“Read it to me,” she says, and it’s not a dare; it’s triage. I scan fast. The outlets are careful with verbs—alleged, appears, sources say—but the comments are feral. I angle the screen away before any of it can stick to her.
“No more looking,” I say. I slide the phone aside and step into her space, one arm wrapping around her shoulders, the other hand bracing on the counter beside her hip so the world has to go through me to get to her. She doesn’t lean for a beat. Then she does, slow, like trust is a door she opens an inch at a time.
“This is the part where you choose optics,” a mean little voice in my head says—the one built by years of handlers and clauses. I throttle it. “This is the part where you choose her,” the rest of me answers, louder.
I speak it out loud so there’s a record, even if it’s only our kitchen. “If they ask me to choose between a clause and you,”I tell her, “I choose you. I choose standing next to you where everyone can see it.”
Her eyes lift to mine. Hope and terror make a complicated green. “You know what that costs,” she says. It isn’t a warning. It’s a fact laid gently on the table between us.
“I know,” I say. “I also know what it costs if I don’t.” The last time I didn’t choose her, I lost something I’ve been pretending skates and trophies could replace. “I’m done pretending.”
She exhales, shaky but real. Her hand finds the seam of my T-shirt and grips. “Then we do it smart,” she says, because she is who she is even when the floor tilts. “We don’t feed them blood. We give them boundaries.”
“Boundaries,” I repeat, liking the taste of the word in my mouth. “And facts.”
The phone thrums again—text this time. I risk a glance. Not an alert. Julia.
Julia: Do not post. Drafts coming 8 a.m. Also—league chatter. Stand by.
Another text lands on its heels, a separate thread, the kind that pings with a different weight because it’s piped through every handler channel she has.
Julia: Press conference set for 10 a.m. MANDATORY. League attending.
I feel the hit in my knees the way you feel a check you saw coming and took anyway. They’re moving fast. Faster than us. Fine. Then we make them catch up to our terms.
I turn the phone so Riley can see the block letters. Her breath feathers my wrist. For a second we just look at the words together, measuring them, weighing them against everything we’ve been building in this little circle of light.
“Ten a.m.,” I say. “We don’t run.”
She swallows. Nods once. Then again, slower, steadier, the kind of nod you give when you’re saying yes to something that will cost you and you’ve decided to pay.
“We do this together?” I ask, because some questions deserve to be spoken, not assumed.
She meets my gaze and answers without flinching. “Together.”
The phone buzzes again. The screen floods with blue-white. The bubble holds for one more breath—and then the chapter ends as the night leans into morning, the press already setting up their lights.
Chapter 25
High Stakes
Riley
The front stepsof my building are a crime scene of microphones. They sprout from fists and selfie sticks and extendable poles like weeds after rain—black foam heads, red network flags, a forest of hungry mouths. Flashes go off and the world stutters in white frames. My pupils can’t keep up. Neither can my patience.
“Riley! Over here—conflict of interest?”
“Trainer sleeping with her own player—comment?”
“Are you pregnant?”
I keep walking. Jaw set. Bag strap cutting into my shoulder. I’ve taped guys’ ankles through boos that sounded nicer than this. The rain last night scrubbed the air clean; the street still smells like wet concrete and fryer oil from the diner on the corner. I fix on the smell like it’s a point on the horizon and put one foot in front of the other.
“Riley, smile?” someone calls, like that’s the currency. Another shouts, “Blink twice if it’s true,” and laughter skitters. I don’t blink at all.
My phone vibrates steady as a heartbeat in my pocket. I don’t need to look to know it’s a stack of alerts eating itself. I thumb it open anyway while I walk, more muscle memory than choice, and the screen floods with blue-white. I open Notes and type a line I’ve drafted in a dozen versions since I graduated undergrad:Committed to the highest professional standards…I stop. Delete the whole thing. Our rule from last night—both of us or neither—sits heavy and right in my chest. I will not perform my innocence.
A camera pivots too close and clips my elbow. Pain zings; I suck in a breath and taste adrenaline. “Back up,” I say without looking, trainer voice that stops twenty-year-old millionaires in their tracks. It doesn’t do much to a man with a day rate and a deadline.
