Hard As Rock (4 page)

“Okay, I’ve said a lot of stuff I didn’t mean. And I said it because I’m under a lot of stress. I’m sorry I said it. I love you, Kaitlyn. I just want to talk to you. Please. Just call me. I know we can get past this if you’ll just call me. Please… just call me.”

They went on and on and on like that.

And the later the messages got from the previous night, the drunker Derek became, until he was finally just slurring his words and almost crying in some of them.

I was alternately touched…

…and disgusted…

…and enraged.

Fucking call me back, you stupid –

I knew the next word was ‘bitch.’ Or worse.

He’d managed to hold back and not
completely
shoot himself in the foot – but I knew what the intention was.

That wasn’t even the worst of the voicemails. ‘Bitch’ got pretty free usage the drunker he got.

By the end, I was shaking with anger.

Ryan took longer than thirty minutes. By the time he returned, I had washed my face, brushed my teeth, and dressed in jeans and a simple top.

“Let’s eat breakfast, and then I’m ready to go,” I announced when he walked in.

Hell, I hadn’t even unpacked yet from the flight home.

He stood there with his bag of bagels and schmear and tray of freshly-squeezed orange juices. “You sure?”

“I’m sure. I just… I need to be clear with you if I’m going to do this.”

“Go for it.”

“I really, really like you, Ryan. But I’m not in love with you. And I’m never going to be. I know that sounds harsh, but… I can’t go with you if you’re expecting something from me. Something more than… just being friends.”

He gave me a smile. It seemed amused, not sad. “I’m never going to expect anything more than that, Kaitlyn.”

I relaxed. He seemed sincere. And so kind.

“…okay.”

He set down the bagels and juice and pulled out his phone. “I’ll go ahead and book the tickets.”

I put my hand on his arm to stop him. “Before you do that… there’s one more piece of business I need to take care of first.”

By 10AM, I found myself sitting across from Glen at Rolling Stone’s offices. Ryan sat by my side.

I hadn’t wanted to take him with me – it was something I felt I should do on my own – but Ryan won me over with logic.

“Is this guy going to treat you with respect?”

“Ha,” I snorted. “Probably not.”

“Is he going to threaten you?”

“Not physically.”

“But with lawsuits or something.”

“…yeah, probably.”

“And you owe him money?”

“…yeah…”

“And you’re late on the assignment?”

“
Oh
yeah.”

“So he’s probably going to go full nuclear on you.”

“Probably.”

“In cases like this, I’ve found it’s always good to have a powerful ally. And a witness.”

“Yeah, but…”

I was going to say,
He wants Derek, not you.
But I knew how rude and hurtful that was going to sound.

Ryan knew exactly what I was thinking – again. I could tell by the slightly amused upturn in the corner of his mouth. It was a little eerie how well he could read me. But he didn’t show that he was bothered by my thoughts in the slightest. “Of course he wants Derek. But since you want out, I’m his next best option. He’s not going to get Derek except through me. If he has half a brain, he’ll realize that.”

“But
you
can’t get Derek to do anything, either.”

“Yeah, but this Rolling Stone guy doesn’t know that.”

I sighed and eventually gave in.

I’m so glad I did.

When we walked in, Glen was frosty to me, but immediately started doing his “I’m your biggest fan” dance with Ryan.

Ryan was
far
friendlier than Derek had been. I mean, come on, it’s hard to get much worse than, ‘Take your tongue out of my ass, buddy.’ So in the end, we all settled into our chairs with a fair amount of goodwill and civility.

The editor watched me closely, but his eyes kept glancing furtively over to Ryan.

“So… you have the story?” he asked.

“…no,” I said, my stomach feeling like there was a lead block inside it.

I saw Glen’s hands clench together on the desk. “I see. And when do you think you’ll be able to get it to me?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I cleared my throat and tried again. “…it might be a long time. It might be… a really,
really
long time.”

Glen’s face started to turn pink with anger. “I hired you specifically to – ”

“I know, Glen, I know, and I feel awful about it,” I said, and I
did
feel awful. In fact, I felt like shit. “But… we… broke up.”

