“Fine,” she grumbled, shaking out her hand.Goddamnthat hurt.
“You might want to put some ice on that.”
Ice, huh? She could probably just chip some off Rosaline and call it a day.
Poppy was far from perfect, a fact she accepted with only a small amount of self-castigation on a good day. She wasn’t afraid to own up to her mistakes when she made them, but this time she hadn’t done a damn thing wrong. She might respect the hell out of Rosaline as a publicist, but she wasn’t some punching bag for her to take out her anger.
Rosaline needed to understand that.
She answered on the third ring. “What.”
Poppy cradled the phone against her ear with the hand not currently throbbing in time with her heartbeat. “I wasn’t finished.”
“Well,” Rosaline said simply. “I was.”
“You are impossible, you know that?”
“Excuse me?”
Fuck it. She was too stressed to mince words or care about the potential repercussions of giving Rosaline Sinclair a piece of her mind. She already thought Poppy was a hack who wasn’t cut out for the responsibility that came with having a high-profileclient; what harm could come from being forthright with her feelings?
“You heard me.” Poppy punted a stray football out of her path, pacing the length of the gym. “I get that you’re frustrated. I am too. But you don’t get to be mad at me for something outside of my control and youdefinitelydon’t get to blame me for it.”
“You’refrustrated?” Rosaline scoffed. “In a single article, your client was praised for his prowess on the field, applauded for his daring fashion choices, and exalted for his philanthropy. The writer’s lips were so firmly affixed to Curran’s ass that a crowbar couldn’t pry them free. And you’refrustrated?”
It wasn’t about what the article said, it was that the article existed at all. That they had been followed, that some creep had been hiding out across the street, lurking in the dark, surveilling them, waiting to snap a photo, to invade Cash’s privacy and blast his personal business all over the internet.That’swhat pissed her off. “Cash deserved a say in how and when this got out too.”
“And Lyric deserved better than having her upcoming album release reduced to relationship fodder in some rag sheet.Again,” Rosaline grumbled. “Thisis what I was worried about.Thisis what I wanted to avoid. Her new single debuted at the top of theBillboardHot 100 with sixty million streams, fourteen thousand digital downloads sold, and an airplay audience of thirty-three million, but did the article mention any of that? Of course not. Why would they laud her for her accomplishments when they could speculate on her love life instead?”
No one was suggesting Lyric deserved to have a major career moment undermined. She and Cash both deserved better. None of this was right and none of it was fair, but treating it like a competition for the shorter end of the stick was going to get them nowhere. “This sucks.”
“You can say that again.”
Poppy slid down the wall until her butt hit the rubber mat covering the concrete floor. It wasn’t even noon, and she was ready to crawl back under the covers and call it a day. “What are we going to do? I mean, what’s our plan now that people know?”
“You know, I was thinking we’d hard launch with a billboard on Hollywood and Highland.”
“Okay, let’s say we don’t do that. What are we actually going to do?”
“Pivot, Peterson. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to pivot. When’s the next Pathfinders’ home game?”
“It’s a bye week,” she said. “The game is next Sunday. Why?”
“Because.” Rosaline sighed, deeply aggrieved. “Lyric’s going to be there.”
Chapter Five
“Pop-Tart?” Cash called out from the hall. “Can I come in?”
Poppy stared morosely at the bedroom door. “If you want.”
The door opened, and Cash slipped inside the room, hair still wet from his shower. “I, uh, made your favorite.” He lifted the glass in his hand, showing off the smoothie he’d made. “Strawberry matcha, which I stand by tasting like dirt, but you like it, so...”
“You didn’t need to do that.” She held out a hand for the smoothie. “But thank you.”
Cash hovered awkwardly beside the bed. “I just got off the phone with my folks. They’ll be at the game. They’re on board.”
Part one of Rosaline’s master plan to hard launch Lyric and Cash’s relationship was in motion. If they couldn’t stop people from talking, the next best strategy would be to make sure they were talking about Lyric and Cash’s relationship the way they—Rosaline—wanted. By hard launching at an NFL game, not only would their relationship automatically have an international spotlight shined on it, but so would Lyric’s upcoming album. And if Lyric was seen publicly interacting with Cash’s parents, the relationship wouldn’t look like some rebound; Lyric wouldn’t look like a girlfriend—she’d look like potential daughter-in-law material.
