Page 95 of Hate To Be Mine

“Sit,” Adrian said, gesturing to the empty chair facing them.

I sat.

“She’s taking a walk on the beach,” Dash informed me. “I don’t think she wanted to be here for this.”

Mom always tried to be Switzerland in our arguments. She always said we needed to work it out on our own. It would have been nice to have her support, but whatever.

“Get on with it,” I said. “I know you’re chomping at the bit to do your big brother thing. Lay it on me.”

Adrian did not look amused. “We should have been here with you,” Adrian started. He was being way too calm, which somehow made it worse. “To help out. Support you. This was too much responsibility to put on you alone.”

“Things were going great,” I protested. “The shoot went perfectly. The campaign is amazing. I don’t need you to tell me how to run a shoot. It’s good. Everyone has said so.”

“And then you got into a fistfight with a crew member and nearly got us shut down by the Miratoan government,” Briggs interrupted. “Breaking the law can be grounds for the insurance company to revoke our policy. Which would mean canceling the runway show. Do you understand what that means? Millions of dollars. Elizabeth’s launch. The entire campaign.”

“Sounds like our lawyer should have negotiated a better deal,” I shot back.

Briggs bristled. “I negotiated an excellent deal. What I didn’t account for was you deciding to play white knight and assault someone in front of witnesses.”

“He was harassing her. And he assaulted me first.”

“I know what he was doing,” Briggs cut me off. “I’ve interviewed everyone. Rico was being inappropriate. You were defending Bernadette. That doesn’t change the fact that you used violence instead of words, which created a legal nightmare I’ve spent all morning cleaning up.”

Dash leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Dude, you fucked up.”

The bluntness of it—so Dash—made me laugh despite myself. “Yeah. I know.”

“Do you?” Adrian’s voice had an edge now. That vein on his head was running its own drum line. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you let personal feelings compromise the entire production. Which is exactly what we were worried about.”

“My feelings are just fine.”

“And why is the insurance representative now a model in our campaign? You didn’t think to run that by us? By anyone?”

“Elizabeth liked the idea.”

Briggs snorted a laugh. Actually snorted. Adrian turned to him, frowning. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s worse than you know,” Briggs said, looking at me with something like sympathy. “Sebastian didn’t just mess up. The idiot went and fell in love.”

Silence fell over the room. Then all three of them started talking at once.

I glanced over at Elizabeth, who was trying to smile around what I could now see was a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. Adrian should consider buying a pickle company. His wife was going to own stock in Vlasic.

“You what?” Adrian said. He looked from me to Briggs. “He did what?”

“With the insurance lady?” Dash asked.

“No one falls in love in a week,” I said.

That was a lie, but I wasn’t ready to admit that to them.

“You can start falling that fast,” Adrian said quietly. We all looked at him. He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Elizabeth and I… it didn’t take long. When you know, you know.”

Elizabeth nodded as she chewed. “Yep.” The word came out around a mouthful of her sandwich.

“He doesn’t know,” Dash said dismissively. “He was just chasing tail like always. Got distracted by a challenge. The buttoned-up ice queen who wouldn’t fall at his feet. Of course he got obsessed. It’s natural to want what you can’t have.”

“I wasn’t chasing tail.”