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Maddox shook his head and took a long swallow of drink. “Your people can still run it. You can—”
Onyx’s phone rang, cutting Maddox off.
“It’s Markus.” Onyx stared at the screen.
I wanted to say fuck him, we’re talking. A sense of impending doom crept in, though. “Get it out of the way, so we can get back to figuring out how to get you to stay.”
“Yeah,” Onyx answered. “Wait. Say that again.” He set his phone on the table and changed it to speaker.
“One of the interns fucked up.” Markus’s news made my heart sink. “She spilled coffee on all of the entries to date—which is you and one other team—and destroyed them.”
I’d heard that wrong. I must’ve. My brain was revolting after the string of good things. “What?”
“I’m so sorry,” Markus said.
Maddox looked angry. Not as mad as when he’d come back from seeing his dad in the hospital, but still very un-Maddox-like. “You’re extending the deadline, then. Making an exception because this was your mistake?”
“I can’t.” Markus’s reply was full of apology. “Legal is prepared to offer you cash, as an apology—”
“No. Fuck no.” I wasn’t accepting this. Not after everything we’d just gone through.
28
Onyx
This was unbelievable. After all our work… “We’re not disqualified though.” I needed confirmation.
“No,” Markus said. “If you can have new entries to me—”
“We will.” Maddox reached over and disconnected my phone.
And Maddox was right. “We still have the negatives.” I was saying what we were all thinking. “We don’t need to do reshoots, and we have a little less than a day to redo the painting and lettering.”
“Exactly.” Alys nodded. “We’ll be pissed after we’re back in the running.”
Great. “What do we need to get started?” The list was spinning in my head. “Paul’s Boutique is easy.”
“Thanks to Brooke.” Alys had her phone out and was taking notes. “What else?”
“We need color prints for all of them except The Rascals and Korn.” The images spun in my head. “Maddox will run to the pharmacy and get our color reprints, you and me back to my place.”
Maddox grabbed two more chicken wings in one hand, and gave a sloppy salute with the other. Evie would hate that. “Meet you at home.”
Alys and I drove to my place. We didn’t need to exchange words. She was already pulling out the paint, stencils, and other supplies while I headed to the darkroom to develop the black and white prints. Yes, Maddox usually did this part, but this was the easy part of the process and we were all doing what we could.
When I was done putting multiple copies of each image through developer and their bath, I left them drying on the line, and headed into the kitchen.
Maddox joined us a moment later. He laid each photo out on the table.
Rush just needed stenciling, and Alys grabbed the photo of everyone from Evie’s.
Maddox had a new eleven by fourteen canvas for the Journey background. I grabbed the accompanying photo, to cut my own head out.
“By the way, you can’t get out of the other conversation that easily,” Alys said.
“I don’t…” But I did know what she was talking about.
Maddox painted a dark blue circle around the edge of the canvas. “You’re not selling.”
