CHAPTER ONE
Tanner
“Love makes or breaks us as human beings. It’s the very foundation of who we are, what makes us tick.” The words felt greasy leaving my mouth, but the people gathered in the audience paid a lot of money to hear platitudes like this. “And that’s what the True Love app provides the world. Hope, and a method of getting out there and being proactive in the search for true love.”
The applause that thundered following my little spiel was only more proof that people were sheep when it came to love. But I kept smiling, selling my belief that the bullshit that just spilled from my mouth was true.
The allotted time for the panel discussion on technology and human emotions was up, and the moderator thanked the participants, the audience, and the media for coming. There were six of us onstage, all somehow linked to the tech world. There was a computer engineer up here, a journalist for one of the big trade magazines, a couple app designers like myself, and two investors that had funded most of the top-performing dating and social apps on the market today.
As the panel’s table cleared out, my best friend and executive assistant, Jasper Crane approached. I wasn’t in a huge rush to get to my next appearance, so I didn’t make a move to stand right away.
“Great job,” Jasper said as he approached. I merely nodded and stifled a yawn with my hand. I rarely slept at these expos with all the schmoozing and handshaking that was required — though they preferred to call it “networking.”
Corporate ass-kissing was all it really was. But I played the game, and I played it well. It was why my own app, True Love, had been number one across all relevant categories in every app store on the planet for fourteen months straight. It was why the media had turned me into some inane celebrity they tried to sprinkle into every article that remotely dealt with dating, technology, or smart phones.
“We’ve got about an hour before you need to head up to the galley to sign some event posters,” he said, his eyes dancing around the room, not missing a thing. “Maybe you can disappear up to the room and catch a few minutes of sleep?”
Jasper must have noticed the bags under my eyes, and maybe even the surly mood that was becoming harder and harder for me to hide. The muscles in my eyes were more than likely strained from the number of times I had to not roll my eyes at some stupid cliché about love in the modern world uttered during the discussion.
I liked to think that my contemporaries were savvy to the world like I was, but sometimes, I had to wonder if they really believed the fluff and nonsense they pandered to lonely people.
Jasper’s eyes continued to watch the participants still milling about the room, lingering on a few journalists still seated in the media galley, huddled together and looking at the expo’s schedule. I hoped to god they weren’t planning to follow me to the next event. Or the one after that. I had zero patience for vultures like them — always after a bigger story, even if it was pure fiction.
“I think you did well,” he said as he rolled his neck from side to side.
“These sad bastards eat up every little cliché I feed them,” I said bitterly, twirling a ballpoint pen in my hand as I stared at the pile of papers in front of me. “Anything to believe there’s someone out there just for them. Anything that gives them even a remote sense of misguided hope.”
I laughed, and Jasper just snorted as he collected my things for me and put them into the canvas messenger bag I carried around.
“Sheep,” I continued, feeling myself getting worked up to the subject, thinking about how the media and the app’s fans had made me a virtual prisoner. “Like love exists for idiots like that. For anyone, really. Like an app can magically make them less boring or more appealing to a potential mate. Bullshit, all of it.”
I heard the first intake of breath, a gasp, from about twelve feet away, right in the center of the media section where a few reporters still wore headsets the venue provided.
Headsets… likely attached to digital recorders.
Headsets… likely attached to smartphones that recorded entire conversations.
Headsets… that heard every word I said.
Fuck me.
Even as my brain registered what was happening in front of me, Jasper’s head popped up and his eyes widened, looking from the reporters to me. He mouthed, Fuck, as his eyes dropped to the small lavalier mic clipped to the collar of my shirt. His face turned red and seemed to grow in size, and I was pretty sure my friend’s eyes were about ready to spring from their sockets.
Son of a…
The sinking feeling in my gut was instant and violent, and I knew without another word that I’d just royally fucked up.
Shit.
“Shit.” My thought was echoed in Jasper’s word, and with a face now set in stone, he reached across the table and ripped the mic from my shirt, disconnecting it from the battery pack in my lap. “Damn. Damn. Damn,” he said, repeating himself as the same dread that was filling me completely overtook him.
