“Riley!” The shout snaps down the corridor from the far end where a service door opens to the loading dock. A reporter has slipped past the front desk and is already raising her phone like a blessing or a weapon. “Riley, is it true?”
Heads swivel. Phones rise in a ripple, players and staff morphing into an accidental press pool. Someone whispers, “Don’t look,” which of course makes everyone do it. I feel the shift in the room, the way silence gets teeth.
Security pivots, interposing themselves between the reporter and me with the practiced choreography of people who know how fast a hallway can turn into a headline. “Ma’am, you need to step back,” the tall one says, palm out.
She leans, toes in the tape line like she’s earned the right to toe it. “Conflict of interest? Abuse of power? Are you pregnant?” Each question is a little knife tossed underhand, hoping I’ll reach out and grab one.
I do not flinch. Trainer voice. “Questions go through PR,” I say, calm enough to sound bored to my own ears. I look at Sophie. “Start the call.”
She’s already tapping. “Speaker,” she says, eyebrows up at the security officer. He nods. We’re all pretending this is civilized. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. My heart hasn’t decided.
The reporter lifts her phone higher for a better angle. I shift my body so all she gets is my shoulder and the profile of a woman who refuses to be interesting on command. “Riley,” she tries again, sweeter now, poison wrapped in honey, “you owe the fans honesty.”
I owe a lot of things. The fans aren’t on that list. “I owe my patients care,” I say, but the door behind me is locked and the word echoes strange in my head. Care. Who gets it. Who withholds it. Who weaponizes it when a woman stops saying please.
The tall officer clears his throat, gentle cattle prod back to the script. “Ms. Lane.” He indicates the elevator with an open hand, the way you might guide someone across a slick patch of ice.
Sophie squeezes my elbow—touch this time, small and hot and necessary. Her phone screen flashes with a connection and a name I want in the room. She thumbs speaker on. “Counsel’s live,” she says.
“Ms. Lane,” a calm voice comes through the tiny speaker, steady as a metronome. “Don’t answer questions. Don’t sign anything. I’m five minutes out.”
Five minutes might as well be a year. I nod anyway, even though the voice can’t see it. “Copy,” I say, and taste the absurdity of answering like I’m on comms. “We’ll…hold.”
We start walking. Security to the sides, Sophie at my shoulder, the corridor narrowing to a vanishing point none of us can see around yet. Behind us, the reporter calls my name onemore time and the hallway lights glare off a dozen phones held at chest height, recording.
The elevator doors slide open with a bright, far-too-cheerful ding.
I step in.
The doors begin to close on a chorus of whispers and the last question I don’t answer.
Chapter 26
Breaking Point
Jason
The press roomis a box of heat and humming glass. White lights bleach the edges off everything—the podium, the sponsor backdrop, the rows of faces already puckered into questions they think are knives. The cameras don’t just look; they thrum. The vibration settles in my ribs like I swallowed a hive.
Julia’s shoulder brushes mine as we step up. She’s all steel in a black blazer, a legal pad in one hand and a pen she clicks when I worry her. Click. Click. I take my place at the mic and the branded backdrop makes my skull hum. This is supposed to be familiar—answers about forechecks and ice time. This is not that.
I find her before I take a breath.
Riley stands just offstage in the wing where the curtain shadows soften the light. One hand is fisted at her side, knuckles pale against the dark of her blazer; the other is loose, fingers tapping her thigh like she’s counting breaths. Her chin is up. Her mouth is set. The sight cuts through the glare and slideseverything into focus. It’s not the cameras that matter. It’s that hand, that chin, that woman.
“Jason,” Julia murmurs, low enough not to bleed into microphones. “Remember: we set terms. Don’t chase.”
“I won’t,” I say, even though we both know I might.
The moderator gives the nod. Red lights blink alive. First question comes barbed and fast from a guy in the second row who’s built a career on making someone flinch.
“Jason, are you exploiting your position to involve yourself with a staff member?” He doesn’t lift his eyes from his phone as he asks it, thumbs ready to live-post any stumble.
The room tilts hostile with the first syllable. I can feel the owner at the back before I see him—Nolan Blackwood isn’t a presence, he’s a weather system. When I do clock him, he’s in the last row, silver hair carved into place, mouth a straight line. His right hand slices quick across his throat: cut it short. Stick to script. Be manageable.
I lean into the mic. The metal is warm from the light. My pulse steadies on a beat that is not for the cameras.
“I won’t dignify that premise,” I say, voice level. “But I’ll answer the question I think you tried to ask.” I draw breath. It tastes like hot dust and stage. “I love Riley Lane.” The room inhales like a single body. “We’re having a baby.” Flashes pop. Phones lift. Somewhere to my left a cameraman swears softly. “And the harassment of her—online, outside her home, at her workplace—stops now.”
