Chapter Two #2
I’m back in that conference room six months ago, staring at a laptop while our “Books for Every Block” campaign numbers climbed past eighty million views. The last time Ivy and I worked together. The last time I proved I didn’t deserve her trust.
I’d brought the creative vision—middle schoolers rewriting classic fairy tales to reflect their own neighborhoods, their own struggles. Raw stories that hit you square in the chest and leave you reaching for your wallet without thinking twice.
But Ivy?
Ivy built the machine that made it run.
She mapped the rollout to the minute. Wrote donor sequences that moved people before they realized they’d been touched. Designed retention systems, forecasted problems that hadn’t happened yet, and created contingency plans for every possible fuckup.
I would have uploaded the video and hoped for the best. She engineered the whole damn thing.
“Cole, this is exactly what we needed,” the client had gushed through the screen. “Your approach completely transformed our reach. Brilliant work.”
Ivy sat beside me, watching the praise flow my way.
The client kept saying “your campaign,” “your strategy,” directing everything at me.
I could have, no should have, corrected them.
Should have said “our work” instead of nodding along.
But Reece had told me earlier I needed “more visibility as a leader” if I wanted to advance.
It felt like my moment. And it was my idea.
So I took all the credit.
The way she looked at me when the call ended—not angry, just unsurprised, as though she’d expected it. We haven’t worked together since.
“Any questions about the evaluation criteria?” Cam asks, yanking me back to reality.
“Good to go,” Ivy responds and I nod along.
“Hell yes,” Reece grins, rubbing his hands together. “Now show me Dare4Change’s next campaign director. Let’s not just move the needle, let’s keep it there.”
“Remember superstars.” Cam’s gaze flicks between us. “Best campaign execution wins, and please—” she presses her hands together, “—no drama. I promised the hotel that we are a group of calm, boring professionals. Don’t make me a liar.”
Reece snickers, and Cam smacks his chest in response. He snatches her hand, yanking her into a kiss that has her squealing against his lips.
“Bye!” they chorus with cheesy grins.
Their faces disappear.
Ivy goes into drill sergeant mode, rattling off logistics. “Okay, timeline’s locked for Blaze’s entrance, B-roll scheduled in fifteen-minute increments, backup shots categorized by lighting conditions.”
Her fingers dance across the iPad, planning his arrival as if we’re filming a blockbuster movie, not a celebrity strolling through a lobby.
“I’ve mapped every deliverable,” she finishes.
“Except,” I say. “You didn’t leave room for it.”
She lifts her eyes. “Room for what?”
“For when something better happens.”
“We don’t wing it.”
“Who said anything about winging it? I call it adapting.”
“This weekend will run according to plan.”
“Whose plan?”
“The one that works. Mine.”
Her eyes narrow. That assumption, the one where she built the spreadsheet so she gets to call the shots, lights a fire in my chest.
“We’re both being evaluated, Ivy. I don’t take orders from you.”
Her words crack the air like a starting pistol.
“Listen, Hartwell—”
She inches closer. So close, I can see the moment register.
My arm. Still around her.
Her gaze tracks the line of my forearm, tracing something she doesn’t quite understand. Stops at my hand. My fingers are spread wide over her waist, curved around the warm, firm swell of her hip like they belong there.
Why am I not letting go?
Better question.
Why isn’t she pulling away?
The lobby is loud. People talking. Luggage rolling. Someone laughing too loudly near the elevators. But it all sounds far away, distant, as if I’ve ducked underwater and the world is happening somewhere above me.
Her lips part.
My thumb presses into her hip instinctively. The smallest squeeze.
She’s off the bench in an instant. I pull back at the same time, too fast, too abrupt.
THUD.
I hit the floor.
“That—” she starts.
“Didn’t happen,” I finish.
We stare at each other, not blinking. Both pretending we weren’t one millimeter away from doing something catastrophically stupid on the Lovers’ Bench.
And the worst part? Neither of us looks convinced.
THHRRUMMMM.
An engine roars outside. First distant, then, right on top of us.
The floor vibrates. The chandeliers clatter like a cage of nervous birds. The stained-glass trembles.
The crowd at the Singles Activism Weekend—women in flowy dresses and strategic lip gloss, cologne-soaked men who swear they’re only here for marine conservation—freezes mid-check-in.
VROOOOOOOOM.
Every head turns toward the entrance.
Ivy’s eyes go wide. “He wouldn’t.”
I lift my camera out of my bag, power it on, and start framing my shot.
“Oh, Stopwatch. He absolutely would.”
The lobby doors BLAST open.
Sand shoots across polished marble.
And Blaze Tate rides straight into the Hotel Bellwether on a lifeguard-yellow quad like he’s never been told no a day in his life.
At that exact second—
“Cake By The Ocean” detonates from the ATV speakers.
“BLAZE!” the women scream.
The men in the lobby square their shoulders as if to salute their captain.
He’s six-foot-something of golden chaos. His bare, sun-browned chest is a canvas of colorful tattoos, and his damp, wind-tossed blond hair falls into his eyes. He grins like the world is his sandbox and he just brought the toys.
Blaze guns it.
VROOM. SCREEECH.
He does a donut.
Sand explodes across the check-in desk. I’m already moving because I know (I know) this is the reaction shot. These faces. This exact moment. This is the content.
The guy next to me’s mouth is just… open.
“The shot list!” Ivy snaps behind me. “We had an entrance sequence!”
I shout back. “He wrote a better one.”
I swing wide as Blaze races toward the grand staircase.
The women gasp like he’s about to propose to all of them at once.
Someone next to me, recording on their phone, murmurs, “There’s no way he’s taking that up the stairs.”
Oh, he is.
The quad climbs the stairs one by one, each step a VROOM, each landing a SKRRRT.
I rush to the best lobby vantage point, parallel to the landing, and point my camera up.
I’m there before he is, because I know that’s where the light is and that’s where the crowd breaks.
I didn’t read that in any shot list, I just know.
Blaze hits the balcony landing and positions the quad to face us.
We all look up. Nobody breathes.
Blaze hits the gas, pops the front wheels, and it looks like he might just jump off the balcony. Jesus!
He lurches to a halt.
Two wheels rest on the decorative balcony railing.
He pumps his fist in the air.
I adjust the exposure mid-tilt, keeping his profile sharp. It’s not luck. It’s timing.
Blaze revs once more for the crowd, then drops the wheels back to earth. He turns, and then—because the man has never once chosen moderation—stands on the seat as the quad thunders down the staircase.
“He’s the motherfucking GOAT,” a man whispers reverently.
The second the quad hits the marble, he’s already pushing into—
A handstand! On the seat!
On a moving quad.
Inside a century-old lobby.
To “Cake By The Ocean.”
The ATV rolls to a stop. Blaze holds for a beat… for the algorithm, for the drama, for the forty women vibrating at a frequency only whales can hear. He dismounts in one fluid motion, lands clean, then pulls his sunglasses down with a grin.
“Who’s ready to save some seals?”
The mob surges. Panic-stricken hotel security descends from three directions. Women are screaming. Men are screaming. Someone is crying happy tears while someone else films the crying and this, right here, is the internet’s new favorite moment.
Through the lens, I catch Ivy just over his shoulder, iPad up with a stunned expression. Her vision, up in smoke.
She can have the plan. I’ve got the footage. And that promotion?
Already got my name on it.