Hope pulled the microphone from her waistband and turned it off as she walked out of the kitchen and put her phone to her ear. She wasn’t going to give Cadence an option at this point. Rolling her shoulders, Hope stepped into the hallway since she couldn’t exactly escape outside right now.
“Mary?” she said into the phone, hoping this was about something different than the obvious.
“You should have told me,” Mary scolded.
Hope’s heart sank. She should have. But they had to act immediately, and they hadn’t had much time to think. And yet, she should have relied on the one person who had been with her from the beginning.
“I know.”
“This is…” Mary paused and sighed heavily. Hope had only heard her sigh like that when she’d told her that she was getting a divorce. And Mary had been right. They’d narrowly avoided a disaster from that. “This is bad, Hope.”
“Bad? It can’t be that bad.” Hope gnawed on her lower lip, trying to find the good in the situation. She needed it to be better than it was. Something had to give, right?
“Hope… this is… the majority of the reactions are good, I’ll give you that. But I can already see the turning and the questions that are being asked about you and Rex, and it will get uglier before it gets better.” Mary sounded nervous now. For the first since Hope had known her, she wasn’t sure what Mary felt about the situation at all.
“But there are people who are supportive?” Hope asked, needing someone outside of the little circle of filming to tell her that this would be okay.
“There are, but once they catch wind of timelines and questions, it might make them doubt. For the moment most of the queer community seems elated. But again, once questions start…”
“They might not like the answers that they find,” Hope finished for her. That had been part of her fear, but she still hadn’t wanted to wait. And she wasn’t sure that even the dramatics following this would make her regret the decision of taking the opportunity when it arose.
“They might not. Answers that you haven’t even told me.”
Hope’s lips thinned, and she looked down at her toes with a little bit of shame. She did feel bad about that one. But she and Angelica couldn’t have happened any other way. She never would have allowed herself to, otherwise. Hope rolled her shoulders. “So what do we do?”
“I think for right now we monitor. We see if Josef launches a new attack against the two of you now that everything has beenput out into the open. And we also plan for potential outcomes that we know we can predict. That’ll help us lay plans for the problems that we can’t predict.” Mary sounded so confident, sure that she knew what she was doing in a way that Hope had never quite mastered when it came to this end of the business. That was why she kept Mary so close and wouldn’t ever give her up.
Angelica was also damn good at it.
Mostly.
“What do you mean plan for potential outcomes?”
“I want to hire a crisis PR group to handle this. I think it’s going to bring everything up from the divorce again, only worse, and I want to protect you and Eva as much as possible before it gets bad.” Mary always sounded so confident.
“You really think they’d attack Eva?”
“Yes. No one is safe, you know that.”
Hope hated that. As much as she wanted this career, Eva hadn’t had a choice in it, so to thrust her into the spotlight wouldn’t be for the best. It was the only part of her job that she hated. “Have you seen what Josef’s done?”
“Yes, all of it,” Mary answered. “And I have to say, Hope, it doesn’t look good. If he has more?—”
“I’m sure he has more. I’m sure he has just about everything.” Hope hated to think about that. There were so many ways that she and Angelica had snuck around that he could have video of, and then this last year? When they hadn’t even bothered during the break to try and hide their relationship? He could have so much from that.
“How bad does it get?” Mary asked.
“It could get bad. I don’t know what he has. We thought we were being careful…”
“But you never really are.”
“No,” Hope agreed. “No, we could have been more careful than we were.”
“Right. So I’d like to hire a crisis PR team to help us work through this.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.” Hope tensed, her entire body just waiting for the next battle to start. Cold rushed through her. They just had to get through this and then maybe they’d be able to find a sense of calm and happiness. She just had to get through every single battle, and then she could win the war. And then maybe, she and Angelica could be tighter without the problems of the world weighing down on them.
Maybe.
