Page 28 of 7 Nights of Sin

The next morning,all I felt was regret. I'd gone for so long without letting my emotions get the better of me, but leave it to Kevin goddamned Porter to come along and ruin all of that.

When I checked my phone there were missed calls and texts from him, but I deleted the texts without even reading them, and ignored the calls.

Instead I sent a quick message to his agent, telling her I would be dealing with Kevin through her until the completion of the job.

She didn't ask any questions, just agreed, and I had to wonder if she was used to people wanting to be done with her charge.

It didn't matter either way.

I was almost finished.

Most of the brands who had been considering dropping him were placated by the burst of positive press, and there were just a couple more interviews that Kevin needed to do, along with some public appearances.

And then we would be done. He could go back to his life, doing whatever it was he did when he wasn't making my life a living hell, and I would take my promotion and move on with my life.

We never had to see each other again.

Except for when I turned on the television during baseball season or went too far into the city and had to see massive billboards of his face, but other than that, he would be out of sight and out of mind.

For about a week and a half, I got status updates from Kathleen, and she was the one to go with him to the interviews. I watched them later, just to make sure he hadn't screwed them up, but it all seemed to be going fine.

"He's toeing the line," she said when we talked. "Taking it all more seriously than I would have given him credit for before. So I gave him leave to go on a little vacation. I think he's earned it."

I held my tongue about that. Kevin could do whatever he wanted, after all.

At the same time, that little voice in the back of my head started up again, this time warning me that a Kevin left to his own devices was probably a Kevin that was going to get up to some shit, but I pushed it to the side. Probably it would be fine.

It wasn't fine.

Two days later, I woke up to every online publication, gossip site, and pretty much all of social media screaming about Kevin's Wild Night.

The accompanying pictures were of him, clearly mostly naked, in a hot tub with a bevy of busty, attractive women, a bottle in his hand, and a look of happy abandon on his face.

None of the pictures were very clear, and they were all taken at a distance, but it was him alright. Straight from some beach house in Hawaii, ignoring everything I had told him and trying to ruin his own fucking life.

I couldn't believe it.

After all the hard work I'd put in. After everything I'd done to try and turn things around. He went and did something so incredibly stupid.

And it wasn't like I could just abandon him to his fate. No, I was still under contract to fix his mess, so I had to deal with it. I had to somehow manage to turn this around, and I could only hope that the positive momentum I'd started would be enough to help.

I called his agent.

"Where is he?" I demanded.

She sighed and gave me an address in O'ahu. "I'll take care of booking the flight," she told me. "Since this is sort of an emergency."

"He's an emergency," I muttered.

"You're not wrong."

By the end of the call, I had a flight out for the next day, and I used my anger to get me up and packing, throwing things into a suitcase while I called my boss to explain the situation.

Sam answered, and I gave her the short version.

"What an idiot," she said.

"Tell me about it."

I had half a mind to punch him right in his stupid face when I saw him.

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