“We’re coming. Give us five,” Zoey told her.
Begrudgingly, Gail agreed and left.
“You look like you’re in shock.”
“What was in that video?”
She pulled out her phone and searched for the video. We watched it together. It was a short clip of her Zoey falling off the wall and me catching her as we both laughed.
“Why would they post that scene? Are they just doing outtakes?”
She groaned. “I guess so. That’s not our normal teaser. I don’t know what Bryan was thinking.”
“I’ve never seen another person in your videos like this before.”
“There have been a few, but only when necessary to show me learning something, never like this. I’ll talk to him.”
Without another word, she got up and left the room. I did the only thing I could—I followed her.
By the time I caught up to her, she already had him cornered in the climbing gym.
“What was this all about?” she demanded.
“What? It’s pure gold. The sparks between you two are practically tangible.”
“But this is not on brand, and you know it.”
“It’s still on brand, just a bit more. It’s clearly stated that you’re learning a new skill in order to truly trial the product. That’s all.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s not all and you know it.”
Zoey was truly upset about this. Was she embarrassed to have me in the video with her?
“Zoey, you are real and relatable here. It even looks like you’re being flirty with him. Your followers are eating this up.”
“What?”
“Over five hundred thousand views in less than an hour. The internet is loving the two of you! I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Gail explained. Everyone else in the room just nodded in agreement.
“Shit,” she muttered. “Well, what’s done is done. What do we need to wrap up today?”
“I need you actually climbing. It’s a rock wall, you don’t really need this level of training to climb a stupid rock wall,” Bryan said. “Just get on with it and we’ll be out before the sun sets.”
A sharp pain shot through my cheek as I gritted my teeth trying to keep my mouth shut.
“Is that all you need for this? An indoor rock wall climb in the harness? Because if that’s the case then Bryan’s right. You might have needed some help putting it on correctly, and it’s very much overkill for this sort of wall, but otherwise you would be fine. I thought you wanted to actually learn to climb.”
I wasn’t addressing the others. My question was directly given to Zoey, but Gail interjected to respond.
“She doesn’t really have time to learn how to climb. Just the basics. We’ve already wasted too much of her time. This is one item for her to review. She gets dozens of these a week.”
I glared at her and she clearly understood that her interruption was not appreciated, or maybe my wolf was just too close to the surface and subconsciously she sensed it, because she held up her hands and took two steps back.
Zoey, however, wouldn’t even meet my eyes.
“Zoey?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
“Gail’s right. Let’s just get through this video and move on. I’ll try climbing this time. Bryan, get the cameras ready. We’ll wrap this up as quickly as possible.”