I looked at the reporters, who were looking at me with gleams in their eyes as they snapped digital photos, recording for prosperity my fall from grace.
It only took a few seconds for Jasper to get control of himself and go into crisis mode.
“We need to go now,” he practically barked at me, and I didn’t balk at his tone, like I usually would have. He was right. We needed to put as much distance between these media vultures and my big mouth as possible.
I grabbed the stack of papers in front of me and the suit coat I had draped over the back of the chair and stood, dropping the mic’s battery pack to the floor and stepping over it.
“Just leave it,” Jasper muttered. “I’ll get it. Get up to your room and don’t answer any texts or phone calls until I get there. I’ll call Shane once I escape.”
I groaned.
Shane Bennington, the vice president of the development company I’d formed after creating True Love, was going to eat this up. He loved a good fuck up — especially when it was me who did it. I didn’t think Shane was necessarily a bad guy, he was just incredibly short-tempered about things like this and loved to make a huge hullaballoo about it at board meetings.
If he wasn’t so damn good at his job, I would have fired him just to get rid of his arrogance. And as much as I hated the idea of him smirking at me right now, I knew he was the one to handle this crisis.
Pushing through the double doors behind me, I made quick work of finding the quickest elevator and closing myself inside, grateful that I was staying in the same hotel as the expo. A couple minutes later, and I was locking the door behind me, tossing my belongings on the bed.
I’d almost convinced myself, too, that Jasper was worried about nothing.
This was fine.
I was fine.
Everything was fine.
***
“We’re totally fucked,” Jasper said a few hours later after pounding on my door and waking me up from the precious few hours of sleep I’d been able to grab. Checking the clock, I saw that I’d missed the signing I was supposed to be at.
“Took care of it,” he said, brushing past me and sitting at the desk in my suite. “We have bigger things to worry about. Major things to worry about. Catastrophes to worry about.”
Jasper was a bit of a drama queen, if I was being perfectly honest. More than likely, he had his boxer briefs in a knot over nothing.
It was after two in the afternoon now, about three hours since the panel discussion ended. What could possibly have happened in that short of a time?
“We live and die in a digital world, Tanner,” Jasper sighed, turning his laptop screen around to face me. “And right now, we’re about to go headfirst into a death spiral.”
The headline of the post on the Digital Tech Trends website cut straight to the crux of Jasper’s worry: “Phony Dating App Creator Doesn’t Believe in Love.”
Blowing out a long breath and running a hand through my hair, I pulled a chair next to Jasper and let him cycle through the open windows on his browser, all boasting much of the same. Media outlet after media outlet all calling me a fake, saying I pandered to the masses and was selling snake oil.
“This is bad,” Jasper repeated, in full-on panic mode now. “This is really, really bad.”
Yeah, I could agree with his assessment. I’d fucked up before, but nothing like this.
“How long ago did these go live?”
Jasper glanced at the bottom of his screen.
“About an hour ago, maybe less.”
I picked up a pen that was on the desk and began twirling it in my fingers as my mind raced. “Does Shane know yet?”
Jasper nodded. “Oh yeah, he knows. He’s been on the phone with pissed off board members ever since. They’re waiting for the fallout, of course.”
For board members and shareholders, the fallout equaled dropping stock prices. The app’s parent company, Jackson Axis, was formed shortly before we went public and offered shares for sale.
So now, instead of having to deal with the fuck up and how it affected me personally, I had an entire cadre of stuffed shirts and money hungry investors who’d be wanting my head on a platter for this.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad?”
I knew better. I fucking knew better, but I couldn’t help but hope for a miracle, or maybe an eventful news day in the world so that these posts got buried beneath something like a zombie apocalypse or maybe Christ’s second coming.
But as the clock neared three-thirty p.m., I was still the top news story of the day.
“We’ve got another panel at five, and I don’t think we want to no-show this one,” Jasper broke the silence with more bad news.
I scrubbed my face with my hands. “I can’t show up after—”
“The expo is paying you a lot of money to be here,” he reminded me. “Renege on this, and the story grows even more. You need to show up and do your best to get to the end of the expo with as little attention on you as possible.”
I knew the chance of that was…unlikely.
