She sighs, softening a shade. “Jason, listen. I am trying to protect both of you. I can’t fight the league, the owner, the sponsors, and the algorithm if you hand them pictures. Give me forty-eight hours without a new image to feed the beast.”
Riley lifts her gaze to mine. There’s a storm in it, yes—but also thought. Calculation. Care. Her thumb rubs the paper corner of my notepad like she’s reminding herself the plan exists. She doesn’t speak yet. Neither do I. The vent hums. Rain threads the edge of the window. The bubble thins but it hasn’t popped.
Julia’s voice returns, crisp. “What I need from you tonight: phones off. Curtains closed. Separate exits if you must move. Tomorrow: no comment. I’ll ping you at eight with language for HR and a draft holding statement. Understood?”
I look at Riley. She looks at me.
I’m not sure which of us says it first.
“No.”
The word lands between the three of us like a dropped stick. Julia goes quiet in that way that means she’s recalculating an entire flowchart.
“No?” she repeats, even. “Clarify.”
Riley’s voice comes first. “No to distance as default,” she says. “No to decisions made for us because they photograph better. And no to separating tonight so a stranger with a camera feels powerful.”
I pick it up. “And no to silence,” I add. “If we speak, it’s not a holding pattern. It’s a plan. Transparency, not tricks.”
“Transparency is a lovely brand value,” Julia says, dry. “It is not a shield against a sponsor with a morals clause and a spreadsheet.”
“Then we don’t give them our morality to monetize,” Riley says, steady. I look at her and feel something settle—pride, or maybe just recognition. She’s not made of apology. She’s made of spine. “If there’s a statement, I approve every syllable. If there’s a meeting, I’m in the room. No more speaking for me.”
I nod, because this is the line I needed her to draw for herself. “Both of us or neither of us,” I say into the phone. “If you want me, you get Riley. If they want Riley, they get me. We move together.”
On the other end, Julia exhales. “You’re making my life difficult,” she says, and there’s a ghost of a laugh in it that tells me she’s already building a strategy around our stubbornness. “Fine. Parameters: if you insist on transparency, we set terms. No medical details. No timelines. No images from inside anyone’s home. We name harassment for what it is and we shift the burden where it belongs—on the people wielding cameras at windows.”
Riley’s shoulders loosen. “And privacy?” she asks. “I need a version of this where I’m not performing my life.”
“Privacy means you decide what stays in the bubble,” Julia says. “Control means you decide what leaves it and when. I can work with that if you follow one rule.”
“What rule?” I ask.
“You do nothing unilateral.” Julia’s tone sharpens, agent steel showing. “No late-night posts, no hallway interviews, no hero moves in a press scrum. Every decision comes through me and through each other. If you want control, you have to share it.”
“Agreed,” Riley says before I can. She meets my eyes. “Shared. All of it.”
“Agreed,” I echo, and the word feels like a lock sliding into place. Not a trap—structure.
Julia clicks keys. “Then here’s the immediate path. Tonight, stay dark. Tomorrow morning, I’ll send two drafts: a harassment statement and a professional boundary statement. You will mark them up together. We will ask the team for written assurances on retaliation and device scope. We will not apologize for existing.” She pauses. “And if this escalates despite restraint, we go on the record—with one interview, one photographer, and your terms. That buys us public goodwill and makes the league think twice about steamrolling a pregnant trainer.”
Riley’s breath hitches on that last word. I press my knee lightly to hers. “Our terms,” I say. “Or we don’t do it.”
“Your terms,” Julia confirms. “I’ll text at eight. Leave it on read until you’ve both reviewed.” Her voice gentles. “Get some sleep if you can.” A beat. “And keep the curtains closed.”
The line clicks dead. The kitchen grows around the absence like a bruise.
Riley looks at me, pupils wide in the warm stripe of light. “Both of us or neither of us,” she repeats, tasting the shape of it.
“Both,” I say, and slide the notepad toward her. She puts her hand over mine on the page, ink smudging our fingers together. For a breath, the bubble is whole again.
Then my phone shudders under our palms—one long buzz that doesn’t stop. A second. A third. The screen wakes and floods the underside of her chin with blue-white. Push alerts stack over each other, chewing the top edge of the glass.
The rumor just jumped the boards.
Push alerts spit across the screen like hail. STAR-PLAYER SCANDAL? TRAINER ENTANGLEMENT ALLEGED. A lower-third screenshot from a broadcast I didn’t agree to roll up next—our silhouettes through a rain-blurred window, my shoulders unmistakable even when I’m turned away, the caption doing more work than the facts.
Riley flinches. The muscle in her jaw jumps once, hard, then stills like she orders it to. I hate that she knows how to steady herself for impact.
