YES! Join her!
We want to know who you arrreeee!
You’re delicious!
Do you climb too? You can climb me any day!
His eyebrows shot up. “What the hell is this?”
We’re yours, that’s what we are!
Fucking tosser, get a haircut!
Shut up, he’s yummy!
I reached upward and grabbed his forearm. “Please, ignore the bad comments and come join me. I’ll explain.”
“I don’t understand.” Almost in a daze, he let me pull him around the couch and sat heavily beside me. He couldn’t tear his eyes off the dizzying amount of comments still cascading in curiosity to know who he was.
Dude looks as if he murders puppies.
Where did you find the yeti, Gemma?
He swallowed hard as I made the video image larger and hid the comment box. Slowly, his gaze met mine, bouncing between the mirror image of us being recorded and back to me beside him. “Who are those people?”
I could only imagine the comments still pouring in, but I wasn’t here to scare Kas off the internet before he’d even become acquainted with it. I should’ve given him a lesson before now, but we’d had so much on. This was the first day where we weren’t being prodded by doctors, traveling cross country, or dealing with family reunions.
Taking a deep breath, I smiled at the people watching my live stream, noticing I had more traffic now than ever before. Kas was definitely a massive drawcard. “Guys, this is Kas. Long story short, but he is the reason I survived while I was missing.”
Kas scrunched up his nose. “What are you saying. I didn’t help you survive. I trapped you and hurt—”
“Whoa, whoa.” Pausing the video for a second, I whispered. “This is a video, and we’re live. I’ll explain what all of that means afterward. I wasn’t planning on still being online when you woke, but you’re here now, and people love you. But you can’t tell them what really happened. That’s got to remain between us.”
His forehead furrowed. “I don’t understand. Why do they love me? They don’t even know me.”
“The comments show rampant curiosity. Which is a good thing.” I toggled back to the comment box, hoping only nice things were being said. “Here...see?”
He’s swoon-worthy.
How do you mean he helped you survive?
Why did you cut him off before? What did he do to hurt you?
Did he hurt you by breaking your heart because he’s just so damn fine?
I closed the window again. “See? This is my world, Kas. This is how I share my videos about climbing with a lot of people. Right now, I need to assure them that my channel will be posting more content soon. I’ll only be a couple of minutes. However, now you’re here, they’re very interested in you.” I kissed his cheek. “You said you wanted to make money? Well, I have a feeling you could have a huge following if you talked about living out in the wilderness. The Bear Grylls comment got me thinking. You’re like a real-life Bear Grylls. Survival techniques and tips are huge online.”
“Bear Grylls?”
“I’ll explain later. All you need to do now is sit next to me and don’t say anything unless I prompt you. Let me feel out the market for your own information channel.”
“My own channel?” He shook his head. “I don’t even know what this is, let alone—”
“I’ll help you.”
“Help me with what? This makes no sense.”
“With this. Making money comes in all sorts of forms these days, Kas. It’s a whole different world.”
“This is how you make money?” He scowled at my paused video. I had no doubt the comments would be full of people complaining that they’d been staring at a blank screen for too long.
“Yes.”
“But how?” His eyes filled with confusion. “I don’t get it.”
“Ad revenue, sponsorships, viewer watches.”
“I have no idea what any of that means.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“So it will be yet another thing I owe you?”
“Not at all.” I took his hand. “Think of it as payment for teaching me how to properly plant seeds.”
“Ha.” He rolled his eyes. “I doubt this is in the same realm.”
“It’s a skill for a skill.” I licked my lips. “Look, let me get rid of them, and we can chat properly, okay? I can’t make them wait any longer.”
He didn’t reply.
I took that as his co-operation and clicked resume.
“Sorry about that, guys. I had to explain how the World Wide Web works.”
The comment bubble popped back up, chiming with a thousand new questions.
What? Why?
How has he never heard of the WWW?
He’s legit a caveman!
I grinned, tingling with the knowledge that Kas had the origin story, the skills, and the looks to be a rock star on YouTube if he so desired. A little tease and testing the market would never be a bad thing. “Well, you know how there are some humans who live off the grid and don’t have phones or internet? A rare breed these days, but they do exist.”