5. Saylor
SAYLOR
Iwoke up in Maddox Vale’s bed with the Pleasure Valley skyline filling the floor-to-ceiling windows and my phone vibrating against his nightstand.
Three texts from Dennis. One from Tasha. A calendar reminder for a ten a.m. client call I was going to have to take from somewhere that wasn’t the twenty-fifth floor of Reboot Condominiums.
Maddox was still asleep. Face half-buried in the pillow, one arm stretched across the space where I’d been lying.
The sheet had slipped to his waist and the morning light was catching every line of ink across his chest and shoulders.
His breathing was slow, steady, unguarded.
He looked like a man who hadn’t slept well in weeks and had finally stopped fighting it.
My chest tightened looking at him.
I picked up my phone. Tasha’s text was two lines.
Checking in on Juniper intake. Let’s debrief when you’re in today.
The ache turned to ice.
I slid out of bed, found my clothes folded on the chair where he’d set them last night—my skirt, my blouse, my underwear—and dressed in his bathroom with the door closed. The mirror gave me back a woman with swollen lips and mascara smudged under one eye.
What did you do?
I knew exactly what I’d done. I’d slept with my client. The first real account I’d ever been trusted with—not because I’d earned it, but because everyone else was busy.
Tasha had handed me an opportunity, and I’d turned it into a cliché.
The twenty-three-year-old junior who couldn’t keep it professional when a powerful man paid attention to her.
Every stereotype, every assumption, every quiet doubt anyone had ever had about whether I was ready—I’d just confirmed all of it on a pool table.
When I came out of the bathroom, Maddox was awake. Sitting up against the headboard, watching me with an expression I couldn’t read. His eyes dropped to my blouse, buttoned to the collar, and came back to my face.
“You’re leaving,” he said. Not a question.
“I have a ten o’clock.”
“That’s not why you’re leaving.”
My fingers were tight around my phone. “Maddox, last night was—”
“Don’t.”
The word landed hard. His voice was quiet but the warmth from last night was gone. Something colder had replaced it—not anger. Recognition. He was watching me put the mask on and he knew exactly what it looked like because he’d spent his entire career refusing to wear one.
“You’re going to tell me it was a mistake,” he said. “That you’re my publicist and this can’t happen again and it’s nothing personal.” His jaw was set. “Go ahead. Say the version that sounds right instead of the version that’s true. That’s what everyone does.”
“That’s not—”
“It is. You’re putting on a show, Saylor.”
The words hit hard. I opened my mouth to argue and nothing came out, because he was right.
I was standing in his bedroom rehearsing the professional version of myself—the one who’d never let this happen, the one who had it together, the one Tasha could trust. A careful, palatable, professional version of the woman who’d challenged a stranger to strip pool just hours ago.
I left anyway.
The walk from Reboot to Pixel Lofts was eleven blocks in the early morning heat.
I didn’t call a car. My heels hit the sidewalk in a rhythm that felt like punishment and my eyes burned the entire way.
By the time I reached the lobby, my blouse was damp with sweat and my throat was tight with something I refused to let become crying.
I took the stairs to 3C. Closed the door. Sat on the edge of my bed in the apartment I loved, in the building I loved, on the floor where I’d been planning a Friday happy hour to bring my neighbors together, and pressed my palms flat against my knees.
Find the piece of the truth the clip cut out.
My own words. The advice I’d given to a stranger in a coffee shop and then built an entire crisis strategy around.
The whole point—the entire thesis of the sizzle reel, of my approach to Maddox’s account, of everything I believed about PR—was that the truth was better than the performance.
That audiences could always tell the difference.
That you never put someone in front of a camera to say something they didn’t mean.
And I’d just walked out of his condo pretending I didn’t mean any of it.
Because of how it would look. To Tasha. To Dennis. To the industry. To anyone watching a twenty-three-year-old junior publicist fall for the client she was supposed to be managing.
I was doing the exact thing I’d been coaching Maddox not to do—hiding behind a curated version of myself instead of letting anyone see what was real.
You’re putting on a show, Saylor.
I picked up my phone and called Tasha.
She answered on the second ring. “Saylor. I was about to—”
“I need to tell you something about the Juniper account.” My voice was steady.
I didn’t know how. “I’ve developed a personal relationship with Maddox Vale.
It started during the intake process and it’s become romantic.
I’m telling you because you trusted me with this account and you deserve honesty, not because I’m asking permission. ”
Silence. Long enough that I could hear the hum of her office AC through the phone.
“I appreciate you telling me,” Tasha said. Her tone was unreadable. “We’ll talk about it when you come in.”
“Okay.”
“Saylor?”
“Yes?”
A pause. “Thank you for not making me find out from someone else.”
The line went dead. My hands were shaking. I didn’t know if I still had a job or a mentor or a future at T. Tomlinson, and the uncertainty sat in my chest with a physical weight. But underneath it, something else. A steady, clear feeling I hadn’t had since yesterday morning.
I changed my clothes. Washed my face. Put on a sundress and flat sandals and took the elevator down to the lobby. The girl from 3F was checking her mail—dark hair, quiet face, earbuds around her neck. She glanced up when the elevator opened.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Saylor. 3C.”
She looked startled. “Margeaux.”
“There’s a happy hour on the roof Friday. You should come.”
Something shifted behind her expression—surprise, maybe, or the faint edge of wanting to say yes. “I’ll think about it.”
“I’ll save you a spot.”
The walk back to Reboot was faster than the walk away from it. The doorman recognized me from the night before and held the door without asking. The elevator to twenty-five was empty. The hallway was quiet. I knocked.
Maddox opened the door in the same clothes from this morning—gray joggers, no shirt, every tattoo visible.
His expression was guarded in a way I hadn’t seen since our first meeting.
He was braced for the speech. The professional one.
The one that would confirm everything he believed about people who chose optics over truth.
“I called Tasha,” I said. “I told her. About us.”
His hand was still on the door frame. He didn’t move.
“I’m not putting on a show,” I said. “I’m not managing how this looks. I don’t know what happens with my job or the account or any of it, and I’m scared, and I’m here anyway. Because you were right. How it looks doesn’t matter if what’s real is—”
He pulled me through the door before I finished the sentence. His mouth found mine and his arms locked around my waist and I was off the ground, pressed against him, tasting coffee and relief and the collapse of every wall we’d both been building.
“Stay,” he said against my mouth.
I stayed.