Page 25 of All Superheroes Need PR
“I, um ...” Vanessa clearly spots the journalist. Her arm waving in the air encourages several other journalists to raise their hands too. Vanessa’s stutter gets worse. “My company’s s-small, and I was pretty sure we wouldn’t—shouldn’t—even be considered for the bid with Roland’s and my r-r-r ...” She’s not gonna be able to get through the word. She tucks her hair behind her ear. Her fingers fumble over the podium as she searches for the nearest note card. She fumbles that too.
“Are you trying to sayrelationship?” the journalist who shot her hand up into the air first shouts without prompting.
Beside me, Margerie lurches forward half an inch. Her bottom jaw juts out, and she’s baring her teeth again, and I take that as the final signal I need.
“All right, enough,” I hiss. Margerie grabs my arm, but this time I shake her off, look her dead in the eye, and say evenly, “I got this.” I can hear the rapid increase of drones’ tempos as they whoosh closer, frenzied by my sudden movement as I halve the distance to Vanessa.
“Are you suggesting that you and the Pyro are in a relationship?” a reporter shouts.
Vanessa makes a soft sound that guts me and nods.
“And that’s why you threw up on him?” another journalist stupidly blurts.
“I ... no ... of course not ...”
Vanessa doesn’t hear or see me coming, so she doesn’t step off the step stool as I reach it and bracket her arms with my own, lining her back with the front of my body. I slam one fist onto the edge of the podium and let it erupt in flame as I point at the last journalist who spoke.
“Don’t ask my girl stupid fucking questions.”
I field question after question, shooting reporters down and getting them off her back while she rigidly stands there, refusing to lean even one inch of her back against me. And when it’s all over and we’re back in the safety of a quiet conference room in the COE building, Vanessa turns to me and looks up at me with those big doe eyes, a single note card still nervously clenched in her right fist.
She says, “Thank you, Roland.” I feel the fabric of my being shift. And that’s it. It’s decided. She’s mine.
I’m gonna grab her, steal her, take her away so nobody can fucking find her again ...
No. That’s what a madman would do. My hands flinch and react toward her in menacing, kidnappery pulses that she doesn’t seem tonotice, and I know that if I stay here another second, she’s going to make a villain out of me. So I do the only thing I can do to avoid committing a crime as everything within me says tosnatch.Kidnap kidnap kidnap.
I take a step back, get the fuck away from her, and take to the sky.
Chapter EightVanessa
Don’t ask my girl stupid fucking questions.
My eyes open. It’s dark in my room, but I can’t sleep. Haven’t been able to sleep since the press conference last week and the media frenzy that followed, even though I’m absolutely exhausted. I understand now why Mr. Singkham said that there were teams of a hundred plusjustworking on the comms, PR, and marketing for some of his Champions.
Of course we’d prepped, but we couldn’t have prepared for him. Forthat.
You don’t talk to her, you talk to me.
In a single afternoon, the Wyvern had played a role and built a persona for himself that we had hoped to build over the next several months.
She’s shy. I see any of you hounding her on the streets, I’ll melt the cameras to your hands and light your underwear on fire.
He’d made threats even more violent and imaginative over the next seven minutes and sixteen seconds that he’d taken question after question.
So you don’t think it’s nepotistic for Ms. Theriot’s company to win a PR contract for the COE despite the nature of your relationship?
The bid was blind, and she won it before we met, without me having seen it or her. After I asked her on a date the first time, Mr. Singkham made us sign a whole bunch of shit to be sure whatever happens with us doesn’t affect the company. Nessa’s a good fucking girl and smarter than the lot of you combined. She got here on her brains, not on her back, and if any of you ever suggest anything like that again ever, I’ll tear out your spines.Nessa. He called me Nessa.
And is the nature of your relationship sexual?
Not that it’s any of y’all’s fucking business, but no, it ain’t. Not yet.Not yet. I shudder where I lie in bed, replaying those words over and over. I know it’s part of the brand, the package, but he sounded so damn serious. He can’t be serious. And yet, the warmth that spreads across my thighs and between them is.You ask another personal question like that, I’ll light that microphone you’re holding on fire and shove it up your ass.
The more violent his declarations got, the more rabid the reporters became. When he finally did what he’d promised and turned all the raised microphones into mini torches, the reporters present all laughed, right after they’d screamed.
I’d been really worried, but Margerie hadn’t been when we’d gotten offstage. She’d been scrolling my accounts and assured me that the press conference had swayed public opinion on the Wyvern already but warned me not to check the accounts personally, reminding me what I usually reminded all my clients—that people could be mean.
And like my typical client, I didn’t listen. I wanted to see.
