seen us yet, but the staff is loud, clearly wanting to make themselves understood after one crazy bitch sprinted past without paying.

  Evan looks at me. “I don’t care. I’ll answer all their questions. Privacy means nothing without you.”

  It’s sweet. But I have other designs on Evan right now, and I don’t want an audience any more than he does. “There’s a back door,” I point. “There.”

  He stands firm, resolute. “I mean it. I love you, and I won’t hide us anymore.”

  But I shove at him, my heart full and thoughts lewd.

  “Move it, Cohen. We’ve got things to do, and we can’t do them in public without getting arrested.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  REBECCA

  FIVE MONTHS LATER

  FALL IN Texas can still be plenty hot, but as I sit on Evan’s deck this high up, I’m kind of chilly. The view is spectacular, and although I hate to admit it, I like the “queen of all that lays below” feeling I get when up here. I thought shorts and a tee would be enough for today given my current situation, but I was wrong. I want to get into the hot tub, but I know I’m not supposed to do that.

  Annoying.

  I consider going inside to grab another layer, but I’m too lazy. Work was hard. I had to sit in this chaise lounge all day, telling people about Evan and our relationship for the past half-hour as part of the LiveLyfe “humanizing” initiative that Evan hates, and Skyping with interesting people about the Apptitude AI before that. Oh, and once, I had to get up and refill my lemonade.

  My thoughts about warming up go as far as glancing toward the glass wall to Evan’s apartment — or, I guess, our apartment. Evan’s inside, pacing, still on the phone with God knows whom. He’s been going back and forth for as long as I’ve been doing the LiveLyfe Ask Me Anything session.