He looked at me for a long moment… and then shook his head and flung out his hands like,
SO?

“I fail to see how that impacts your ability to finish the job I hired you to do,” he snapped.

“It’s… really hard.”

“That’s what being a
professional
is all about,” he said condescendingly. “You do the work even when it
is
hard.”

I wanted to jump across the desk and strangle the arrogant bastard.

But he had a really good point.

That’s what made him so infuriating.

But then Ryan jumped in with an even better one.

“How long have you covered musicians, Glen?” Ryan asked.

Immediately Glen dropped the whole pissed-off editor routine and became a huge sycophant. “Oh, almost twenty years, give or take.”

“For
Rolling Stone?”

Glen hesitated. “No… smaller magazines. I’ve only been here for the last year.”

Huh. This was the first I’d heard of it.

“Well, I’m sure you know from covering musicians that usually they
don’t
get the work done when thing are hard. When there are rifts in the band, when there are outside stresses, when things are falling apart… they don’t record. They cancel tours. They don’t get the work done.”

Glen didn’t like being contradicted, and his voice got a little smug, while still managing to stay halfway unctuous. “Well, Ryan – journalists and rock stars are two different things. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard on when we deliver the goods.”

“So you’re saying you’re better than rock stars,” Ryan said with the tiniest bit of coldness in his voice.

“Oh, no, no no no no
no
– no, I wasn’t implying
that
– ”

“So you were placing punctuality above quality? Deadlines above genius?”

“No, with journalists, we need both punctuality
and
quality. And I hardly think that Ms. Reynolds qualifies as a genius,” he said with a snarky little glance over at me.

Asshole.

“Whether she is or not, I’m telling you from firsthand experience that sometimes you can’t rush the work,” Ryan said evenly. “Sometimes you need to let the work breathe and develop organically. Rushing it can destroy it.”

Now Glen was becoming impatient. I could tell, because his deference towards Ryan was starting to drop away. “We hired her to be a professional, not an artist.”

“So your writers aren’t artists?”

“I’m – I didn’t say that. But we needed her to deliver a product.”

“A product. Like an assembly line.”

“NO, but – look, she had a deadline – ”

“No I didn’t,” I protested. “You
never
gave me a deadline.”

He swiveled his gaze over to me and his inner reptile came out. “I TOLD you that we needed it as
soon as possible –
”

“That’s not a deadline, Glen. A deadline is a
date.
”

He jabbed a finger in the air. “LOOK – ”

“Glen,” Ryan said in that same tone of voice he used on Riley when she was misbehaving.

Commanding. Cool. Brooking no dissent.

Glen glared at me, but bit his tongue and looked over at Ryan. “What?”

“You knew that Kaitlyn had no national-level publishing experience when you hired her. Correct?”

The question stung a little, but I thought I saw where Ryan was going with it.

Glen didn’t. He just smirked at me. “Yes.”

“In fact, she didn’t even have mid-level newspaper experience. Correct?”

“Correct.” He couldn’t resist throwing in a little jab: “As her behavior since then has demonstrated.”

I wanted to pull a Riley and throw a bottle of Jack Daniels at his head
SO
bad.

Ryan didn’t get fazed at all. “In effect, you were hiring someone with very little experience, and then expecting her to perform at the highest level imaginable. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Glen stared at Ryan. Now he could see where this was going, and he didn’t like it.

“I gave her an opportunity – ”

“And you also hired someone with very little experience, and then expected her to perform at the highest level imaginable. Yes?”

“I wouldn’t characterize it that way.”

“I would,” Ryan said with the coldest of stares. “And I would suggest it was a monumental error in judgment on your part.”

Glen gritted his teeth in anger. “She assured me that she could do the job.”

“Actually I said ‘no’ and walked out on you,” I reminded him.

“But then you said yes!” Glen yelled.

“This isn’t about her judgment. She was a young journalist presented with a fantastic opportunity. Of course she was going to say yes,” Ryan continued. “The question is, should you have given her the opportunity in the first place? And having given it, should you have placed such unreasonable expectations on her?”

