“No,” I say, folding my arms and remaining rooted in place while she has a seat.
“So, I’ve been working on something absolutely epic for you. No.Biggerthan epic, it’s—”
“—Did you have recording equipment sewn into our backpacks?” I ask, glaring at her.
“Mm-hmm.” She nods, cracking the can open. “Stroke of genius, don’t you think?”
Wow, so she’s not even going to deny it. “I’d use a different word actually. Unscrupulous or conniving maybe.” I tilt my head, then add, “Or evil. Yes, evil is the most accurate, definitely.”
Dylan looks taken aback, then she waves off my words as though I’m nuts. “Evil? Is it evil to make you a star? Is it evil to help put two young people who are perfectly suited for each other together in the wild so they can fall in love?”
“It’s evil to record us without our knowledge and you bloody well know it,” I say. “What’s the secret you’re revealing, Dylan?”
“What secret?”
“Cut the crap. You know what I’m talking about,” I spit out. I’m definitely treading far over the line of acceptable workplace decorum, but I really couldn’t care less. “The one you’ve been advertising every five minutes.”
“I think you can guess,” she answers.
I let out a frustrated sigh, my gut tightening. “Her mum?”
Dylan nods. “I can see why you’re upset. I get it. You love Arabella and it’ll be a bit tricky for her for a few days, but in the end, I promise, it’ll be apositivething. It never feels good to keep secrets. It’ll actually be quite freeing for them. Plus, it’ll open up the conversation on mental illness and suicide. So, when you think about it, we’re actually doing a great service for the entire kingdom.”
“Don’t you dare try to spin this,” I scoff. “What you’re doing is wrong and you know it. These arerealpeople’s lives you’re about to ruin.”
She stands and walks around the table toward me, then perches herself on the edge of it. “You wanted me to make you a star.”
Shaking my head, I start to say no, but she talks over me.
“Yes, you did, William. You want to be famous. You want to be incredibly rich so you can spend the rest of your life hopping from one adrenaline rush to the next one,” Dylan says. “And I promised I’d get that for you, which is what I’m doing.”
“You’re unbelievable. Ineverasked for any of this. I just wanted to do my show, teach people about the wilderness, and maybe get some of them out there into nature once in a while instead of sitting around glued to screens their entire lives,” I say.
“Well, this is something Ms. Alanis Morissette would call ironic,” she says, having a swig of her drink. “You don’t want people to get outside into nature. You want them sitting at home watching you. In fact, youneedthem to because if they don’t, you can’t make a living doing whatever you want whenever you want. Before me, you were a man teetering on the edge of unemployment, remember? The network was about to drop you, but I finally got people to watch. And now, you’re upset about how I did it. Maybe you should just say thank you and be glad you’re about to have all your dreams handed to you on a silver platter.”
I set my jaw and glare at her, my mind spinning as I search for a way to make her listen. As badly as I want to lose it and start yelling, the wiser part of my mind is telling me I have to play nice here. I have everything to lose, but more importantly, so does Arabella. “I don’t want it this way, Dylan. I’d rather be broke for the rest of my life than to hurt Arabella like this.” I let my shoulders drop. “Please, Dylan, please don’t do this to them. There are other ways to get ratings.”
She scrunches up her nose. “I wish I could help you, but the execs love it. Victor and Kira almost died, they were so excited. They’ll never give it up.”
“Let me talk to them,” I say. “I can convince them that this is the wrong thing to do.”
“Doubt it,” she says with the phoniest apologetic face I’ve ever seen.
“They’ll sue you.”
“They’ll lose,” Dylan says. “The contract you and Arabella signed is absolutely clad in titanium, never to be undone.”
“Come on, Dylan, you’re a better person than this,” I say, even though she’s not and she probably knows it. “Don’t you feel the least bit bad about what you’re about to do? They’re going to suffer for the rest of their lives because this thing will get played over and over forever. Even little James and Flora are never going to get out from under this. It’s the kind of story that never dies.”
“There’s a price for fame, Will. Paris Hilton—sex tape, but now a successful businesswoman,” she says. “Same with Kim. In fact, her entire family hitched their star to her booty, and look at how amazingly it’s all turning out for them. Kylie’s a freaking billionaire, Will. Abillionaire. Think of what you could do with a billion dollars! You could save all the elephants and bees or whatever you’re worried about saving. You could buy a small country and turn it into an enormous obstacle course. Trust me, compared to what some people go through for fame, you’re getting off easy. John Wayne Bobbitt had to have his penis thrown in a ditch to get famous. This ispeanutscompared to that.”
“Jesus, Dylan! I don’t want to be a billionaire.” I throw my hands up in the air. “You’re about topermanently ruinthe life of the woman I love. Permanently. Forever. Never to be undone. I cannot stand by and let this happen.”
She makes a clicking sound, then says, “But the thing is, it already happened.”
Every hair on my body stands on end and anger rushes through my veins. “I’ll stop doing any more promotions.”
“We’ll sue you.”
