Chapter Two
Remy
Clementine paces across the meeting room floor, talking a mile a minute.
“I don’t understand why Colin’s doing this!
He was sleeping with that drummer for, like, eight months, and you know that wasn’t the first time he cheated on me.
What gives him the right to blab to the tabloids?
And now he’s trying to make it look like I was cheating on him, when he’s the fuckboy?
” She stops mid-pace, pulls up the floppy collar of her cream boatneck sweater, and screams into the plush wool knit.
Even in the midst of a full-blown panic attack, Clem manages to look mostly put together, though her thick bottle-blond hair is starting to resemble a lion’s mane the longer she freaks out.
Clem’s publicist, who’s seated at the table across from me, makes a helpless gesture in his client’s direction.
He’s fairly new, and he looks awfully young, maybe early twenties.
I offer him a gracious smile. There’s no point in interrupting now.
Until Clem burns off some of her anger, I won’t be able to talk any sense into her.
When she’s screamed herself out, she drops the collar back into place and resumes her pacing.
“What does it matter to him, anyway? I’m a lifestyle influencer.
Nobody wants to be influenced by someone with a shitty reputation.
I’ve already had four clients cancel partnerships!
Four! I’m being canceled on, like, every social media platform!
Should I post an expose? Should I refute him? How do I fix this?”
“Easy,” I say.
I can already see the shape of the solution before she finishes the question. This is the part I’m good at—finding the lever that shifts the whole situation without breaking anything else.
Clem stops pacing and whips toward me. “What?”
I gesture to the seat she abandoned. She rushes over and drops into it, clasping her hands on the table in front of her as she waits for my advice.
I lean toward Clem, subtly prompting her to mirror my posture. “At the end of the day, who is Colin?”
“Um.” Clem sticks out her full bottom lip and looks up at the ceiling. “He’s a cheater. And a liar. And…” She trails off, clearly unsure what I’m fishing for. “A freeloader?”
“Exactly.” I reach across the table to lay my hand on top of hers. “He’s nobody. He’s just talking shit about you to stay relevant. But do you know what he really wants?”
Clem shakes her head. “That’s exactly what I don’t understand.”
“He wants the two most valuable things you have to give: your time and your attention. He knows how to get under your skin. When you let him, you’re giving him exactly what he wants.
” I reach for my coffee and take a slow sip.
I keep my movements deliberate, forcing Clem to slow down, too.
“But you know Colin as well as he knows you, right?”
Clem nods slowly. “Yeah. I mean, I do now.”
“So tell me: What would get under his skin?”
One corner of Clem’s mouth curls upward. “If I ignored him.”
I nod my agreement. “Exactly. If you respond to his trash-talking, you’ll just give him more of what he wants.
So here’s what you’re going to do: You’re going to kick off a new campaign.
A ‘get-ready-with-me on your way to a girl’s night out.
’ A ‘fit check before a spin class.’ Don’t mention Colin’s name at all…
Talk about your hot, single instructor instead. ”
“Oh, my gosh.” Clementine claps her hands to her cheeks, already glowing as she ponders the ideas. “You’re right. He’ll hate that. Ooh, and I could do some collabs with that pole-dancing instructor who’s always giving the funny relationship tips. What’s her handle?”
“Ava Rice.” The publicist looks utterly relieved.
“Ha! That’s right.” Clem practically bounces in her seat. “Ooh, I’m going to throw so much shade.”
I sit back and sip my coffee, smiling to myself as my client’s mood does a complete 180.
I genuinely like Clem. She’s one of our smaller clients, and her relative level of drama is low on the semi-official Remy Callahan Petty Bullshit Scale.
Yes, I have criteria. Yes, I made a chart.
On her worst days, Clem caps out at a three out of ten: She’ll catastrophize and scheme, but she’s not actively evil.
In other words, she seeks justice, not revenge.
And she listens. That’s the real difference. Most clients don’t. Most of them want a miracle without doing the work, and when it falls apart, they look for someone to blame. Usually me.
If only the rest of my clients were so receptive to my suggestions.
By the time Clementine and her emotionally battered publicist depart the firm, we’re all in a decent mood. I drain the last of my coffee on the way out of the meeting room, fully intending to refill before I head to my desk. Alas, it’s not to be.
My boss, Ezra, pokes his head out of his office on my way past. “Remy, I need you for a moment.”
I know that tone of voice. Something is amiss. I stick out my bottom lip and brandish my empty mug at him. “Can I top up first?”
Ezra’s a fairly unflappable guy, but his usually impeccable hair is mussed, almost as if he grabbed it in both fists and tugged. Yikes. “Alright,” he says, after a moment’s hesitation. “That might be wise, all things considered. Every little bit helps.”
Double yikes.
“On second thought, this sounds urgent.” I step forward, prompting Ezra to move aside and make room for me. If this is as serious as his expression suggests, the last thing I need is caffeine jitters.
Ezra closes the door behind me, which is unassailable proof that we’re about to cover something serious that he doesn’t want anyone else in the office to overhear. With a mounting sense of dread, I settle into one of the chairs on this side of the desk.
Great. Closed door, serious tone, no coffee. This is either a promotion… or a disaster. Given my luck, I’m not betting on the promotion.
“You grew up in Boston, correct?” he asks.
Seems like an odd segue, but I bite. “North Shore, born and raised.”
“Mm.” Ezra lowers himself into his chair, adjusting his blazer as he does so. “Hockey country.”