Damn, Ryan sounded like a lawyer. And a good one, to boot.

“She was the only way to get to Derek Kane!” Glen snapped.

“Which is why you hired her.”

“Which is why I hired her!”

“Not based on her journalistic background.”

Again, it hurt to hear, but I saw the trap he was laying.

So did Glen. “I – of course I took her journalistic background into consideration.”

“Really? So you took someone with no national level experience and put them into the most high-pressure situation imaginable, and expected her to deliver at the level of one of your very best writers? That was your choice as an editor?”

“I – I just expected her to – ”

“To what? Get you access to Derek Kane? She did that,” Ryan said coldly. “That’s why you hired her.”

“But I need a fucking article out of it!”

“Then maybe you should have hired one of your top writers.”

“But they couldn’t get to Kane!”

“So you hired someone based solely on her ability to get to the lead singer of my band, and then expected her to perform at the level of a twenty-year veteran, knowing full well the history she had with Derek, and knowing that she might get entangled in that again. But all you care about is your goddamn article.”

I looked over at Ryan.

He’d said ‘goddamn.’

He was
maaaaaaad.

“This isn’t my fault,” Glen shouted.

“I’d say this is entirely your fault. I wouldn’t hire a rhythm guitarist straight out of music school to tour with the band, just because he was friends with Killian Lee. And I certainly wouldn’t berate him and threaten him when he didn’t perform up to Killian’s level. That would be completely idiotic and unprofessional of me. Wouldn’t you agree?”

BOOM.

I didn’t like that I was the rhythm guitarist straight out of music school in that analogy, but… still.

BOOM.

Glen was gnashing his teeth in frustration. He’d had all his asshole arguments turned back around on himself.

So he decided to go with another one.

“She owes us money,” he hissed, stabbing the desk. “Plane tickets – ”

“
One
plane ticket,” I said.

“Hotel rooms – ”

“For, like, a
week.
”

“And meals, and expenses, and – ”

“For a week!”

“We covered your expenses!” Glen raged at me. “You
owe
us that article!”

“Wait,” Ryan said, holding out his hand. “Did you ever pay her?”

“We covered her expenses – ”

“But did you
pay
her?”

“We – I – ”

“Did you write her a check or deposit any money into her bank account in exchange for all the time she was spending researching?”

“I wouldn’t call what she was doing ‘researching,’” Glen said nastily.

“HEY!” I shouted, almost getting up out of my chair.

Ryan put out his hand, though, and I stayed seated.

“Did you or did you not pay her? Yes or no,” Ryan said calmly.

“
No.
The agreement was that she would be paid on receipt of the article – ”

“So you didn’t pay her. She was, in effect, working for you for free, then,” Ryan said.

“No – we covered all her expenses – ”

“For a week!” I yelled.

“That’s still a lot of money!” Glen yelled back.

Ryan reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a checkbook. “If that’s the sticking point, we can take care of it right now. How much does she owe you?”

I looked over at him, horrified. “Ryan – no – ”

Ryan held up a hand to me again, but never looked away from Glen. “How much does she owe you?”

Glen looked at the checkbook, and I swear he licked his lips. You could see the wheels turning inside his head.

“Well… it was a lot… the plane ticket was last minute… the room at the Dubai, that was expensive…”

“Give me a number,” Ryan said.

“I would have to check to make it accurate…”

Ryan waved his hand. “Ballpark. Give me the upper range of what it might have been.”

Glen licked his lips again. “…ten thousand dollars.”

“BULLSHIT!” I yelled. “You know there’s no way on
earth
it was – ”

Ryan raised his hand again, and I quieted down.

“Ten thousand would definitely cover it?”

Glen hesitated. “…maybe. Twelve thousand would definitely cover it.”

“TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS?!”
I raged. “Jesus Christ – ”

“Kaitlyn,” Ryan said quietly, and I calmed down. It was like a fucking Jedi mind trick he had.