While I got to enjoy a modest amount of free movement around my home base of Austin, Texas, there were still plenty of cameras when I showed up to social events. And when I set foot in Los Angeles or New York, the paparazzi had hounded my every move ever since I was named by Forbes as one of the most eligible bachelors in the world last year. One of the richest, most eligible bachelors in the world, that was.
The label had come after my very public split from my country singer ex-girlfriend landed us on the cover of every gossip rag from coast to coast. Suddenly, people were interested in who the fourth richest man under forty was seen out to dinner with or attending a gala with. My stupid face had been everywhere in the past year, and today, I’d managed to do the one thing that would assure another six months of scrutiny, guaranteed.
Rubbing my eyes, I acknowledged defeat at Jasper’s logic. It was true. They’d paid a lot of money for me to give my thoughts on tech, something I was actually really good at.
“There’s a chance they’ll stay on topic,” I muttered, knowing better.
“You’re a terrible fucking liar,” Jasper said, shaking his head, his judgy expression firmly in place.
I simply shrugged, acknowledging it.
“Nothing left but to face it, I suppose,” I said, suddenly feeling more tired and worn out than I did before the catnap.
I knew it was going to be a shit storm I was walking into. I knew it. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to make it all go away. This was the story that could make a career, the one every underpaid, bored-off-their-ass reporter dreamed about when sitting through editorial meetings with their bosses.
I was in for one hell of a ride, that much was certain.
***
“Mr. Jackson…” The first reporter to raise their hand and be acknowledged by the moderator wasted no time in firing the first shot. “Regarding the comments you made earlier today in your first panel discussion. Would you care to elaborate on what you said? Do you really think your customers are sheep? Fools for believing in love? Even worse, fools for buying your app?”
It took every fiber in my being not to scowl at the smug woman in the bright pink sweater. She had her arms folded across her chest, pen tucked somewhere under her armpit, nowhere near the notepad that was on the seat next to her. She wasn’t going to write down or record my answer, she was trying to slam dunk me in front of her peers and let them capture the soundbite.
I swallowed and took a sip from the water bottle next to me, buying myself some time. Just a few seconds, really, as the pressure in the room changed with each second that ticked by. The mood of these people was suddenly a real, palpable thing, like an energy they were purposely aiming at me.
“Well…” I began and stopped immediately, cringing as my voice cracked on the first syllable. I cleared my throat and took another sip of water. Shit. These people were getting to me, and I searched the crowd for Jasper, my lifeline. He merely shrugged helplessly at me, unable to do a damn thing. I was on my own.
“I think the comments you’re referring to were taken out of context,” I managed to say, hating every word because they were straight out of every PR playbook on the planet. “And of course, I don’t think people are sheep. I was caught in a bad personal moment that I’m not prepared to speak about right now.”
It was cringe-worthy, that piece of shit non-comment I just gave, and I prayed that she and every other reporter in the room was gullible enough to take it.
They weren’t.
Another round of hands shot up, voices shouting above one another, demanding to ask the next question. Down the table, the four other panel members were taking the chaos in as passive observers, as if they understood that this was a one-man circus created by yours truly. Their expressions were clear… I was the one who had to live in it.
The moderator, a board member to some nameless software firm that I never bothered to learn, should have picked up on the rising swell of chaos that was threatening to overtake the whole damn room, but either he was clueless or he was enjoying watching me squirm.
My bet was on the latter.
He pointed his stubby little finger at a man in hipster glasses, dark, sturdy frames with lenses that were probably made out of cheap plastic instead of prescription glass, and indicated he was next.
“Hi, Tanner,” the hipster reporter began, getting real, real personal with me and my first name like we were college drinking buddies or something. The fact that I was thirty-two years old and probably a decade older than the mousy little dude pissed me off. And the fact that it pissed me off made me even more upset. Who the hell got mad for someone using their first name?
Me, apparently, especially when I had bigger things to worry about. The hipster reporter continued, “Do you fear the fallout that’s looming because of your careless comments after the panel? Do you think you’ll face any sort of repercussions from Jackson Axis and their shareholders or board?”
I sighed, and without meaning to, scrubbed my hand down my face.
Jesus. It was going to be a long conference.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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