Wendy
She’s dragging the pencil along her lash line when she hears the knock. She startles; her hand slips, liner streaking, nearly jabbing herself in the eye. She exhales sharply, sets the pencil down. Another knock.
“Hold your goddamn horses,” Wendy barks, storming across the room, far too irritated for this hour of the morning.
“Well,” she says, swinging the door open, unimpressed but curious. “This must be important.”
Boots waits in the doorway, apprehensive, easing her Loewe sunglasses down. “I know things haven’t been… great between us.”
“Hadn’t noticed,” Wendy replies, trying for cool detachment, even as the bitterness slips through.
“I heard about Leah,” Boots says flatly. “If I’d known she’d turn it into a sideshow, I never would’ve let her through the door. She and Daphne are blacklisted. Indefinitely.”
“Indefinitely?” Wendy tilts her head, squinting through mascara. “I’d go with permanently.”
“That’s fair.” Boots nods once, like she’s still working up to this. “Look, Wendy, regardless of where we stand, that night wasn’t okay. I invited you as a gesture. And then you get ambushed? That’s not how I do things. I don’t let my guests get blindsided.”
“Big of you to say, Boots. Honestly, I assumed you’d paint me as guilty by association.”
“Not even close. Leah hit you. That’s on her.”
“Actually… she didn’t.” Wendy allows herself the hint of a smirk.
“But I heard—”
“That I hit her? Yeah. That part’s true.”
“You’re telling me—”
“Leah came onto Shane. Kept pushing. So I pushed back.”
“Jesus.” Boots lets out a dry breath, almost laughing at herself. “So I’ve been defending the wrong woman?”
“Sounds like you got dragged into a messy game of telephone.”
“I don’t condone violence, Wendy. Especially not at my events.”
“Neither do I. But Leah knew exactly what she was doing. So I reminded her who she was doing it to.”
Wendy gives the ghost of a shrug. Then she shifts, voice cooling, like changing tactics mid-game. “Y’know, Boots, despite everything with Simone, I’ve gotta hand it to you. You’re the one who introduced us in the first place. You see potential in people. You saw it in me, I think. And that’s why you’re here, whether or not I bashed in Leah’s face.”
Boots snorts, already turning to go. “You’re a real piece of work, Deerwood.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Tell me something,” Wendy says, stepping past the threshold. “You ever think about going in-house?”
“Come again?”
“As you know, the influencer economy’s evolving. NDA’s evolving with it. We need someone to lead events. Total control, bigger budgets, full access to our client roster.”
“I’ve been running my own shop since I was eighteen. Going corporate? Not really in my DNA.”
“That’s a long time to carry the weight alone. Don’t you ever get tired?”
Boots holds Wendy’s gaze, like she’s daring her to push. “I love what I do.”
“And if the price was right?”
Boots turns, glancing idly over the balcony. Her gaze catches on something near the pool’s edge—a dark stain of something. She barely registers it.
“I doubt it,” she says, turning back to Wendy, still unmoved. “But sure. I’ll take the meeting.”
She starts to walk away, then tosses a grin over her shoulder. “Have your people call my people. If they want to.”
By the time she leaves for work, Wendy’s still calculating. The idea to bring Boots in to run NDA’s events had come in a flash. Now she can’t stop turning it over. Obsessing.
Another day, another stroke of genius. Sure, the agency’s floated “event strategy” before—the kind of blue-sky chatter that never goes anywhere. But maybe this time… it could.
A self-satisfied smile pulls at her lips as the wheels turn. Two birds, one stone: win Boots’s allegiance back and land a strategic win at NDA in one clean move. The only hitch? Alan. He’d have to buy in, then sell it upstairs to the board, or whoever actually called the shots.
She’s nearly through the gate when the voices stop her. Two of them. Across the pool. Leah and Shane—too relaxed, talking too close, outside Leah’s open door.
Wendy steps back, slips into the archway’s shadow, listening as Shane’s voice carries across the courtyard—
“I wasn’t expecting such a late night.”
Wendy sees it, even from a distance: the softness in Leah’s gaze, the way her voice lowers just for him. Intimate. Too intimate.
“It was… unexpected, to say the least,” she says.
“You good, though?”
“Yeah. Just… processing.”
Wendy stills, breathing through it as the morning chill sharpens her focus. Of course, Leah wasted no time playing the fragile survivor, angling for sympathy, spinning her pain into seduction. And Shane, like every man who should know better, is eating it up.
“Just… trying to recover, honestly,” Leah says, her voice dropping, soft, deliberate, a little too bruised to be believable. “I’m sore in places I didn’t expect.”
What?? For a split second, Wendy pictures crossing the courtyard to bash in Leah’s stupid, ugly face all over again.
But she doesn’t. She steps into the light instead. Shane sees her first. Then, Leah, even more caught off guard.
Wendy locks eyes with Shane. Holds his gaze, just long enough to see it: the flicker of surprise. Maybe even fear.
Then Wendy turns. Walks away. No scene. No spectacle. Not today, at least.
An hour later, she’s trapped in the boardroom, forced to listen as Leah pitches some bottom-tier, D-list client like she’s the next big thing.
“This isn’t just another wellness influencer. She’s a movement,” Leah says, addressing the room. “She’s expanded her reach, doubled her audience, and her podcast is climbing the charts. There’s momentum here. Real potential.”
“Let’s not rewrite history,” Wendy cuts in, her tone slicing clean through. “Her last three partnerships tanked, and both of her books came and went without a ripple. Did it occur to you to check her sales history? Because it’s abysmal.”
Leah barely contains the urge to spit in Wendy’s overly contoured face. “Her platform’s grown, Wendy. You’re looking at her past. I’m looking at her trajectory.”
“Trajectory doesn’t fund advances,” Wendy shoots back. “If this is your strongest play, I’d suggest aiming higher. Think bigger, Leah.”
The meeting ends. Staff begin to drift out. Wendy lingers, slowly gathering her things.
“You’ll have to try harder than that,” Leah mutters, slowing as she passes.
“Oh, will I?” Wendy says, glancing over. “Because from where I’m standing, it felt remarkably easy to put you back in your place.”
Leah glares, unshaken. A wall Wendy can’t quite scale, but she meets it with practiced poise.
“Oh, Leah,” she purrs. “We’re going to have so much fun together. You’re going to make this so easy. Just you wait.”