KDBookOnline
Share Us
Katie willed her pulse to slow. If it didn’t, she was going to pass out. “Things got away from me. Events took a turn.”
“Where we’re at now, unfortunately, is in a defensive position. Not my favorite position.”
“No,” Katie agreed. “You like to play offense.” She watched Trois leap down from the living room sofa and run at full speed down the hallway toward the conservatory. Trois and Madelynn did not enjoy each other’s vibes. “You have in fact begged me to allow you to play offense, and I have turned you down over and over again, and here we are.”
Madelynn’s mouth twisted in wry acknowledgment. “Indeed. I expect we’ll see press from Ben within the next thirty minutes. The photos of Wil in her robe in your driveway are already making their way around, and because the rumors were primed by your involvement with Wil’s channel, this news is like pouring a ladle full of paraffin on a campfire.”
Katie glanced through the glass door to the back patio, where Wil had stood up. She was smiling, nodding. Wil’s body language said she was wrapping up the call.
“However, Wil’s platform is sexy, popular, and that perfect blend of progressive and transgressive. We both know April’s in meetings as we speak, and I trust her to keep the focus on the vision despite being forced to jettison our initial strategy of separating the obstacles of your professional future and your love life. Ben Adelsward is going to paint himself in a very unfavorable light within the hour. I would love, reallylove,to have your permission to make it clear to the public, minimally, that we have noticed he’s a wankhammer, and ourpolicy from now on will be one of zero tolerance. He is an obstacle that is best obliterated completely and forever.”
Wil came through the door to the table and slid into the seat beside Katie, and Katie breathed in sun and vanilla and felt her pulse slow down. “You must be Madelynn.” Wil held out her hand. “Wil Greene.”
Madelynn gave Wil’s hand a brisk shake and introduced herself. “I enjoy your TikTok. My niece sent me the link back in June.”
“Oh! Thank you.”
“You have four million followers and no publicist. I’m going to act as your publicist now.” She reached into her big bag and handed a form to Wil. “Look this over and sign it. Give it to Katie or one of her assistants to get it back to me. I’ll bill Katie.”
Wil looked from Madelynn to Katie. “Those were all orders,” she said mildly.
Madelynn placed her hands on the table and gave Wil a polite smile. “Would you like me to make them questions? I forgot you’re from the Midwest.”
Grinning back, Wil shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I understand I’m out of my depth. I’ve been working as an insurance adjuster for years. The robe incident was a car crash. You’re the expert. I assume you’re going to solve my problems with knowledge and money. I’m also going to assume that Katie has read every word of this agreement, since you wouldn’t ask me to sign anything she hadn’t already signed. Yes?”
Madelynn nodded.
Wil glanced at the form, scanned the table until she saw Madelynn’s pen, picked it up, and signed. She slid the form back across to Madelynn. “Save me from myself.”
Madelynn smiled. “I’m good at that. I was just sharing with Katie that I’d love to use this opportunity to take a shot at Ben Adelsward.”
Wil turned to Katie. “What do you think of that?”
Katie opened her mouth, then closed it again, suddenly adrift in feelings she hadn’t planned for.
Her throat tight.Shame. Her chest too floaty.Humiliation.
Also, her stomach sick with guilt, because she hadn’t told Wil anything about what she had planned with April, or anything about the stakes. Sitting at the same table with Madelynn and Wil made it obvious to Katie how many secrets she had been keeping. How many parts of herself she was protecting from Wil.
FromWil.
“I don’t want anything to be about Ben right this minute,” she said. “I need to tell you that there are things I haven’t told you about that I don’t want you to hear from anyone else but me.”
Wil had been sitting with her arms crossed after signing the form, but now she leaned forward and planted her elbows on the table. She looked from Madelynn to Katie. “I’ve known that,” she said, her eyes sad. “I did try to ask.”
Katie straightened up so she wouldn’t cry. “I have a professional goal I’ve been working on a long time, that you know parts of, but you don’t know all the parts that have been working under the surface.”
And then Katie told her. She told her that she had been counting on Honor Howell’s money, but that didn’t seem likely to come through. The photographs taken outside Wil’s house had fanned the flames of the public conversation about Katie’s personal life at the exact moment when Katie needed to reassure Honor that she would be a director and filmmaker who centered work above everything else. She explained that April had the idea to use the video Katie had directed to attract alternative, less conservative types of funding—a strategy that would work only as long as the video was disambiguated from Katie’s love life, which wasn’t supposed to exist.
She told Wil that this was the reason they had been secreted to Los Angeles. The real reason.
And Katie told her that they now had to pivot again, because there were pictures of Wil in nothing but a robe in front of Katie’s house when Katie was supposed to be in Green Bay.
But also that Ben was likely to make it almost impossible to pivot, because Ben knew things about Katie and Katie’s life, and the story he liked to tell about her was one that highlighted her incompetence, salacious drama, and insecurity.
Once she’d stopped speaking, Katie couldn’t tell what Wil was thinking, only that the patch of freckles under her eye had become flushed.
One of Madelynn’s phones lit up with a notification. When Madelynn slid it closer to herself, the second phone lit up, too. She swiped and frowned at her screen. “There it is.” She put the phone down on the table and pushed it across to the space between Katie and Wil. “If you want to see it. Katie, I know you usually don’t, but this might be a special circumstance.”