10. Passing Notes
Passing Notes
Cam
If you ever wanted to know what it felt like to be swallowed by money, try walking out of a corporate conference suite at Peachtree HQ at nine a.m. on a Wednesday. The place reeked of success. Maybe that would explain it.
Stacks and I exited the conference meeting room with two copies of the same contract, one folder each, and a shared high that only comes from mugging a roomful of suits and walking away with their gold watches.
The doors slid shut behind us without a sound, like the building was exhaling, relieved to be rid of us.
The lobby ran on different oxygen than the rest of the city.
You could see your reflection in the floor—actual, literal mirror shine, so bright it made every sneaker scuff into a felony.
Overhead, a grid of lights gleamed so bright they could've been spotlights.
The walls were limestone, matte-finished to make you look softer by comparison, and the couches were the kind you'd get side-eye for sitting on wrong.
We hit the open space and stood for a second, soaking it in. Stacks grinned, baring every tooth. "You believe that shit?" she whispered, like someone was going to snatch the deal back if we talked too loud.
"Not until I see the wire transfer," I said, but my voice was all helium.
A pair of marketing girls click-clacked past in business-casual drag, their ponytails whip-lashing in unison. They didn't look at us, but you could feel their sidelong scans like sonar pings. I resisted the urge to flip them the bird.
Stacks nudged me with her elbow. "We got twenty Gs before noon and corporate sponsorship, bitch. Let's get that victory coffee! My treat, since you carried the Q&A."
The building's in-house "café" was a glass-walled pop-up with blue walls and tropical flowers painted on them.
Someone walked out of the double doors balancing a steaming tray of coffee, and the Hawaiian coffee smell drifting toward us made me drool.
The barista inside wore a black apron and an expression like he'd just been cast in a cologne ad.
I headed that way, letting the adrenaline burn off, ready to get my hands on the banana bread chai.
Stacks was going on about some producer drama, hands flying as she acted out the whole scene. She was loud enough that people were turning to look, but she didn't care. Never did. That's when I spotted the familiar figure across the lobby.
At first, it was just a flash of an expensive purse near the reception desk.
Then the details came into focus: an oversized jacket, loose-fitting jeans low on the hip, and pink heels.
Hair blown straight, perfect posture, that untouchable energy that was around her like a force field.
Romi, talking to some executive type, looking like she'd bought the building that morning and was deciding whether to keep it.
The sight of her hit me sideways. My stomach did this funky little dip, and I had to force myself to keep walking normal.
Stacks was still talking, but I wasn't listening anymore. I was thinking about that moment when her knuckles brushed mine and she'd flinched back, then immediately tried to cover it.
That's when Stacks looked up and saw Romi too. Her whole expression shifted to panic mode.
"Not today, Satan," Stacks said. She pivoted, herding me toward the pop-up with a hand to my shoulder. "We're not doing drama before noon."
I let myself be moved, but my head kept swiveling back. Romi was still locked in with the white-blazer exec, her voice soft and even. Every word was deliberate. There was zero chance she didn't know we were watching.
Blood rushed to my face so fast I probably looked sunburned.
I forced myself to look away, focus on the mundane: the menu board, the impossible-to-pronounce pastries, the way Stacks was already rehearsing her coffee order under her breath.
But my brain wouldn't cooperate. It kept circling back to Romi—the colors of her jacket, the way she held herself like gravity was optional.
Stacks leaned in, blocking my view. "Look, just keep it moving. 'Cause it's giving 'I'm about to make a questionable decision' face right now. Just so you know."
I gritted my teeth, willing my body back to baseline. "I know, I know."
"You know, and you can't help yourself. That's the problem." She jabbed a finger at my chest. "But you also know what? You don't owe her nothing. Not a conversation, not a glance, not even acknowledgment. You got your own shit popping now. Move the fuck on."
But I couldn't.
All week, my brain had been stuck on that night on the balcony.
How for a few moments, Romi had let her walls down and actually talked to me like we were equals, not just opposing brands locked in a blood feud.
I kept replaying the laugh, the way she'd said you have no idea, the flicker of something real in her eyes before she smothered it.
