Page 11 of Liam

I can barely keep my eyes open, and for that, I blame Adelaide. It’s only been three days since she re-entered my life, and I can’t seem to get her out of my head—and not in a good way. She’s infiltrated my mind, left trails of darkness in every space of my being, and in case I haven’t mentioned it yet, I fucking hate that she’s back.

Now I have to play this stupid game of avoidance, as if she isn’t invadingmyspace, working formyfamily, doing fuck knows what when I’m not around.

Honestly, I’ve expected to walk into the studio to see all our equipment smashed to pieces, just for her own amusement.

I’ve considered temporarily moving all our shit back to the house just to be safe, but I don’t know how Linc would feel about it. Speaking of Linc, he’s fast asleep in the passenger’s seat—must be nice to be him—and I really wish he’d get his license at some point because this whole playing chauffeur shit is getting old. To be fair, I’ve just picked him up from the airport after hespent three days in New York being a billionaire’s shadow so we can retire at thirty… so he says.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting into the studio aftershefinishes work just to getmywork done, and it’s incredibly inconvenient. Okay, not really, because I work late anyway, but now I have no choice in the matter, and I think that’s what’s pissing me off the most.

Well, that, and the fact that these little airport trips always take three hours out of my day, when I could be doing literally anything else.

“Jesus Christ!” Linc yells out of nowhere. “Will you tell your brain to shut the fuck up! I can’t fucking sleep with how loud your thoughts are!”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck off.”

“Get fucked.”

So… that whole twin telepathy bullshit appears to be real, but for some reason, it only seems to work when we’re in close proximity. Weird, right? It wasn’t something I picked up on until the past couple of years, because Linc and I had always donealmosteverything together. Ever since he met Joseph Kovács, our brother’s billionaire father-in-law, he’s wanted tobecomehim. Which is fine, I guess. But Joseph lives and works in New York City, and I… well, I don’t like to put myself in situations where I don’t have full awareness or control of my surroundings. It’s a great way to live. If you’re me.

Linc gives up on sleeping, sits taller, and looks out the window. “Can we go to the diner? I’m starving.”

We’re about ten minutes from home, and we’ve had the opportunity to stop anywhere from the airport to here, and he choosesthe diner.And he won’t just want to run in and grab something to go, he’ll want to sit inside and talk business.Whereas all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep like the dead. “Sure.”

Another thing I noticed over the past few years is that I am (unfortunately) a people pleaser. Ayesman. It’s hard for me to say no to those around me, and since Linc is the one I’m around the most, I’ve fallen into the trap of forever agreeing with him—even when I don’t.

It’s the one major difference between us, and I fear I may be the only one who sees it. I also fear that it may, one day, become my downfall.

“Rundown now or later?” Linc asks as he sits opposite me in the booth. He takes four napkins from the dispenser and hands me two.

“Now’s good.”

“We have a lot of opportunities,” he starts, and for the next few minutes, I do my best to listen. None of what he says excites me, but that’s been the norm for a while now.

Lincoln and I were iPad kids before “iPad kids” became athing,soI grew up watching a hell of a lot of content. Later, I’d post random videos, mainly with the two of us doing dumb shit around the house. Then, at the ripe old age of fifteen, we postedthevideo… the one that went viral, put us on the map, and the rest, as they say, is history. We gained millions of new followers, posted more content, worked whenever we weren’t forced to go to school, and suddenly, we were bringing in more money than we knew what to do with. After promising Dad we’d still earn our high school diplomas, we quit the public school system (thank fuck) and did it online, so we could focus all our energy on what Linc refers to as “The Business.”

I just like making content.

I come up with the ideas, do the editing, post the content, and study the back end. But Linc—he’s the star of the show. He brings the energy when I don’t have it in me, and anyone who watches us can see that.

The money we earn goes into a shared account that we pull our salaries from, and it’s that account that Linc wants to dosomethingwith. Investments, trades, whatever.

Again, I just like making content.

“What’s up with you?” Linc asks, after going through all the “opportunities” at our feet.

I shrug. “Nothing.”

Our food arrives—burgers, fries, and drinks—and our server knows us well enough to give the fries to one of us and the burgers to the other. She just doesn’t know which one of us to give them to. We wait until she has her back turned to switch. While Linc sprinkles salt on the fries and pours ketchup over the lot, I remove the pickles from both burgers, then scrape the onion from one to the other. I hand him the one with extra onion at the same time he slides over the fries.

We sip our drinks in unison, then dig in.

Around the mouthful of food, he asks, “Are you still pissed I forgot to tell you about Adelaide?”

Yes. “No.”

After my run-in with Adelaide, I gathered my thoughts, then attempted to reign in my anger. I couldn’t. So, I called Dad and asked why he never mentioned it to me. Turns out, he had calledLincoln.“Linc’s not even home.Iam,” I’d told him, my irritation showing.“You realize we’re not the same person, right?”

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