Don't Move Your Desk: Chapter Twelve
In which Keaton wears contact lenses
A summary for you on what to expect in this edition in case you want to scroll down to the interesting bits: my decision to drop Ream; Chapter Twelve of Don’t Move Your Desk; and the progress report with an update on my week-on-week sales and writing progress.
Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter
My experiment with Ream, which I mentioned previously, may well be over. I haven’t seen any movement there at all - they don’t have stats, which is unendingly frustrating, so I can only judge by comments, follows, subscribers, or votes in my community polls, all of which are at 0.
Unlike Substack, there’s no way to get involved in the community. As I had decided to keep this pseudonym separate for now and not share it with my existing audience, that has severely limited the options for building growth. There’s a Facebook group for Ream users (ostensibly for all subscription builders, but it’s run by the company that owns Ream) where I thought I’d ask for some advice on how others have built their audience there.
The response was… disheartening, at best. Rude, at worst. The impression I get now is that the only people actually making money there are those with a huge pre-existing audience who brought that audience with them to Ream. After hearing that, I disabled my queue. Should anyone subscribe there, I can always restart it, but I don’t think it’s likely to happen. So, that’s one time-consuming experiment I’ve wasted hours on so you don’t have to! Maybe Ream will one day be robust enough to be useful, but for now, it really just feels like a college assignment built by someone studying first-year coding. No bells, no whistles, and a very distracting/not nice-on-the-eyes reading environment, which must be putting readers off. It definitely put me off reading other authors while I was there.
The experience has given me a new-found level of appreciation for the tools that Substack has. I feel like I’m part of something here. I can post and reach out without having to have extra social media accounts, and people will find me. It’s slow, but it’s actually a lot quicker than something like Instagram right now (not as fast as TikTok, but I’m also yet to earn anything there). It’s a perfect environment for a pseudonym with no need to do extra work outside of the site or share who you really are.
I probably won’t try putting up that Ream story here, because it’s a very different vibe from what I think does well on Substack. But, we’ll see. Things may change. I may end up with a different opinion down the line. I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to try next with that book. (Also, I think I’d be terrible at maintaining a pseudonym here, because I’m not mentally organised enough to remember who I’ve met and interacted with under one name vs under the other; I guess I’m not cut out to be a catfish).
As a quick reminder: this chapter will go behind the paywall 60 days after publication. Don’t miss the chance to read the next chapter for free by subscribing for email updates! By the way - I just removed the last automatically-added paywall from these chapters. Chapters 1 to 3 remain free to read, but from next week, you won’t be able to read chapter 4 without a subscription. Now’s the time to catch up!
Okay, that’s it! On with the chapter!
Olly
“Sir,” Keaton said. He was standing in front of my desk with a coffee from the machine and a sheaf of printed papers.
I reached out for both. “Thank you,” I said. He’d only brought over what I had asked for from the printer. Still. I needed to thank him. I needed to improve the atmosphere.
Anything would be better than yesterday. The cold silence when he’d come back into the office with my to-go coffee from across town. The way he avoided my gaze and sat down at his desk as if he had something incredibly important to do. The way neither of us spoke until I reluctantly told him I was leaving in the late afternoon and he could go home.
The way he’d scurried past me and out of the building like it was on fire.
I took the mug from him and our fingers connected. An intense spark zapped between us. The warmth of his skin sent a shiver down deep into my stomach. I put the mug down on my desk and looked away from him. I couldn’t let him see that reaction. It was inappropriate. Especially after yesterday.
I looked up into his face without meaning to. He wasn’t wearing his glasses today. I liked seeing his face more openly…
But those glasses were cute. They suited him well. I kind of missed the tortoiseshell frames.
A ping sounded from Keaton’s computer. I watched over the top edge of my laptop as he moved back over to it. He saw something on his screen that made him frown. He clicked a button even as he was sitting back in his chair.
Then all the color drained from his face.
“Um,” he said. “Sir?”
I was already half on my feet. “What is it?” My mind was working overtime. A threat from that ex of his? Jordan coming here to attack him? To hurt him again like someone so obviously had in the past? I would crush him. He would regret the day he was born –
“It’s a video,” Keaton said. He scooted his chair over for me to stand next to him. There still wasn’t quite enough room behind his desk. I leaned over him. The heat of his shoulder seemed to burn a hole against my side even though we weren’t touching. “It’s Ridley Angus.”
I frowned as he pressed play again on the video to restart it. It was Ridley, alright. He stumbled around between two of his teammates. Drunk as hell. They were halfway to his car before he fell down and they had to help him get back up. The video only stopped when they finally had to half-throw him to get him into the back of the car.
“What the hell?” I exclaimed. Keaton moved away from me almost imperceptibly. Almost. But I noticed it – because I was attuned to his every movement. He had been so close to my side and I immediately wanted him closer.
But I knew why he’d moved.
