Chapter 7
938 Words
Joe’s POV
The tray slipped before I could stop it.
Porcelain cracked against the hardwood, coffee pooling fast across the floor and the rug. My fingers were still curled in midair, empty and trembling. The room was silent except for the hiss of hot liquid against broken ceramic.
Every pair of eyes landed on me.
Fake dating.
They could not be serious. They could not possibly know what they were asking from me.
“I... uh... sorry,” I muttered, crouching to gather the pieces. My voice came out too tight and too fast. The words did not even sound like mine.
Louis sighed like I had just added another item to her endless list of disasters. “Forget the coffee. Just... don’t step on the glass.”
Easy for her to say. My pulse was jackhammering in my ears. This was not even about the coffee.
When I straightened, Sienna’s gaze was already fixed on me. Sharp, Curious and Suspicious. Like she had caught the flicker of panic behind my eyes and wanted to drag it out into the open.
I forced a laugh, brittle at the edges. “Me? .... Fake date her?... She is my boss.... You have all lost your minds.”
No one laughed with me.
“Right now, public perception is everything, especially if we still want that role of Cecilia Hartwell ” Louis pressed. “The photos already exist. Fighting them will only fuel the fire. But if we confirm them and spin them....”
“Spin me,” I cut in, harsher than I meant.
Her lips pressed thin.
I swallowed, trying to breathe past the weight in my chest. If they kept pushing this, if I stood next to Sienna in front of flashing cameras, there was a chance.... no, a certainty... that someone would recognize me instantly. All the time I had spent burying my real identity, keeping my face out of the wrong places, it would be gone in a headline.
And then Sienna would know.
The thought twisted like a knife in my gut.
Sienna’s eyes narrowed. “You look more panicked than I do. What is your deal?”
I shook my head quickly, too quickly. “Nothing. Just… I did not sign up for this... mess.”
But my hands betrayed me, curling tight at my sides, still shaking from the spill.
The PR team kept talking over each other, tossing strategies and hashtags like they were lifelines, but their voices blurred. The only thing I could hear was the echo in my own skull:
If this happens, everything unravels.
I caught Sienna still watching me, her lips parted like she was about to ask something she should not.
I turned away first.
The smell of coffee was already seeping into the rug. Dark stains spread like ink on parchment, and what I could think of at that moment to distract myself was that I had ruined Sienna’s house on top of everything else.
“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath, crouching again. The shards of the cup had already been whisked away, but the rug...the rug will be doomed if I do not act fast.
Sienna was now staring at her PR, and her PR team had not stopped their chatter about headlines and narratives and “damage control.” But it looked like all of that faded into background static in Sienna’s head, too. The only thing that i had to do now was fix that stain.
Fix the rug. Fix the problem.
But here is the thing: I do not know the first thing about cleaning. My entire adult life had been built around board room meetings, takeovers, and bugets, then it turned to shadows, anonymity, and staying out of sight. Not scrubbing coffee out of rugs. Those things were left to the maids.
Which I am now... damn the irony of it.
Despite all these, something in me was desperate to do something... anything at all. My eyes darted toward a cabinet in the corner of the kitchen. Cleaning supplies? Maybe. But I knew what about something for sure— alcohol.
Alcohol disinfects things, right? I had heard that somewhere. If it works on wounds, it should work on rugs. That was logic enough.
I grabbed the bottle and strode back to the mess. The room fell quieter as I unscrewed the cap. No one stopped me they were still too busy dissecting the scandal.
“Okay, let’s just… fix this,” I whispered to myself.
And then I poured.
The sharp alcohol tang hit the air immediately, burning my nose. The dark patch of coffee foam sizzled faintly as the liquid spread, soaking deep into the fibres. For a moment, I thought I had been brilliant. Maybe I had actually solved something for once in my life.
Then came the voices.
“What the hell are you doing, Joe?”
I froze mid-pour.
When I looked up, every face in the room was turned toward me. Sienna’s jaw hung slightly open, her eyes wide with disbelief. Louis actually looked scandalized, like I had just dumped kerosene on a national treasure. The rest of the PR team wore a mix of horror and… was that pity?
I glanced back at the rug, now a blotchy mess of coffee and alcohol. The air was thick with the sting of it. My hand was still hovering above it, the bottle tilting dangerously.
“…What?” I asked, my voice small.
The silence stretched, unbearable. Heat crept up the back of my neck.
“Did I… do something wrong?”
- Writer
