The room does several things at once. Frank develops a sudden interest in his notepad. Two board members exchange a glance. Someone's pen stops moving.
Rosalie turns and looks out the window at whatever is apparently fascinating about the Los Angeles skyline at ten thirty on a Monday morning.
I am going to burn this building to the ground. I built it, I can burn it.
I grind my teeth. "No, Mrs. Monroe. I am not gay."
"Okay." She uncaps her pen. "Then you'll need to settle down with a woman. Soon. This week, ideally. Multiple public dates, consistent appearances, same face every time." She taps the pen against the file. "Adopt a dog. Or a cat. A turtle. Something with a heartbeat that screams commitment and isn't a woman you're paying." She looks up. "Your file reads like a man hiding something, Mr. Sullivan. The press has filled that blank with womanizer, which has served you up to a point and is now actively working against you. The board has apparently filled it with — well." She glances, very briefly, toward where Rosalie is still studying the skyline. "The point is, the blank needs to be filled before someone else fills it with something worse. A relationship does that. A real one, or a convincing one. Either will work for our purposes."
She saysour purposeslike we have already agreed on something. Like I have already signed something.
I stay quiet.
Rosalie turns back from the window. She is very carefully not looking at me, which means she is thinking exactly what I think she's thinking, which is that this woman has walked into my conference room on her first day and diagnosed me with the same conclusion Rosalie reached, in front of my entire board of directors, using nothing but a thirty-two page file.
A turtle,I think.Something with a heartbeat.
"You want me to get a pet?" I say.
"I want you to appear human," she says. "The pet is optional, but statistically effective. People trust men who keep things alive."
Frank makes a sound that is almost certainly agreement.
I look at him. He looks at his notepad.
"Mrs. Monroe." I keep my voice level. "No disrespect to your efficiency, but that plan is a little too on the nose. It screams cliché and overdone. Considering you're the best at what you fucking do." I punctuate it with air quotes, digging my grave a little deeper, because I still need to call my goddamn therapist. "I'd assume you know that's the oldest trick in the proverbial book and come up with something more original."
"Mr. Sullivan, there is a reason it's overdone: because it works when executed properly." She doesn't miss a beat. "I am, however, open to your suggestions."
"My only suggestion is to go back to Houston and find another corporate carcass to circle."
Her head rears back like she's been slapped. I watch my words land exactly where I aimed them and feel like absolute shit about it immediately.
"Could you excuse us for a moment, Mrs. Monroe?" Mark is already on his feet, opening the conference room door before anyone can say anything else.
She walks through it in silence.
He waits at the doorway until she's cleared the corridor, then pulls the doors shut.
That's when everyone starts talking at once.
I hear them, but it's like they're speaking another language. Every voice in that room coming at me at once and none of it landing because I've never felt more out of control, angrier, more like the walls I've spent ten years building are made of paper and she walked through them without even knowing she did it.
Blaire fucking Alexander is supposed to fixmyimage?
Fuck her.
She can go back to Houston. They can find someone else. There are other firms. There are always other firms.
"Bennet!"
Rosalie's voice cuts through the fog. I look up and find the room — varying degrees of disappointment and fury looking back at me, and I can't blame a single one of them, not really, but they don't know her. They don't know what she is to me, what she did, and I don't give one single fuck that it's been ten years.
Some things don't have an expiration date.
"Please excuse me for a moment." I stand, button my jacket, and walk out the door with as much composure as I can locate on short notice, which isn't much.
The nearest restroom is down the corridor. I push through the door and grip both sides of the sink.
