Ugh.
I don’t say it out loud, but Vin knows me too well, because he makes a sympathetic noise. “Yeah, I know. The good news is, he and Cedric are willing to keep you on the project.”
I don’t feel the relief I should. Maybe I really am ready to give it up. “What’s the bad news?”
He wrinkles up his nose. Very little makes Vin uncomfortable, so this will be a wallop.
“They want you to make a statement with Anderson.”
“What, like a press release? Is Ivy writing something up? I can look it over.” The idea makes my stomach turn, but those generic things never say anything important, and then we can pretend this never happened. I can come back to LA and have a serious talk with Roberta about the future of my career and whether her formula is still working for me. Maybe she’ll have a new franchise in mind, and we can keep going as we have been. Or else we’ll agree to take a pause. Either way, no one has to know the whole backstory. I can come out when I’m ready, and not because Anderson forced my hand.
Vin’s nose is still scrunched up to his eyebrows.
“Not a press release. More like they want you to go toPeopleand give an interview about how it was all a big misunderstanding and how excited you are to be working together.”
“What?” I leap up so fast I knock the bottle onto the floor, splashing water everywhere. “No way in hell.”
Vin winces. “I told them that was what you would say.”
“You want me to play nice with that asshole?” I can’t. I can’t sit next to him and tell the world everything is forgiven or that it was all a big misunderstanding in the first place.
“What I want is for you to stand up and tell everyone that heisan asshole, but you keep shooting me down, so what do you expect us to do? We’re trying to save your career here. It’s time for you to make some tough decisions.”
You know what? He’s right. Screw the formula. Screw Anderson—in the metaphorical sense anyway. I’ll go onOprahand answer her thoughtful and poignant questions and become the hero I was always meant to be. The studios can blackball me for being difficult to work with or whatever, but I’ll know I did what was right for me.
But behind that conviction comes the sinking fear of what will follow. After the sanitized and controlled environment of an interview like that will come the fallout. The cameras, the shutters clicking a million miles an hour. The questions from paparazzi and random people on the street. The online hate. The fans who’ll look at me in disgust or think I’m some token commodity to tuck into their purses. If it backfires—and there’s no way to know until the cat’s out of the bag—I’ll be the thing my family said I’d always be: someone who couldn’t hack it on their own terms.
Walking away will never be as easy as I want it to be. Vin was right this morning. After all, I’m Damian fucking Marshall. The world will follow me anywhere I go.
