“How are you feeling about…things?” Cash asked, tiptoeing around the enormous media-frenzied elephant in the room. “You’re still planning to release it, aren’t you?”
“You have to,” Jo insisted. “It’s incredible.”
I released a slow exhale. “Yeah, I am. I’m terrified, but this is something I have to do, even if just to prove to myself that I can.”
“Hell yes, you can.” Antoni pointed a slender finger at me. “You’re Luca fucking Sterling. You can do any damn thing you want.”
I chuckled. “I don’t know about that.”
“Well, we do,” Katie said. “We all believe in you.”
Jax met my eyes across the table. “Damn right, we do.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Cash asked.
Grace spoke up. “Actually, there is. We were talking earlier about what we can do to shift the narrative surrounding Luca right now, and I was thinking an exclusive televised interview might be a good idea. It would give him the opportunity to address some of these stories floating around and let people get to know the real him.”
“Jo could do it,” Derek suggested, but she shook her head.
“As much as I’d love to,” Jo said, “I think I’m too close.”
“Exactly,” Grace agreed. “We need someone who’s more of a neutral party. But I was thinking you might have some connections for someone whocoulddo it.”
Jo twirled a piece of her auburn hair around her finger. “Definitely. How soon are you thinking?”
“As soon as possible,” I answered. “This week. I don’t want to let this go on too long without addressing it.”
“I have some people in mind,” Jo replied. “I’ll make some calls first thing tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to discourage you from doing it if it’s important to you,” Liv said, taking a sip of her wine. “But what do you hope to gain from doing this interview? I worry about what happens if it isn’t received the way you’re hoping.”
I understood Liv’s hesitancy. Not long after Jax and Liv made their relationship public, she’d been the target of a lot of online hate.
“People are fickle,” she continued. “When they love you, they’re all about you. But they can also turn on a dime. I just don’t want to see you get hurt if this goes south.”
“That’s a valid point,” I said. “And it’s something I’m still kind of working through. Ultimately, I think I have to distance myself from the noise—the badandthe good, because both get inside my head. The bad makes me feel like I’m a fuckup, and the good makes me feel like I canneverfuck up. Either way, I’m left with a mile-long list of unreasonable expectations and a mountain of pressure.”
Ella tilted her head, her brows drawn together. “But the internet is a cesspool of half-baked hot takes and lies. How do you tune that shit out altogether?”
“I don’t know that I can,” I answered. “At least not completely, but I can start by giving Grace access to all my social media. She can be my eyes and ears and keep me informed of anything important.”
Grace gave an emphatic nod. “Nobody gets to you without going through me first.”
“Look at your cute little guard dog,” Ella joked, wrinkling her nose at her daughter.
“I think that’s smart,” Jo said. “People will always find something to hate on. One day last week, after I did my segment on theTodayshow, I got at least a hundred emails about how hideous my dress was. It happens all the time. Seriously, it’s bananas.”
“What?” Katie asked.
Jo nodded. “Yep. It happened when I was on the news in smaller markets too. People suck everywhere.”
Ella grimaced. “Well, that’s comforting.”
I shifted my gaze to Jo. “How do you cope with it?”
“It takes practice,” she answered. “I think you also have to consider where the feedback is coming from and how much information they have when they’re giving it. Do these people know you? Do they love you or care about you? Our loudest criticisms usually come from those trying to poison the soil where we’re planted just to keep us from growing.”
Nate snapped his fingers repeatedly like he was at a poetry reading in a coffeehouse.