There’s nothing in his tone to give away what he’s thinking, but I wince. “That’s… one thing we’re known for, yes.” It’s true that I grew up around the sport, whether I wanted to or not.
Hockey players, especially. Loud, cocky, and convinced the world owes them something because they can skate fast and throw punches.
“Good.” Ezra adjusts his computer screen so that I can see. There’s a YouTube clip already pulled up, with a freeze frame of a handful of hockey players in two different team jerseys.
One click of his mouse brings the scene to life.
His speakers are set to a low volume, but I don’t need to hear each player’s shout to understand what happens next.
One of the guys says something to the goalie in purple and green, then makes a rude gesture.
It’s hardly polite, but in a sport where people’s teeth end up scattered around the rink on a semi-regular basis, it’s nothing to write home about.
The goalie doesn’t seem to agree. He snaps. It’s not just the hit. It’s the look on his face right before it happens—when something flips behind his eyes. When whatever control he had just… disappears.
He skates out of position and slams into the other player, sending them both down on the ice.
I lose track of their movements in the ensuing whirl of limbs as the other players converge to separate them.
The video is being filmed from somewhere in the stands, and they must be getting jostled, because the players are reduced to a blur of color for a moment.
Just before the video cuts out, the players part.
The screen freezes on a still of the goalie’s contorted face, which hovers there for about five seconds before the video rolls into an ad.
I close my eyes and stifle a groan. “Let me guess why you called me in.”
“As I’m sure you can imagine, this um… angle… is a PR crisis for the team.” Ezra’s chair creaks, and I don’t have to open my eyes to know that he’s watching me. “There are multiple videos in circulation, as you can imagine.”
“How badly was the other player hurt?”
If I mishandle this, it’s a PR crisis for me, too. One wrong move, one client who spirals anyway, and suddenly I’m the fixer who couldn’t fix it.
“As I understand it, he’ll only be out two games while he recovers. If he were more seriously injured, we’d have an even bigger problem on our hands.”
That’s a relief, both from a personal perspective and a PR angle. Still, the expression on that goalie’s face was one of pure fury. I’m not one to complain about a project, but doing PR triage on a loose cannon is an uphill battle.
Been there, done that.
I consider my empty mug. “I have one question before we start talking strategy. Are you sure I’m the right person for this assignment?”
Ezra rests his chin on his interlaced palms. “I’m sure you’re more than capable, Remy. Your reputation for managing difficult personalities is the reason I hired you, and I’ve seen that firsthand since you joined the firm.”
I hold up a hand to stop his praise, which is nice enough to hear but doesn’t really answer my question. “It’s not that I doubt myself. The thing is, I know hockey players. I grew up around them. A lot of them… Well, let’s just say, they don’t respect women.”
“Ah.” Ezra squares his shoulders. “You think he might respond better to someone more physically imposing.”
Actually, I think he might respond better to someone who can whip it out and measure. Over the years, I’ve heard all the names men use when confronted with assertive women. “Something like that.”
Ezra drags his thumb over his bottom lip, gaze fixed on me.
“If Owen Rourke had a history of this sort of behavior, I might agree with you. But based on the conversation I just had with the Venom’s PR rep, I have reason to believe that he’s more likely to have a problem with male authority figures.
I know you, Remy. You’ll find the right angle, and you’ll keep a cool head while doing it. ”
I drum my fingers on the side of my empty mug. “My cool head isn’t the one I’m worried about.”
It’s being dismissed. Talked over. Written off before I even get a chance to do the job I was hired to do.
“Duly noted. I’ll have your back if need be, of course.”
He says that as if the statement should be obvious, but I don’t take Ezra’s loyalty for granted.
The one time a job blew up in my face, when a client self-sabotaged his own image makeover by having a friend sneak pills into his hotel room, Ezra yanked me from the job without a moment’s hesitation and told the client’s team in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t be expected to do my job if he couldn’t keep his shit together. Our firm’s contracts are ironclad.
My reasons for balking on this job are personal, though I do my best to keep my work and personal life compartmentalized. I dated a hockey player in college. I should have noticed the red flags right away, but in my defense: those thighs. That ass. The sex was incredible.
The apology texts weren’t. The slammed doors weren’t. The way I started second-guessing every word out of my own mouth just to keep the peace definitely wasn’t.
And the emotional blowouts? No bueno. Big egos, short fuses, and physical prowess are a terrible combination. He never laid a hand on me, but after he put his fist all the way through the hollow-core door of my shitty college apartment, I swore off the whole breed.
But this is work. I don’t have to date him; I just have to tell him how to unfuck his image, manage this crisis and any future crises, and in that, I excel.
“His name’s Rourke?” I ask.
This is the kind of assignment people build careers on—or lose them over. There’s no middle ground here.
Ezra beams. He knows I’m going to take this job. I could say no, but I’d be shooting myself in the foot, career-wise. A high-profile case like this is a career-maker. And a tiny, petty part of me likes the idea of putting a troll like this goalie in his place.
“Owen Rourke,” Ezra replies. “And believe it or not, he’s from Boston, too. You’ll have something in common.”
Something tells me that we’re not going to bond over that, or much of anything else. Which is fine. I don’t need to bond with him. I need to do my job and get out. The sooner the better.
“Fantastic!” I lay on the enthusiasm thick as molasses. “So, when do I start?”
Ezra smiles like he’s in on a secret, and that should probably worry me more than it does.