2– Gabrielle

It was the aggressive vibration of my phone against the nightstand that jolted me from sleep. 

I groaned, burying my face deeper into the mattress before blindly reaching out to answer Grace’s call.

“Girl,” my voice was still thick with sleep, “I had the most bizarre night.”

“I figured as much,” she said, her voice too serious.

I blinked up at the ceiling, a sudden chill settling over me. “Why do you sound like that? What’s going on?”

“You haven’t seen it yet?”

“Seen what?”

“Gabrielle, your face is plastered all over social media. And trust me, it is for all the wrong reasons.”

“What?”

The lingering sleep instantly vanished from my eyes, and the exhaustion drained from my limbs. I sprang up, throwing the call onto speakerphone as I frantically unlocked my screen and opened my feeds. My jaw dropped.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“Yes, girl. You are completely fucked,” Grace agreed solemnly. “I’m actually a few blocks away from your building right now, and the entire street is swarming with paparazzi, reporters, and angry fangirls.”

I dragged my fingers through my messy hair, my heart slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird.

How did the video of Kayden kissing me end up online? 

Who could have possibly taken it?

I lived in an exclusive, high-security neighborhood specifically to avoid this kind of invasive chaos. How could a leak like this have even happened?

“How the hell did anyone get footage of that?” I muttered, mostly to myself, staring at a viral, very clear video of Kayden pressing me against his car.

“I don’t know, but—” Grace began, but the sharp beep of call-waiting cut her off.

My stomach bottomed out when I looked at the screen. It was my boss.

Blood rushed into my ears, and I had to force myself to take a ragged breath to steady my voice. 

I ended the call with Grace and swiped to answer the man who held my career in his hands. “Sir, I can explain—”

“It’s Kayden.”

The voice on the other end wasn't my boss. It was Kayden, his deep tone low and laced with an Oscar-worthy layer of concern.

I would’ve fallen for it if I didn’t know the man well enough by now.

“I am so sorry about this, Gabrielle. Listen to me carefully: there is a black SUV waiting for you in the private underground parking lot of your building. My personal driver will bring you straight to my house. Your boss is already here waiting for you.”

“Okay… okay…”

I didn't even wait for him to hang up. I threw the phone down, bolted out of bed, and sprinted into the bathroom. Moments later, I was rushing back out, throwing on the most professional outfit I could pull together in three minutes.

Within a blur of motion, I was racing through the hallway toward the elevator. The metal doors chimed and slid open to reveal the expanse of the private parking lot.

Just like Kayden said, a driver was standing beside a sleek vehicle.

“Hello, Ms. Gabrielle,” he greeted me with a polite nod, gesturing toward the open passenger door. “Right this way, please. We need to move quickly.”

I got into the backseat. And as the car pulled out of the parking lot, my legs began trembling and I couldn’t stop bouncing them.

The drive to Kayden’s estate was the longest, most nerve-wracking drive of my life. Sitting in the back of the tinted SUV, I watched the city blur past, my thumbs flying across my screen. 

The headlines were savage. “PR Vixen Snares NHL Star,” “Who is Gabrielle Rose? The Woman Behind Alvarez’s Latest Scandal.”

They were framing me as a social climber who used her position to seduce a client. 

The fact that the video conveniently cut off before I could defend myself made my blood boil. 

By the time the driver pulled into the gates of Kayden's mansion and slowed to a stop by the entrance, my anxiety had morphed into pure, unadulterated anger.

The driver hurried to open my door, but I was already out, storming up the steps and pushing through the front doors.

I expected a tense, quiet house. Instead, I walked into a packed house.

The large living room was packed. My boss, Arthur Sterling, stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, pacing like his patience was hanging by a thread. 

Kayden’s sports agent was hunched over a laptop. Next to him was the lawyer, who was looking over a stack of documents. 

And in the center of it all, sitting casually on a leather sofa with an ice pack held to his jaw, was Kayden Alvarez.

The moment the door clicked shut behind me, every eye in the room snapped to attention.

