6. Sloane
Sloane
The hashtag is already trending before we make it back to the conference room. Not rising or building, trending.
#MarcusAndSloane sits beneath two political scandals, a celebrity divorce, and a sports injury, which means the internet has done what the internet always does best. Taken something carefully contained and turned it into public property before anyone involved has finished breathing normally.
I don't look at Marcus when the alert flashes across my tablet.
I don't have to. His phone is already in his hand, his expression unreadable, his thumb resting against the edge of the screen like he stopped scrolling only because stopping looks more controlled than reacting.
Fine.
If he wants control, he can have his version of it.
I trust mine more.
“Pull the first fifteen minutes of coverage,” I say as soon as we step into the room.
“Separate hard news from social amplification. I want the business press, market watchers, and entertainment accounts in different columns. If they’re quoting the same clip, I want to know which one is moving fastest.”
My team snaps into motion before I finish. Laptops open. Screens wake. The room fills with the low, disciplined chaos of people trying not to look like they’re reacting to something that is very clearly already moving faster than any of us would like.
Across the room, one of the analysts lets out a quiet, “Oh.”
I look up. “No emotional commentary.”
She straightens immediately. “Sorry. It’s just—there are already edits.”
“Of course there are.” I hate the internet. Not in a moral way. In a professional way.
It has no patience for context, no respect for intent, and a frankly obscene talent for finding the one frame most likely to undo a person’s ability to think rationally. Which is why I do not look at the clip when it starts playing on the main screen.
Not immediately.
I focus on the numbers first. Velocity. Sentiment. Source hierarchy. Which outlets are embedding the video, which are referencing the statement, which are isolating the kiss like the rest of the appearance existed only to support that single moment.
That’s where my attention belongs: the work, the fallout, the problems still waiting to be contained. Then the clip loops again. And there it is.
The second kiss.
Not the first one. No one cares about the first one. That one did what it was supposed to do. It was brief, clean, and forgettable in the exact way a controlled public gesture should be.
The second one is the problem.
The second one is already being slowed down, captioned, clipped from three angles, set to music by people who apparently have nothing better to do than turn a corporate crisis into foreplay for strangers.
My hand tightens around the tablet briefly before I loosen it.
“That angle is getting the most traction?” I ask.
“Yes,” Dana says, still typing.“The cameras caught the moment afterward. The part where neither of you moved.”
The moment after. Not the kiss. The moment where we failed.
Not visibly. Not enough for anyone else to understand the difference. But enough that the camera caught something that had not been part of the plan.
His mouth is a breath from mine, and my fingers curled tightly against his jacket. Neither of us moving.
I look away before the clip loops again.
“Track captions using ‘real,’ ‘staged,’ ‘chemistry,’ and ‘damage control,’” I say. “Those are our fastest sentiment branches.”
Dana nods. “Positive or negative?”
“Both.”
Because that is the worst part; the lie is working too well.
The original woman from the leaked photos is already dropping out of the first wave of casual coverage. Not disappearing, not yet, but slipping from center frame into background context. The headlines are shifting exactly the way we wanted them to.
MARCUS VALE CONFIRMS RELATIONSHIP WITH CROSSRIDGE PR DIRECTOR.
CROSSRIDGE EXEC GOES PUBLIC AFTER PHOTO SPECULATION.
VALE AND PARKER SHUT DOWN RUMORS WITH PUBLIC STATEMENT.
And then, because subtlety is dead: THAT SECOND KISS DID NOT LOOK FAKE.
I close that tab myself.
“Don’t elevate social language into strategy,” I say, harsher than necessary.
Dana pauses, and so does everyone within earshot. That’s alright. I’d rather they think I’m cold than distracted.
Marcus crosses the room behind me, speaking quietly into his phone. Investor relations, probably or legal, maybe. His voice is low, controlled, stripped of everything that happened in the lobby.
It should be reassuring. Instead, it irritates me, mostly because it seemed far too easy for him.
Not the kiss. I’m not naive enough to believe that. I felt the difference. I felt the second he stopped performing and started choosing something else, something heavier, slower, and more grounded than anything we agreed to give them.
But the part that gets under my skin is how quickly he returns to executive mode, folding the entire moment neatly back into strategy and optics like it never reached beyond that.