Did that even happen? Or did I make it into something it wasn't because I was exhausted and running on fumes? Maybe it was nothing. Some weird glitch, exactly what I'd told myself that night.
And the break room. Ten straight minutes of going at each other, and I walked out with my heart slamming. Not from arguing. From something else. That's not how it works with people who irked your nerves.
Was it?
Because here's the thing nobody says out loud: Romi Dulce is fine.
Objectively. And maybe that's all this is, some dumb wiring in my body that clocks a face like that and starts running its own program, and forgets the whole rest of it.
Forgets she's mean. Forgets she locked every door in this industry and smiled about it.
You can't be that beautiful and that cold and not have people short-circuiting around you all day. I'm probably just the latest one.
That would explain it. That would explain all of it.
Still didn't explain why I wanted to walk over there.
Stacks saw it written all over my face.
"You're not gonna let this go, are you?" she said, tone halfway between fond and disgusted. "You're gonna march your ass over there and try to start shit? Are you nuts?"
"I'm just going to say hello," I said, trying to sound casual. "It'll be fine."
Stacks went very still. Her head tilted, studying me like I'd just started speaking in tongues. "Hold up. You're nervous."
"I'm not nervous."
"You are, though. You're doing that thing with your hands." She gestured at where I was fidgeting with my folder. "Last time I saw you this pressed about talking to someone was…" Her eyes went wide. "Oh. OH. You're catching feelings for the woman who tried to end your career two months ago?"
"Bree, please. I'm trying to end a stupid feud, not write love songs. There's a difference."
I scanned the lobby until I found her—now at the far end, pacing out a measured line in front of the glass, phone to her ear. She had that hyper-focused stillness, the kind that looked bored to mortals but actually meant she was mentally destroying someone in another hemisphere.
"Wish me luck," I said, and started walking.
"Wait, let me get my phone out. I need to document the exact moment Cam Wolfe discovers she's got a type."
I crossed the lobby, every step making my heart pound harder.
The tile made every footfall sound too loud.
Romi was facing away, soft hair down her back, shoulders squared almost as if she was posing for an album cover.
I stopped about a foot from her, close enough to catch the scent of whatever perfume she was wearing today.
She finished her call in one word, then turned.
"Hi," I said, as nonchalantly as humanly possible.
She didn't even blink. "Cam Wolfe. You still doing press runs at this hour?"
I shrugged. "Award season doesn't campaign for itself."
"Bold of you to assume you're in the running."
"Bolder of you to assume I'm not."
She actually smiled at that. "Touché. Though I heard your team's already planning your 'underdog narrative' for the nomination announcements."
"How do you—" I stopped. "You know what? I don't want to know."
"Smart." She leaned against the wall. "For what it's worth, your last single had more cultural impact than mine did."
I stared at her. "Did you just compliment me?"
"I stated a fact."
"From you, same thing."
"Don't get used to it." But her eyes were softer now. "Besides, I'm still winning Best Female Rap Artist."
"This year? In your dreams."
"In Vegas odds. Check the boards."
"The boards also said our beef would be over by now."
"And yet." She gestured between us. "Here we are. Alive and bickering."
"Is that what we're doing? Bickering?"
"What would you call it?"
"Competitive conversation?"
She actually laughed at that. "That's one way to put it."
For a few seconds, we just stood there. It could've been a hostage negotiation, or the preamble to a handshake that ended with someone missing a hand. But the energy wasn't hostile. It was something else that didn't make me want to ball up my fists.
Twice now. The balcony, and now this. Two conversations where we didn't tear each other apart. Where it almost felt…normal. Like maybe we could—
No. Absolutely the fuck not. I shut that thought down before it could fully form. This wasn't friendship. This was a ceasefire. Temporary and absolutely circumstantial.
Besides, this was real life, not some rom-com where the rivals suddenly grab coffee and bond over their shared beef.
If I asked Romi Dulce to lunch, she'd probably think I was recording her for content or setting up an ambush.
Or worse—she'd say yes out of pity, and I'd have to sit through an hour of her being professionally polite while I died a little inside.
And then I'd have to sit through Stacks asking a million questions later, in between side-eyeing me like I'd lost my entire mind.
Hard pass.