Thirteen - Engaged
THIRTEEN
ENGAGED
FIVE MINUTES.
MY fingers smooth nonexistent wrinkles from my one shirt—brand-appropriate, camera-ready. The movement is automatic, drilled into muscle memory like any other performance, any other jump over yet another obstacle.
My phone is propped up and secure over some books, at an appropriate height.
I pivot the desk lamp for the third time, angling it against the white wall so the light diffuses before it reflects back to me.
No glares, no shadows. Chin up to help the concealer under my eyes, a slight side angle so the pearl powder catches the light and I look radiant instead of a glammed-up basement rat who’s finally been allowed in the sun.
Didn’t see Eli all day, today. Trained on my own. It went well.
Ate half an apple in the morning. Tried the soup but couldn’t. Wish Lena was around to guilt me into eating. Or anyone .
Spent the rest of my day in bed, not sleeping, just hiding under the covers. Not even a power nap. Not that lucky.
I check the clock on my phone. 7:56 PM. Four minutes. Hopefully, this meeting is one of those where they just tell me what to do, ten minutes and done. Not the two-hour ones with brainstorms and a million presentations. My fake smile won’t last two hours.
I practice it to the front camera in my phone. My eyes are too droopy—remember to keep them stretched.
I’m getting hungry. Maybe I can eat something after this. Dinner tonight is that curry I like.
Maybe Eli will be there.
The phone vibrates, the screen lighting up with Mom’s contact photo, her custom ringtone blaring against the silence. I take one deep breath, then another. Smooth my face, pull my spine straight, shoulders back. Then I tap accept.
Mom’s face fills my screen. Not a hair out of place, perfect makeup, professional lighting.
And a tall glass of sparkling water with a lemon wedge beside her, one she has no intention of drinking since she hates the stuff.
It’s all for show, to maximize authority for the part she’s about to play—CEO of the Vale Performance Team.
Wish she could just be my mother today.
“Cassian.” Her voice is clipped, all business. I know she’s still mad, but as I see the tiny twitch of her eyebrows not followed by a comment on how tired I look, I also know she’s on my side.
And considering I didn’t even speak to another human being today, that means more than I’ll ever be able to tell her.
Shit. Can’t cry. Not right now.
I clear my throat. “Hey, Mom.”
“I assume you’ve been following the fallout,” she says. I nod. “The photo has over half a million interactions. Got the first alert this morning—a local outlet but equestrian specialized. So it’s starting.”
I nod again. Major outlets are always scanning local ones, and all it takes is the first big name pushing an article for everything to cascade from there. Wouldn’t be surprised if it happened tonight. Maybe a week before bleeding into mainstream sports media.
“We’re less than two months away from the deadline,” she states— reminds , in case I forgot what’s at stake. I didn’t. “We can’t be off-brand when Ruin debuts. We have to fix this before going international. You understand this, right?”
“Yes.”
She squints. “Cassian.”
I frown. “I understand, Mom.” Fuck, I’m not ignorant. I know it’s all going to shit, and we need to take the wheel on this before the news and the world take the wheel for us.
“Then why did you do it?”
My gut clenches. “Do what?”
“You know what. The picture.”
She hadn’t asked me yet. About the mask, yes, via message, but face-to-face like this… What can I say?
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“It was just a kid who needed a moment.” The words sound pathetic even to my own ears. “It wasn’t planned.”
“Precisely.” She leans closer to her camera, her face filling more of my screen.
I lean back, away. “Nothing about this was planned, Cassian. For so long, all we’ve ever done is craft your image as the champion who doesn’t get distracted by anything, let alone by sentiment.
And right now is when you decide to reinvent yourself as what—the soft-hearted mentor? ”
The way she says it… Like a disease. Like I’ve co ntracted something contagious and embarrassing, something fulminant that strikes elite athletes.
Cause of death: a soft heart. Softness, period. I called it, didn’t I?
“I wasn’t reinventing anything,” I try to argue, but there’s no real fire in it. This is a battle I’ve lost the moment I knelt in front of Zane. Hell, the moment I saw him enter that arena with my hair and my eyes and the path I was on at his age.
The moment I wished a different path for him.
For me.
“Just trying to be a decent human being.” It’s all I can say. Don’t even try for anything more conclusive.
Mom sighs, the sound sharp with disappointment. “You are a decent human being, sweetheart. Out of the public eye, somewhere without horses. For those who know you.”
