Page 88 of Gabriel's Album

“Harrison, is it true that Heather isn’t as nice as she seems?”

Someone steps directly in Hayden’s path. They know not to touch us, but it does force him to come to a halt.

“Do you have any comments to make about your friends’ drama, Hayden? You’re awfully quiet.”

“No comment,” he says and sidesteps them to continue into the building.

My heart is beating rapidly in my chest, and I’m grateful that Hayden kept his cool. He’s pretty chill, but I was worried he’d panic because he doesn’t like being put on the spot.

We make it into the building without further incident, but I’m on edge. I want to get this over with and get back to Ariana. Hopefully, Heather will convince her to go see her or something in the meantime.

We’re greeted, as soon as we enter the building, by Cooper’s scowling face. “Great job, as usual, Sebastian.”

I can feel the tension within our group at this greeting. Even though a part of me is angry at Sebastian, we’ll always stick up for one of our own.

“It’s not Sebastian’s fault this happened, Cooper,” Harrison objects.

“Oh, really? Whose fault is it, then? Gabriel’s partially to blame for taking his girlfriend to the event, I suppose.”

I glare at him and my jaw tenses up. “Use Ariana’s fucking name, Cooper. Or I’ll head outside and tell the paparazzi whatever comes to my head.”

It would probably be something along the lines of, ‘we’re changing management,’ with the way I’m feeling right now. I don’t threaten that, though, because I know I’m just thinking it because I’m pissed, and I wouldn’t really mean it.

Cooper meets my steely gaze with one of his own, and I’m reminded of the day we talked on the stage about Ariana. It feels weird that it’s all come to this. It feels like forever ago that we had that discussion, and so much has happened since then.

It hits me that we won the Grammys last night and that I should be celebrating right now, not taking more of Cooper’s shit at some stupid meeting. I am highly resentful of the fact that this is how it’s turned out, and I glare at Cooper as though he’s to blame, even though I know he’s not.

“Well, let’s go into the meeting and we can discuss the way forward, including what to do about the situation with Ariana,” Cooper says tersely, mollifying me slightly by using her name. “The Sierra execs are here, as well as someone from Omnichannel.”

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear our media training is going so well,” Sebastian says in a dry tone.

Once we’re settled, a man at the other end of the table says, “Well, gentlemen. I’m Tristan Scott, the head of Omnichannel Public Relations. Sierra have brought us in just to help work out an official position and how we’re going to handle this news story.”

Wow, they really have brought out the big guns. When we got our media training, we had a couple of middle-management types handling us.

“The story in theDaily Mailhas been picked up by most major news outlets now, and they’ve updated the story to include that they spoke to you this morning, Gabriel. Needless to say, there are also multiple hashtags trending that are to do with the band, your wins, Gabriel’s girlfriend, and Sebastian’s girlfrie—”

“Don’t call that bitch my girlfriend,” Sebastian spits out, and I turn to look at him.

I can see him in profile, and his eyebrows are furrowed as he glares down the table at Tristan, who nods back at him.

“My apologies. Sebastian’s date from last night. The picture she painted of you all isn’t a pretty one, and it’s eclipsing your Grammy wins. We suggest some carefully selected television and print interviews to steer the conversation away from this issue and back toward celebrating your success.”

“What about the girl?” Cooper asks. “Is there a way to shut her up?”

“We’re concerned about trying to get her to sign an NDA. If we do that, she might refuse, and then it looks bad when she adds that to her talking points. After looking into her further, she comes from old money, so buying her off isn’t likely. We strongly suggest ignoring her and shifting the focus.”

There’s quite a bit of back and forth between Cooper and Tristan over this plan. Cooper is insistent that we should try to get Stacey to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He continually throws shade at Sebastian for getting involved with her, and I can feel my friend’s temper rising before he finally explodes.

“For fuck’s sake, Cooper, I get it. I shouldn’t have taken her last night. If you think I don’t know that, then you’re sorely mistaken,” Sebastian growls after Cooper makes approximately his twentieth jab at him.

“Well, good, I’m glad to hear you know that. Maybe you’ll think twice next time, instead of just sleeping with groupies and making the lives of the people around you a living hell.”

Sebastian stands up abruptly from the table and declares, “I didn’t even fucking sleep with her. Ugh. I need a break from this shit. I’m going to the restroom. I’ll be back.”

He doesn’t appear again until Harrison goes to get him ten minutes later, and he scowls at Cooper the whole time he’s walking back into the room. I tune out the meeting as Tristan drones on about the plan they’ve come up with.

He has a list of interviews and questions we’ll allow or disallow the interviewers to ask. He’s picked these outlets because they’re trustworthy and know not to stray from the questions given, apparently.

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