“Sir, let me just say that this is none of my fault,” I burst out, marching straight toward Arthur before anyone else could speak. I pointed a trembling finger at Kayden. “This clown showed up at my apartment completely unannounced and forced a kiss on me.”

“And you slapped me for it,” Kayden chirped from the couch, his voice muffled slightly by the ice pack. He lowered it, revealing a faint red mark on his otherwise perfect jawline, and gave me an offended look. “Technically, I could sue you for assault.”

“Sue me for assault?” I laughed incredulously, my voice climbing an octave. “Are you out of your mind? I am the one being slaughtered and slandered on social media right now for supposedly seducing you! The leaked video conveniently cuts out before the part where you forced me into the kiss, and it completely deletes the part where I slapped you. Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take me to wash off this stain? My entire career is on the line!”

“Gabrielle, sit down,” Arthur snapped, his voice cutting through the room like a whip.

I froze, looking at my boss. His face was thunderous, his arms tightly crossed over his chest.

“Is this how you speak to our agency's highest-paying client?” Arthur demanded, stepping into my space. “With hostility and finger-pointing? We are facing a catastrophic conflict-of-interest nightmare. The board is already calling for your immediate termination to protect the firm's reputation.”

“Termination?” My heart dropped into my throat. “Sir, he trapped me—”

“It doesn’t matter who trapped who,” the agent chimed in, rubbing his temples. “The internet doesn’t care about nuance. Right now, Kayden’s squeaky-clean image—which we spent millions rebuilding—is shot. The NHL looks down on players sleeping with their management staff. Sponsorships are threatening to pull out by noon if we don't fix the narrative.”

“We can release a statement,” I pleaded, looking between them, desperation finally leaking into my voice. “We can tell the truth. It was an unprovoked advance, I rejected him, and we maintain a strictly professional relationship.”

“If we do that, Kayden looks like a predator who harassed his handler,” the lawyer interjected. “That destroys his career. And if we say nothing, you look like a predator who compromised a client. That destroys your career. Either way, someone gets ruined.”

A heavy, suffocating silence blanketed the room. I felt the walls closing in. 

All of my hard work, sleepless nights, and flawless execution, all burned to the ground because of a single, reckless moment from a man-child.

I glared at Kayden, expecting him to be smirking, but he was staring down at his sneakers, a strangely calculated look in his eyes.

“I do not understand why this man is not being reprimanded for what he did,” I breathed.

“It is not mine or your duty to reprimand him,” Arthur countered. “Your duty was to ensure he’s never caught up in any scandal, and you failed. You became the topic of this new scandal.”

“Because—”

“Enough of your excuses!” Arthur yelled. “I don’t care if you fucked him behind closed doors to keep him in check. What mattered was that there was no scandal, now there’s one. What do we do about it?”

“He’s a man-child.”

“A man-child who’s the reason you can afford to live in a high rise apartment.”

“Oh please,” I laughed at the absurdity of that. “You know this has never been about money for me. It’s just the experience.”

“And you’re this close,” Arthur gestured with his fingers, “to losing that experience if you don’t find a way out of this mess.”

“There is one way out,” Kayden cut into the argument with my boss.

Everyone in the room turned to look at him. He stood up from the couch, setting the ice pack aside, and walked over until he was standing right in front of me. The arrogant playboy from last night was gone, replaced by a man who looked too steady for the chaos surrounding us.

“What are you thinking, Kayden?” Arthur asked, desperate for a lifeline.

Kayden kept his dark eyes locked on mine, an unreadable expression settling over his face.

“We can change the narrative completely,” Kayden proposed, his voice smooth and confident. “We don’t deny whatever happened in the video. We lean into it. We tell the world that it wasn’t an unprofessional mistake, or a handler crossing a line. We tell them we’ve been secretly, deeply in love for months.”

I stared at him, my breath hitching in my chest. “What?”

Kayden stepped even closer, his shadow enveloping me. “We sign a contract. For the next thirty days, Gabrielle... you're going to be my official girlfriend.”