Fine. I can do the same thing.
“Media requests?” I ask.
“Six interview asks already,” Dana says. “Two business networks, one morning show, one podcast, and three digital outlets requesting joint comment.”
“No morning shows.”
Marcus ends his call. “Why?”
I don’t turn. “Because morning shows turn everything into a lifestyle segment, and I’m not sitting beside you on a couch while someone asks when we knew it was love.”
The room is silent, broken only by a cough. Marcus stares at me.
“No morning shows,” he says.
I hate that he agrees with me. Or maybe I hate that he agrees correctly.
“Business networks?” he asks.
“One controlled segment,” I say. “Remote or in-studio, no live audience, pre-agreed topic boundaries.”
“No live?”
“Not unless you’d like a second heckler asking for an encore.”
His gaze moves to me then, and I feel it before I actually meet his eyes.
That’s starting to become a problem.
I turn just enough to meet his eyes, because avoiding him would be worse. Avoidance creates shape, and shape creates story. And I am not giving anyone in this room a second narrative to track.
His expression doesn’t change, but something in it tightens anyway, and the realization hits harder than I want it to: there’s no regret there. No apology. Just recognition that whatever happened between us affected him too.
“We’re not discussing the kiss,” I say.
Sloane’s gaze holds mine for a beat. “We weren’t.”
“Good.” I force my attention back to the screen between us. “Then let’s keep this about coverage.”
One of my team members suddenly becomes very interested in her spreadsheet.
Marcus steps closer to the table, not close enough to be inappropriate, but close enough that the room subtly adjusts around him the way it always does. People make space without thinking. Voices drop. Attention angles toward him, even when he hasn’t asked for it.
I wonder if he knows how much easier it is for men like him to take up space and call it leadership.
Then his hand comes to rest briefly at my back.
It should be nothing. A continuation of the performance. The cameras are technically gone, but the glass wall beyond the conference room faces the corridor, and there are still people moving through it, phones in hand, eyes too curious for their own good.
So yes, it makes sense. A visible continuation of what we just sold downstairs.
Except his hand lingers at my back a second too long. Not long enough for anyone else to notice, but long enough for my breath to catch before I can stop it.
I hate that reaction more than anything else that’s happened today.
“Don’t,” I say quietly.
His hand drops immediately. Good. It should feel like a victory. It doesn’t.
“I was keeping the frame consistent,” he says quietly.
“I know exactly what you were doing.”
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “Then you know why.”
“I know the justification,” I say, because that’s easier than acknowledging the part that didn’t feel strategic at all.
His eyes hold mine for a second. There’s no audience inside this part of the conversation, which makes it more dangerous than the cameras ever were.
“Do you want inconsistent behavior five minutes after confirmation?” he asks.
“I want you to stop assuming you get to decide where the performance begins and ends.”
Irritation moves through his expression, gone almost before it forms.
“Noted.”
The word should end it. It doesn’t. Because the next alert hits the main screen before either of us looks away.
A live segment from one of the financial networks. My name is beneath Marcus’s. The clip paused at the exact moment after the second kiss, my hand still against his jacket like evidence.
The anchor’s mouth moves silently until Dana unmutes it.
“—notable shift from earlier market anxiety, with some analysts suggesting the personal clarification may actually stabilize investor response by removing uncertainty around the original photos.”
The room goes quiet. That is the best possible outcome. It is also infuriating because the clip they are using to stabilize investor anxiety is the same one currently making my pulse behave like it has forgotten its job.
“Stats?” I ask.
“Positive pickup is increasing,” Dana says. “There’s still some skepticism, but the emotional read is drowning out some of the scandal.”
I glance at the side column. The woman from the original photos is no longer the lead in most social threads. The focus has shifted to Marcus and me, to timing, to whether we’ve been hiding a relationship, to whether that kiss looked rehearsed or real.
Real. I do not look at that word twice.
“That doesn’t mean we relax,” I say. “It means we tighten.”
Marcus’s phone buzzes. He checks it, then looks toward the door. “Investor call in six.”
“Keep the language narrow. No personal embellishment.”
His eyebrow lifts slightly. “I’m aware.”
“Good. Awareness saves time.”
Someone at the table goes very still.