But now, she had to grovel, because she couldn’t start at the bottom somewhere else. Somewhere worse. “I want another chance to prove myself, because I’ve moved on from the whole Grammys…incident.”
“Go on.”
“I want to write something relevant and challenging. Something that could possibly be positioned as a cover story.”
“All right, so pitch me something.”
“When?”
“Now.”
Her eyebrows shot into her hairline
“Now?”
She’d hope to have more time to prepare, like other writers did before pitching what could be a career-defining story. But, of course, this was her luck.
He crossed his arms. “I thought you said you were serious, Shaw. So, let’s go.”
Brinton’s eyes darted to the massive dry erase board mounted behind Rich’s desk. It had all the staff assignments for the next issue mapped out. Most spaces had been filled in, but there were two openings: the untold history of Kidz Bop, which sounded about as exciting as an ear infection and…
Oh God.
No.
There, written in red, within the clean lines of the outlined grid: Jamie Crawford Jr. album review. Next to it, an asterisk followed by the word “cover” and a giant question mark. It seemed to taunt her. Shay would have gotten a kick out of the irony. It’s pretty fucking impossible to avoid a man you actuallyneedto save your job.
Brinton picked at her thumb’s cuticle bed. “The Crawford story,” she started, the words forming at a glacial pace. “I can do it.”
“Didn’t you just say you’d moved on from the whole ‘Grammys incident’?” He waggled his eyebrows. “What if you wrote something a little more…dialed into theculture?”
“Crawford and I already have an existing working relationship, and I think he’s more likely to open up to me.”
“It’s the funniest thing,” he said, cocking a brow conspiratorially. “About an hour ago, his camp called. They requested you write something about the new album. I said Agatha had more experience?—”
“Not more than me. Not about this.” Brinton’s voice warbled, but she straightened her shoulders. This cycle of gaslighting couldn’t persist. She refused to give up because if she did, she might as well pack up her desk right then.
“But we need something more than an album review. Anyone could do that,” she added. “I say we do a character piece that pulls back the curtain, both on Crawford as an artist and the son of the most successful country music icon of our generation.”
“Interesting,” Rich said, studying her as if a rare species in an exhibit. “The second album comes out at the end of June. Crawford’s team pitched sending a reporter down. Two weeks at his family compound in Tennessee. If I send you, you need to come back with somethingjuicy. Frankly, I think his good-natured Southern boy act is tired. With a family like his, I wanna know where the bodies are buried. Get what I’m saying?”
Her palms were slick and her inner ears crackled. She needed to calm down. It probably would have helped to stimulate her vagus nerve, as her mother often suggested. She never bothered to look up what the hell it actually was. The last thing she needed was for a horrified Rich to watchher violently jab at each of her crevices while he dialed building security.
“Yeah, I get it.”
She needed this job—she needed out of the proverbial Black Box.
“We’re projecting big numbers for this story. It would also include a pay bump. Might even be a cover,” he said.
Suddenly, her lungs swelled a few millimeters. “A cover story?” The elusive carrot dangled inches from her face. Validation she’d wanted for years tightly wrapped in a single answer. One moment.
“Might be a cover,” he reiterated, his smile inscrutable. “If you can deliver something juicy.”
Juicy. That word again.
Thrill snaked down her spine and she shuddered.
She considered herself an above-the-board kind of reporter, not a gossip monger or a user. Jamie was attractive; that was obvious. And even as there were a handful of nights she’d thought about his hands still pressed into the small of her back, there would be nojuiceto be squeezed. She couldn’t let whatever repressed tension—she refused to call it chemistry—throw her off.