I’m always in the public eye, always with horses. Barely anyone truly knows me.
So what is she saying?
“Being decent doesn’t win gold medals,” she adds. “Human beings don’t secure sponsorships; champions do. Focused, relentless champions.”
I don’t say anything else. Any other word out of me would sound defensive, and I don’t have the willpower to hold strong right now. Can barely hold as it is.
So I nod. And I stretch my eyes so they don’t droop. And I straighten my back.
Whatever else she drones on about, I barely listen. Then, eventually, she looks down from her laptop to her phone. “The team is ready to join. So are Carl and Marianne. They’re rightly concerned, so they need to leave this meeting believing everything is on track. Got it?”
The sponsor names hit like lawn darts. One from my biggest equipment sponsor, the other from the performance wear brand that pays half my training costs.
Their logos flash through my mind—on my jacket, my helmet, everywhere.
Things that never bothered me before, but now…
might as well be branding irons, scorching my skin.
“What if it’s not?”
I flinch at my own words. They just slipped out, just… Fuck, what the hell is wrong with me?
Mom freezes. If it wasn’t for the bubbles in the sparkling water, I’d be checking my WiFi connection. “You mean it’s not?” she asks, voice low, lifeless.
The question hangs between us. I should answer, but I can’t. Because then I’d have to explain that my stupid mouth meant me , not Ruin. My sanity, my soft heart. That Ruin is more than on track, he’s excelling. But I’m…
I’m…
Not sure.
“If it’s not,” she adds after a moment. Then pauses, takes a breath. “If it’s not, you need to tell me before it all goes to shit.” No urgency, no accusation. Just facts. “Because I can’t fix it if you don’t talk to me.”
What’s there to fix? You can’t fix dust back into a rock.
And I’m not a rock anymore. I’m dust with nowhere to settle.
Just a breeze away from being nothing.
“Just a hypothetical. Ruin’s doing well,” I say out of instinct. It’s a half-truth but all I can offer. “His training is on schedule. Real progress every day.”
Her shoulders drop, her frown too. Relief. Yeah, that’s what she needs. The team is ready. We need to start this. “Good. That’s what matters. The rest we can manage.” She glances at something off-screen, then back at me. “Gonna let them in.”
I nod, spine straightening even further, face arranging itself into the professional, just-cocky-enough mask that’s served me for so long. That of the Perfect Riding Machine.
Now engaged.
Mom double-clicks somewhere, and suddenly my screen explodes into a grid of faces—PR specialists, sponsor representatives. They’re all smiles, but in that vultures-over-roadkill way, just waiting to feast, to yank at my flesh and leave nothing but bones.
“Good evening, everyone,” Mom says, warm and charming. “Thank you for joining us on such short notice. Go ahead, Priya.”
“Yes, let’s dive right in,” our senior PR Rep says, adjusting those same thick red-rimmed glasses I’ve always known on her.
She’s been with us for so long, I thought she was my actual aunt, as a kid.
“We’re dealing with a significant brand deviation that’s gaining traction.
Our latest prediction is that this photo will go global in five to seven days. ”
Brand deviation. There it is. The official, corporate-approved term for my crime.
“The photo presents a narrative shift that directly contradicts the elite competitor image we’ve cultivated for Cassian,” Priya continues, clipped and efficient.
“We’ve spent nearly two decades positioning him as the perfect riding machine—focused, disciplined, uncompromising.
Through childhood, through his teens, everything.
This sudden pivot to...” She gestures vaguely, searching for the right corporate bullshit.
“What are we calling it, mentorship? And to emotional accessibility creates cognitive dissonance for our audience.”
Picture perfect through a snotty childhood and hormonal teens, and now, as an adult, is when I decide to fuck it all up, is that it? Now, when I’m old enough to know better. Like she wants me to apologize for growing up.
My jaw tightens. I can feel the muscles bunching along my temples, but I keep my face neutral .
“The Vale brand has always been about precision and excellence, not soft skills and feel-good moments,” she adds.
“We can’t afford this kind of narrative confusion this close to the Olympic qualifications.
Fourteen months is not enough time to excise that public image once it escalates.
If we don’t clear things up right now, spin the narrative back to message…
” Her head shakes. “From a marketing perspective, it’s brand death. ”
Death. Deviation, leading to a terminal condition. A cancer. Something that needs to be excised before it escalates.