My Brother's Billionaire Best Friend - Max Monroe Page 0,18

in my lap and a cell phone flashing with something on the screen.

Whose phone is this?

Is this my phone?

Or, like, my heaven-allocated phone?

I inspect it with clumsy fingers, but eventually, I figure out it’s mine.

Is this like prison? I get one phone call or text message before God gets here?

I shrug and figure it’s worth a shot.

It takes a serious effort to see past the light—which, by the way, is even brighter than I imagined—and takes forever for me to unlock the damn thing. But once I do, I start scrolling through my missed text messages while a Neil Diamond revival concert starts to filter into my ears.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was alive and my dear old dad was playing DJ, but like the voice said, God is coming and momma is about to head to her final home.

When I tap to open the text message inbox, I find a few missed text messages from my mom and another one from Evan.

Man, they’re going to be so sad when they find out the news.

Evan: I hope you don’t lose too much blood today. LOL. But seriously, let me know how everything goes.

Looks like that rat bastard will be eating his words when he finds out I lost a death-worthy amount of blood…

I somehow manage to pull up my contacts and try to figure out who my last and final text message should go to.

I scroll through the list, but when I reach one name in particular, I stop.

Holy hot fudge, Milo Ives.

I want to fuck him. Well, wanted to fuck him.

This dead-ass virgin can’t fuck no more.

I wish I could’ve touched his penis, though.

I bet it’s a beautiful penis. Like a beautiful painting of a penis, but without the paint. Just the penis. The whole penis. Not just the tip of it.

If I’d known I was going to take my last breath in a dentist chair during a minor surgery, I wouldn’t have been such a chickenshit the other day at the shop.

I would’ve told him who I was, and then said something smooth like, “I got the feels for you, baby.”

Well, smooth but classy and sophisticated too.

Like, Shakespeare kind of words…

“Good day, dear sir gentleman. It is I, Maybe. Doth thou enjoying the day?”

Yes, something exactly like that for sure, but even gooder.

More gooder?

Betterer?

More better?

Meh. Tomato, tomahto.

These are my final words ever, and I majored in books. No doubt, I’ll come up with something grand.

Milo

My Tuesday started at the crack of dawn. After a lengthy interview with Rosemary, and an even lengthier phone call with my mother, I didn’t have the brain power left last night to prepare for the list of meetings I have today. But I couldn’t go into them unprepared, and thus, the necessity to be an early riser was born.

I’ve never seen a more hideous baby.

But despite the exhaustion and the insanity that is my busy-as-fuck day, I carve out time around ten a.m. to head to St. Luke’s Hospital to meet my cousin Emory’s brand-new baby girl—who I’m absolutely positive will be a whole lot prettier than her metaphorical relative.

My mom texted a few pictures of Hudson Blair Black as soon as she was born a few hours ago, but it’s so hard to see any real distinguishing features in the shaky pictures of joy that come immediately following the miracle of new life. I’m hoping to take a few of my own that don’t look like they’ve been shot mid-parajump from a 747.

The elevator dings its arrival on the fourth-floor maternity ward, and a herd of excited family members with balloons and stuffed animals and flowers steps out in front of me. I wonder briefly if I should have stopped in the gift shop to get something for Emory and the baby, but then I remember who I’m dealing with.

Emory is a good person, but she’s also snooty as all hell. If I was going to get her a gift she’d appreciate, I should have done it well outside the walls of this hospital.

Crying babies and busy medical staff create a chaotic background melody as I get buzzed through the secure doors that provide a layer of protection against babynapping, and a swirling mix of bleach and sterile medical equipment rounds out the olfactory element of the ambiance.

“Excuse me,” I say, stepping up to the nurses station right inside the doors.

The obviously busy brunette nurse at the computer keeps typing but looks up at me at the same time.