Chapter 28
Shareholders or teenage superfans—pick your poison.
The backstage area buzzed with pre-lunch activity, but Emma managed to find a quiet corner in one of the green rooms. She dropped into a chair by the wall, hands aching from hours curled around a pen, and pulled up her notifications, bracing herself.
It was worse than she’d expected.
The feed on X was an inferno.
Her name was trending. Again.
So were #Colehart, #DarrenIsLucen, and—dear God—#SquidGames.
Soft launch, hard launch, now octolaunch??? Darren Cole BB what are you doing to her??
so, I think the #Colehart ship just launched into a new subgenre
of fanfic . . .
I was there guys I swear to god the way he LOOKED at her!
SDCC IS THIS A ROM-COM LIVE brOADCAST WHAT IS HAPPENING??!!
Emma groaned, pressing a palm to her forehead. “This is fine,” she muttered to herself. “Totally fine.”
A text message appeared at the top of the screen, the sender’s name catching her attention. It was from Adam, her boss.
She frowned. It was Saturday. At least one of her jobs—the less crazy one—should be on pause for the weekend. She closed the all-caps madness on X and opened the message.
Sorry to bother you Emma, I’ve seen on the Internet that you’re busy with this Cole fella, wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. Please see the email from Henrietta and get back to her. / A
She closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose. Even Adam knew? He was king of the boomer thumb—hardly someone who spent his time browsing Comic-Con hashtags. How the ever-loving hell did he know?
But the mention of Henrietta was worse. She was a board member, a majority shareholder, and had a . . . meticulous disposition, as Adam diplomatically used to frame it. Translation—she was demanding, hyper-detailed, and a general pain in the ass.
Emma went to her email and scrolled past some non-urgent threads, finding the one from Henrietta. Adam was in copy.
From: Henrietta Forrester
Subject: Urgent
Dear Ellen,
Re the Q2 budget pre-read I would like clarification on the following items. Expected ASAP.
Emma stared at it, from the faulty name to the long list of complicated questions that followed, including a few that would require clairvoyance to answer. No hint of acknowledgment that she was requesting a prompt answer on a Saturday.
She let her head fall back against the wall with a dull thunk.
This was part of the job. Always had been.
As long as she kept it, ignoring a board member wasn’t on the table.
But the walls she’d put up between her two lives were starting to crack under the pressure, and she didn’t know how long she could keep patching them.
Well, Henrietta’s questions would require checking some files on her laptop, which was still at the hotel. She got up from the chair and fired off a message to Leah, telling her she was heading back for a quick nap. It was a blatant lie, and Leah would call her on it, but that was a later problem.
For now, she just needed to get hold of a cab.
gig
In the lobby of the US Grant, the late afternoon tide of Comic-Con had started welling in—cosplayers clattering past in half-unzipped costumes, volunteers hauling tote bags, someone in a Snorlax suit collapsed dramatically on a couch.
Emma kept her head down, trying to slip through unnoticed. Her mind was still stuck on Henrietta’s email, mentally listing every detail she would need to look up to answer even the first question.
She hit the elevator button, shifting her weight impatiently.
“Wait—oh my god, guys, it’s her! Emma Whitehart!”
Emma froze. A girl in a My Little Pony hoodie was pointing a phone at her. It was mounted on a handheld vlogging rig, fuzzy mic sticking up like an antenna, and a ring light half blinding her. Behind the girl, two friends squealed and scrambled to get into the frame.
“Can we grab you for, like, two seconds? This is literally insane. Okay—” The camera was already rolling.
Emma’s smile flicked on by muscle memory, but her shoulders tensed. “Hi. I was just—”
“You have to tell us,” the girl with the rig cut in breathlessly. “Is Darren Cole playing Lucen? Blink once for yes, twice for no. Internet rules.”
Emma let out a thin laugh. “I don’t . . . control casting decisions.”
“But do you want him to play Lucen? Like, is that your dream? Because after this morning—”
One of her friends let out a shrill “Colehart forever!” loud enough to make Emma flinch. The phone edged closer to her face. She tried to retreat, but her back was literally against the wall.
“Guys, I admire the passion,” she said, voice sharpening. “But I don’t have time for this. Seriously—back off.”
There was a beat of silence—interrupted by the elevator finally dinging. Emma stepped inside, pulse racing, not looking at them. If they followed . . .
They didn’t. The girl in the hoodie swung the camera toward herself, adopting a dramatic look of shock. “Okay, guys, did you just see that? She literally snapped at me. People always say she’s so nice, but—”
The doors closed around Emma, sparing her the rest. But her stomach sank, left somewhere on the ground floor as the lift began to rise.
It was probably nothing. Some random fangirl with an expensive phone and three hundred followers. But still. Leah had drilled it hard into her to always—always be polite, no matter what. A single mistake could ruin a reputation and a career along with it.
Well, not much she could do about it now.
She shoved the incident into the junk drawer of her mind, with everything else she her brain couldn’t deal with right now.
At least she hadn’t lied—she really didn’t have time for this.