Because I’d shouted.
I needed to stop doing that.
“It looks like it’s gone viral,” Keaton said. “The clip already has tens of thousands of views. Someone from downstairs saw it and sent it over.”
“Fuck!” I exclaimed again in spite of myself. I stepped back and ran both hands back over my short-cropped hair. “Fucking Angus. Why the hell would he pull a fucking stunt like this?”
“It’s bad,” Keaton said. “But – it’s not that bad, is it? Lots of celebrities get photographed falling out of clubs all the time…”
“Most celebrities didn’t sign a contract with a non-alcoholic drink sponsor,” I pointed out. “Most celebrities didn’t run a full TV and online campaign about how he had gone tee-total.”
“Oh,” Keaton said. He looked back at the screen with an even paler face. “He lied?”
There was a second where I felt something other than panic and anger. Just one second. But it was enough.
A second of relief that Keaton was starting to see that Ridley Angus was not some beautiful god. That he was a man just like anyone else. That he could make mistakes.
That maybe being the most famous football player in the world did not exactly make him a dating prospect.
That was fucking selfish. I had a business to run. Many careers relied on it. Mine was only one of them.
“He lied to everyone,” I told him. “Including me.” I growled under my breath and stalked back to my desk. I needed to get a handle on the rage I was feeling. The last thing I wanted was to spook Keaton. It was just hard. Ridley had fucked up – massively.
It wasn’t even the fallout with the sponsor I was most mad about.
It was the fact he’d lied to me. Ridley told me he was all in on this. That he genuinely wanted to be sober.
Now this fucking disaster.
“Alright,” I said. I pinched the bridge of my nose with one hand and then pointed that same hand in Keaton’s direction. I kept my eyes screwed shut as I thought. “Call in Ridley and Ace. Meeting right here until we have this resolved. Tell the sponsor I’d like to speak with them this afternoon but that everything is in hand. That will give us some time. We’ll probably need to order in lunch – none of us are going anywhere today. Did you have plans?”
Keaton stared at me.
“What?” I asked. Could he not see very well without his glasses on?
“Sorry,” he said, a red flush spreading up his cheeks. “I just – I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that much in one go.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you get all of that?”
“I’ll arrange everything, just like you said.” He paused and gave me a shy smile. “And I didn’t have plans for lunch, no. I’m happy to stay and work through.”
“Excellent,” I said.
And it was stupid. We were in the middle of a crisis.
But having Keaton work smoothly with me actually did feel excellent.
And that shy smile of his sent that lightning bolt shivering into my stomach again in ways that I couldn’t stop to contemplate.
“I swear to you, Harvey,” Ridley was saying. He sat next to the coffee table with his hands spread wide on either side of him. I’ve always been the biggest man in the room – with the one exception being when I’m standing next to Caleb Coleman. But Ridley Angus gave me a run for my money. Those giant hands spread out wide made a visual impact. “I swear to you on my mother’s grave. I didn’t drink anything. I don’t know what happened. Someone must have slipped something into my drink.”
“Why were you drinking at a bar in the first place?” I asked him coldly. The rage hadn’t abated much. It had only cooled to a blazing-white iciness.
“I was-” Ridley took a breath and started again. He lowered his voice from the shout he’d started with. “I wasn’t drinking. Not, like, drinking. I was only using the sponsor’s product. Trust me. I actually had to hassle the owner of O’Finlays to get them to stock it behind the bar for me. It was that glorified apple juice they sell.”
“Look, Harvey, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I believe him,” Ace said. He stood behind Ridley. It was the first time he’d stopped pacing since I called them both here. “We’ve been out a few times to celebrate deals and he’s never once caved and gone for the alcohol. No matter what happens. People even send him free drinks to show their appreciation for him and he just gives them to whoever he’s drinking with.”
“That’s true,” Ridley confirmed solemnly.
I glanced over at Keaton. I wanted to see what he thought. It was almost an automatic or instinctive move. He was pale and worried. I couldn’t tell if he believed Ridley or not.
It was down to me. No matter what Keaton thought.
But the thing of it was…
I was starting to believe him myself.
“Alright,” I sighed. I sat down in my desk chair. I wasn’t joining them at the coffee table today. I wanted that division to remain clear. They were answering to me. “Say I believe you. Who did this?”
“The same person who planted the fake contracts,” Keaton spoke up.
We all looked at him sharply.
He didn’t blush this time. I wasn’t sure whether to be proud of him or disappointed not to see it. “It had to be the same person,” he went on. “They tried to sabotage your reputation with the contracts first, but we saw through it and managed to diffuse the situation. Literally that same night, someone spikes your drink and tips off the press about where you are so that you get caught on film looking drunk? That doesn’t sound like a coincidence to me.”
I had to agree with him. Even if I didn’t like the way he was looking at Ridley. Like the man was now redeemed again in his eyes.
