Page 45 of While You Were Trending

“The Cluckinator! No!” Cricket shrieks as she dashes for her chicken.

But The Cluckinator isn’t alone.

The chicken that Cricket found in the tasting room shortly after she arrived is followed by seven other squawking, angry, flapping chickens, all of them swarming the barn and surrounding my mother while she yelps and prances and sneezes. “Get it—achoo!—off!Get it off!”

“Feather Gump, no!” Cricket grabs Mary Peckins and tries to shoo three other birds away from squawking and flapping their wings at my mother, but it’s no use.

She and Heath grab two or three chickens, and the other four or five herd my mother closer to the door.

“I fucking love those chickens,” Mabel murmurs to me, her arm around my waist.

“We should help,” I whisper back.

Shade has his camera up again, filming the whole thing with a smirk.

I glance at Declan, and everything inside of me freezes.

He’s watching me.

Not justwatchingme though.

Watching me with something like concern.

Warmth.

Protectiveness.

No.

Absolutely fuckingnot.

I scowl at him and then turn my attention back to Mabel. “Cover for me. I’m going out the back door.”

“We’ll get rid of your mother.”

I duck behind the tractor and creep low until I can twist behind a half wall, then I make a waddle-dash for the back door.

I can be back at the house in five minutes.

Faster if I really run.

I grab a random rain jacket that someone left hanging next to the back door, cover myself with it, and sprint for safety.

I’m worried about paparazzi and helicopters and gossips, but I’m barely outside the barn before I realize I should be worried about something else entirely.

9

GOOD GINNY HURTING

Declan

I knowI shouldn’t race after Ginny, but it’s exactly what I’m doing.

“Ginny, wait,” I say as I catch up to her while she runs away from the barn.

“Goaway,” she replies.

“I didn’t do it. I didn’t leak. It wasn’t me.”