Emma kept her head down, trying to slip through unnoticed. Her mind was still stuck on Henrietta’s email, mentally listing every detail she would need to look up to answer even the first question.
She hit the elevator button, shifting her weight impatiently.
“Wait—oh my god, guys, it’s her! Emma Whitehart!”
Emma froze. A girl in a My Little Pony hoodie was pointing a phone at her. It was mounted on a handheld vlogging rig, fuzzy mic sticking up like an antenna, and a ring light half blinding her. Behind the girl, two friends squealed and scrambled to get into the frame.
“Can we grab you for, like, two seconds? This is literally insane. Okay—” The camera was already rolling.
Emma’s smile flicked on by muscle memory, but her shoulders tensed. “Hi. I was just—”
“You have to tell us,” the girl with the rig cut in breathlessly. “Is Darren Cole playing Lucen? Blink once for yes, twice for no. Internet rules.”
Emma let out a thin laugh. “I don’t . . . control casting decisions.”
“But do you want him to play Lucen? Like, is that your dream? Because after this morning—”
One of her friends let out a shrill “Colehart forever!” loud enough to make Emma flinch. The phone edged closer to her face. She tried to retreat, but her back was literally against the wall.
“Guys, I admire the passion,” she said, voice sharpening. “But I don’t have time for this. Seriously—back off.”
There was a beat of silence—interrupted by the elevator finally dinging. Emma stepped inside, pulse racing, not looking at them. If they followed...
They didn’t. The girl in the hoodie swung the camera toward herself, adopting a dramatic look of shock. “Okay, guys, did you just see that? Sheliterallysnapped at me. People always say she’s so nice, but—”
The doors closed around Emma, sparing her the rest. But her stomach sank, left somewhere on the ground floor as the lift began to rise.
It was probably nothing. Some random fangirl with an expensive phone and three hundred followers. But still. Leah had drilled it hard into her to always—alwaysbe polite, no matter what. A single mistake could ruin a reputation and a career along with it.
Well, not much she could do about it now.
She shoved the incident into the junk drawer of her mind, with everything else she her brain couldn’t deal with right now.
At least she hadn’t lied—she really didn’t have time for this.
Chapter 29
This is an intervention.
Emma sat cross-legged on the bed, laptop growing hotter and hotter against the duvet. The number of Excel sheets open on her screen verged on the absurd.
Her eyes burned from the strain—she had already spent a full hour trying to answer Henrietta’s questions, and she’d barely made a dent in the list.
It was like fighting a hydra. Slice off one question and three new ones sprouted—which shealsohad to address, unless she wanted a follow-up email within minutes.
She rubbed her temple with one hand, typing clumsily with the other. The lack of sleep from her early morning was taking its toll, and she suddenly realized she hadn’t eaten anything all day except half a smoothie at the signing.
Her phone vibrated sharply against the nightstand. She startled, half expecting Adam to be checking in on her progress.
It was Darren.
Any chance you’re free for lunch, or are you booked solid with the media madness?
A pause. Then another bubble:
Btw did you know there is something called tentacle porn?!! You might want to stay off AO3 for a while...
Emma snorted out a laugh, too loud in the empty room. But right now, even Darren was something she didn’t have the capacity to deal with. Every time she thought she had him figured out, he shifted, like a prism scattering new angles. It was exhausting.