The man had legions of adoring fans. There was no need for him to have Keaton as well. He wouldn’t miss one more person staring at him with admiration and lust.
Damnit. I needed to concentrate.
“I think you’re right,” I conceded. “Fuck. We needed to get on this before it got this far. Do we have any leads on the person behind all of this?”
“I didn’t see anyone back in the VIP area except my boys and a few wannabe wives,” Ridley said. “No one touched my drink that I saw. It must have happened back at the bar or on the way over.”
Great. No use at all.
“Think,” I said. I pointed at Ridley. Then I pointed at Ace and said it again. “Think.”
Ace slumped into the chair next to Ridley and started muttering questions at him.
I rubbed a hand over my forehead. I turned my chair away for a moment. I faced the windows behind my desk. I wasn’t seeing the city at all. Just the inside of my own head.
Solving the mystery of who was doing this was only one thing. We also needed to handle the crisis. That was my specialty. I was going to have to come up with something.
“Keaton,” I said on impulse. “Sit over here.”
My wide-eyed secretary scrambled to his feet and moved to the chair in front of my desk. He’d brought a pen and notebook with him. I was getting to learn that he was always organized. We’d thrown him to the wolves with the coffee machine that first day. He had been an expert user by the second morning.
“We need to get out ahead of this,” I told him. “I want to organize a press meet and greet.”
“H-how would I do that?” Keaton stammered. He was nervous. He didn’t want me to shout at him again.
I held back a groan of disgust with myself for scaring him like that in the first place.
“Call our press contacts once we’ve settled on a time and place,” I told him. “It has to be soon. And – Keaton. Where are your glasses?”
He blinked at me. “I’m not wearing them today.”
“Why?”
“I… have contacts in?”
I grunted with displeasure and focused my eyes on the table. On my own tapping fingers.
“Do you prefer it when I wear my glasses?” he asked. “… Sir?”
“Yes.” I paused a second. No explanation. Let him read into it what he would.
Probably that I was a control freak who needed everything to always remain the same.
So long as he didn’t guess that it was because he looked so cute wearing them. So cute I wanted to eat him up.
Preferably spread right there over his desk.
I cleared my throat.
“As I was saying,” I said. “We need to organize it soon.”
Here ends this week’s chapter! What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts below. I really appreciate your comments - what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’d like to see next.
If you don’t have the energy to leave a comment today, please hit the heart button below and show me that you like what you’re reading. And if you want to really, seriously help out, hitting the reshare button is an incredible boost that will get this story in front of more eyeballs, for which you will have my undying gratitude.
Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter
Progress Report
Note: Changes are in bold, since this is getting long! I’ve changed up the phrasing below a bit so the sales updates aren’t so wordy, and separated everything into two sections.
TOTAL SALES:
Don’t Move Out: ebook - 734, paperback - 7, KU pages read - 320,232 (238 pages = equivalent 1,345 full-book reads), free downloads - 2,324
Don’t Go Outside: ebook - 86, paperback - 6, KU pages read - 119,530 (222 pages = equivalent 538 full-book reads)
Don’t Fly Home: ebook - 52, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 74,164 (224 pages = equivalent 331 full-book reads)
Don’t Leave Town: ebook - 59, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 52,008 (299 pages = equivalent 173 full-book reads)
Don’t Check Out: ebook - 50, paperback - 2, KU pages read - 27,738 (192 pages = equivalent 144 full-book reads)
CC 1-5 Boxset: KU pages read - 11,540 (1,068 pages = equivalent 10 full-set reads)
WRITING:
Don’t Move Your Desk - written and edited fully, serialisation underway, all chapters queued up ready (7 ‘spare’ chapters with no set date)
Kiss The Cook cover revealed, ebook formatted and final draft done - Yes! It’s done!!! Preorder will be coming soon, but I’m not too worried about getting it up until closer to the release date
Cook Up A Storm: loose plot done - A new entry for this week! I haven’t had much client work to do, so I brought this forward from next month’s planned start date so that I can be more flexible once the next batch of client work comes in.
(Books 8+): 8 covers, themes, and titles done, Crowhill Kitchen release schedule and titles announced, all Kitchen characters created and romances/interpersonal relationships between books set up - I’ve changed the order of books 3 and 4 in the planned Crowhill Kitchen series and also changed the pairings slightly (not that you all knew what the pairings were before anyway!) after getting to know the characters while writing Kiss the Cook
Subscribers: free - 48, paid - 2
Followers: 170
By the way, please like this post if you enjoyed it and would like to see more! This helps me decide what to do for future content.
XO Rhiannon
OMG! The tension is everything! There's the sexual tension and the plot tension. I love that you keep ramping it up. And since we also get Keaton's POV, it's easy to see what he's feeling and how these two are a good match, even though they can't see it yet. Such good writing! I'm always happy when the next installment arrives!