Marco continues, “PR is going to want to talk to you.”
I swallow hard. “Coach already said?—”
Marco nods. “Yeah. Lie low. Keep quiet. But quiet doesn’t stop the machine once it starts moving.”
My phone vibrates on the nightstand, the sound loud in the small room. My heart leaps again, wild and desperate. Maybe it’s Rafe. Maybe?—
I push off the wall and grab it so fast my fingers fumble. The screen lights up with an incoming call. My breath catches.
Marco watches me, expression unreadable.
I stare at the name, my pulse hammering, hope and dread colliding in my chest. And I answer before I can talk myself out of it. I keep my eyes closed for a beat longer than I should, phone pressed to my ear, Eric’s “What the hell happened, kid?” hanging in the air like a weight.
I can give him context without giving him the truth, I tell myself. I can talk around it like I always do. That’s what I’m good at. That’s what I’ve trained myself to do.
I open my eyes and see Marco watching me, reading the disappointment on my face like it’s printed there. He doesn’t say anything, but his expression shifts, subtle and sad, because he knows who I wanted on the other end of this call.
I swallow hard and force my voice steady. “It was my fault,” I say to my agent. “I lost control. I shouldn’t have.”
Eric exhales through his nose. “Okay. But what triggered it? Because I’m going to be blunt, Oliver: ‘I lost control’ reads like anger issues, and you don’t have those. Not publicly. Not historically.”
I rub my free hand over my forehead. My skin feels too tight. “Trash talk,” I say, vague and careful. “It got… heated.”
A pause. I can hear Eric’s suspicion through the silence.
“Kirk,” he says.
It isn’t a question.
My stomach drops. “Yeah.”
He makes a sound that’s half irritation, half understanding. “He has a reputation. Still,” Eric continues, “you can’t give anyone a clean narrative that you’re volatile. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “I know.”
“Good,” he says. “Here’s what happens next. Damage control. The team’s PR will want you in front of them. They’regoing to script you. They’re going to make sure you say the right thing and nothing extra. They want to contain this.”
My pulse stays too high. “Okay.”
“You’re meeting in an hour,” Eric replies. “One of the meeting rooms downstairs. They’ll tell you which one. I’m going to join on voice. You keep your head down until then. No socials. No comments. No calls to anyone who isn’t me or PR. Understood?”
My throat tightens at that, because all I want to do is call Rafe again. All I want to do is hear his voice and feel like I haven’t burned everything down.
“Yeah,” I say. “Understood.”
Eric’s tone softens a fraction. “You’re going to be okay. You made a mistake. We fix it. You take responsibility. You move forward.”
I nod even though he can’t see it. “Okay.”
“And Ollie,” he adds, voice a little lower, “if there’s anything else involved in why this happened—anything that could become a storyline—tell me now. I’m on your side, but I can’t protect what I don’t know.”
My shoulders tense, and I lie. “No,” I say. “Nothing else.”
Another pause, but Eric doesn’t push. “All right,” he says. “Meeting in an hour. Drink water. Put ice on that eye if you can.”
The call ends, and the quiet that follows is thick.
Marco stares at me for a beat, then jerks his chin toward the untouched room service tray. “You need to eat,” he says.
