Page 15 of The Authenticity Clause
“David is in love with any idea that lets him use the word ‘synergy’,” Leo retorted, though he couldn’t suppress a smile. He took a long sip of his beer. The euphoria was still bubbling under his skin, a fizzy, golden feeling he hadn’t felt… well, ever. He wasn’t just faking it anymore. He was making it. For a single, glorious moment on that whiteboard, he had been completely himself, and it had been enough. More than enough.
“I’m just saying, this is huge,” Maya continued, her voice softer now. “Julian Thorne does not hand out titles like that. He barely hands out compliments. To have him put you in charge of the creative side of his biggest project? Leo, that’s not just a job. That’s a coronation.”
Leo felt a flush of pride so intense it was almost painful. Julian’s approval. He hadn’t realized how much he’d craved it until it washis. The memory of Julian’s focused gaze, the quiet weight of his validation, was more intoxicating than any beer.
“I just have to actually do it now,” Leo said, the bubble of euphoria deflating slightly with a prick of anxiety. “I have to lead.”
“You’ll be amazing. You just have to keep doing what you did today.”
“What, have a panic-induced artistic seizure in front of the whole team?”
“Exactly!” she laughed. “Look, all you have to do is protect the big idea. You’re the vibes guy. You just need to make sure the final product has the right… user-centric paradigm?”
Leo winced. The jargon. The ever-present, terrifying jargon. He’d almost stumbled during the brainstorm, had nearly suggested they “triangulate the aesthetic frameworks” before realizing he had absolutely no idea what that meant. It was a phrase he’d overheard Anya say once, and his brain, the traitorous sponge that it was, had filed it away under ‘Things Smart People Say.’ It was a close call, a tiny stumble on the tightrope he was walking.
“Right. The paradigm,” he said, trying to sound casual. The lie felt heavy again, a cold stone in his gut amidst the warm fizz of victory. He was the Creative Concept Lead, a guardian of chaos built on a foundation of meticulously constructed bullshit.
Maya seemed to sense his shift in mood. “Hey,” she said, her expression serious. “You earned this. Don’t let that stupid imposter syndrome get to you.”
Oh, honey,Leo thought, a fresh wave of self-deprecating humor washing over him.If you only knew. It’s not imposter syndrome if you’re an actual imposter.
He pushed the thought away, forcing a grin. For tonight, he wouldn’t think about the fragile house of cards his career was built on. He wouldn’t think about the fact that he was falling, just a little, for the one man who would be most furious when it all came crashing down.
For tonight, he was the Creative Concept Lead. And he was going to order another beer.
Chapter 11: The Anomaly
Control was Julian’s native language. It was the architecture of his mind, the operating system on which his entire life ran. He understood the world through data, through patterns, through logical progressions that led to predictable, efficient outcomes. Chaos was a rounding error, a bug in the code to be identified and eliminated.
Which was why, at six-seventeen in the morning, Julian was in his silent, sterile office, watching a recording of a man who was the human embodiment of a system crash.
On the large monitor that dominated the wall, Leo Hayes stood before a whiteboard, marker in hand, looking like a vibrant, technicolor glitch in Julian’s monochrome world. Julian had the recording on a loop, focused on the two minutes and forty-three seconds where Leo had hijacked the Northwind project meeting. He watched it with the intense focus of a bomb disposal expert studying an unidentifiable device, his pen hovering over a pristine notebook, waiting for a single, quantifiable piece of data to emerge from the whirlwind.
The idea itself, when stripped of Leo’s manic energy, was deceptively simple: market the feeling, not the product. It wasn’t revolutionary. But theexecutionof the idea, the wild, nonsensical diagram of the “I-deserve-this” spiral, the bizarrelyperfect analogy of the thermal socks—that was the anomaly. It was illogical, unprofessional, and utterly underivable from any data set Julian had provided. And yet, it worked. It worked so well that the client had approved the new direction in a single, gushing email, and the team was more energized than Julian had seen them in months.
Why?
The question was a splinter in his mind. He paused the video on a frame of Leo, mid-gesture, his face alight with a kind of frantic, unvarnished passion. Julian tried to deconstruct it. Was it the unexpectedness of the presentation? The use of humor to disarm the client’s preconceived notions? The relatability of the core emotional concept? He mapped it out in his notebook, creating a flowchart of Leo’s chaotic presentation, trying to reverse-engineer the genius.Step 1: Introduce relatable frustration. Step 2: Present the product not as an object but as a form of self-care. Step 3: Create a visual metaphor for impulsive joy.It looked logical on paper, but it felt hollow. It was like describing a kiss as ‘the mutual juxtaposition of labial tissue.’ The analysis missed the entire point.
He rewound the tape again, this time watching Leo’s audience. He saw David from marketing, a man who lived and died by conversion rates, lean forward with the unadulterated delight of a child. He saw Anya, his best UI designer, get a spark in her eye that he hadn’t seen since she’d first joined the company. Leo wasn’t just presenting an idea; he was transmitting an emotion. It was a form of communication Julian had always found inefficient, and yet, here was the undeniable proof of its power. It was like trying to write a mathematical formula for a sunbeam. The harder he tried to pin it down, the more its essential quality slipped through his fingers. It was infuriating.
The glass door to his office slid open with a soft hiss, and Sarah breezed in, holding two cups of coffee. She was the co-founder of the agency, the yin to his yang, the chaotic good to his lawful neutral.
“I knew I’d find you in here,” she said, her voice bright. She placed one of the cups on his desk. It was an oat milk latte with a whisper of cinnamon. She always remembered. “Analyzing the victory, or just admiring your new Golden Boy?”
Julian didn't look up from the screen. “I’m trying to understand the underlying methodology of Hayes’s approach so it can be replicated.”
Sarah laughed, a warm, genuine sound that always seemed out of place in the office’s quiet reverence. “Oh, sweetie. You can’t replicate a firework. You just have to be smart enough to stand back and enjoy the show.” She perched on the edge of his desk, her bright red blazer a splash of defiance against the gray. “I have to say, Julian, I’m impressed.”
“The team rallied. The idea has potential,” Julian conceded, his tone clipped.
“I’m not talking about the team. I’m talking about you,” she said, poking his shoulder gently. “You let him cook. The old Julian would have shut that down in thirty seconds flat with a withering look and a perfectly reasonable, soul-crushing statistic.”
The praise landed like a tiny stone in his shoe—a small but persistent irritant. He hated the implication that his previous, highly effective methods were somehow flawed. “My methods are effective. They’ve built this agency.”
“They have,” she agreed easily. “They’ve made us reliable. Precise. Profitable. But they’ve never made usexciting. WhatLeo did in that room yesterday was exciting.” She leaned in, her voice lowering conspiratorially. “Admit it. You felt it too.”
“I felt a significant deviation from the planned agenda,” he said, the words tasting like a lie. Hehadfelt something. A jolt. An uncomfortable flicker of admiration. “It was a calculated risk.”
