I meet Jason’s eyes over the glow. He sees it land. I see the vow harden in his jaw.
The phone buzzes once more in my hand, bright and merciless, burning a hole through the dark.
Chapter 28
Off the Record
Jason
The tabloid headlineis still burning into my retinas when the elevator spits me into the corridor outside our office.ULTRASOUND IMAGE LEAKEDstrobes in my head like a penalty light I can’t skate away from. My hands are fists before I know it. Doors. I’m ready to break doors. Someone at that clinic sold us out and my body is already writing checks my contract can’t cash.
Fluorescents buzz. The carpet eats my footsteps. Past the glass conference room, three TVs run the same segment on a loop—blurred black-and-white, red arrows, my name in a font reserved for meteors and moral panic. My phone won’t stop vibrating—agents, teammates, a player from juniors I haven’t heard from in years. I want quiet so loud it knocks power out in a three-block radius.
I hit the threshold like a hit I mean to finish—shoulder tight, jaw locked.
Julia catches my sleeve.
“Not rage,” she says, eyes on mine, voice flat enough to cut through the noise. “Results.” She steers me sideways, out of the doorway and into the narrow slice of hall where sound goes to die. She doesn’t let go until my hands remember how to be hands.
“There’s a watermark,” I say. It comes out closer to a growl than a sentence. “Her clinic. They?—”
“I saw it,” she says. “And I’ve already sent the preservation letters. The station that ran it will be getting one in six minutes. The clinic’s legal will get the big one in ten. You breaking doors buys us nothing. You breaking ratings buys us leverage.”
I force air in until the edges of my vision stop pulsing. “They want us to bleed on camera.”
“They want you to lose your temper and make my job easy for the other side,” she corrects, not unkind. She’s in full black—sharp shoulders, sharper attention. “We’re flipping the board. One controlled interview. Ground rules. We reframe: harassment, boundaries, accountability. We do it with Riley’s consent or not at all.”
“She’s not a prop,” I say, because I need to say it out loud even to an ally.
“She’s a partner,” Julia agrees. “Text her. If she says no, I pull the plug and we go full legal. If she says yes, we own the angle before eleven o’clock turns this into a carnival.” She taps her tablet and a calendar blooms. “I can have a producer here in forty. We shoot in Studio B—smaller room, fewer mouths.”
The hive in my ribs starts to settle, not because I’m calmer, but because I recognize the ice. “Ground rules,” I say. “No medical details. No doxxing staff. No ultrasound on screen.”
“Add: you won’t discuss dates beyond what’s already public,” Julia says, thumbs moving. “Add: they blur prior leaks, run our hotline lower third for harassment reports against staff, and agree to our right of review on the chyron language.”
I nod, already seeing the angles like lanes through traffic. “If they want color, I’ll give them tape. Practice footage. Rehab logs. They want proof? We’ve got proof.”
Julia finally lets go of my sleeve. “Now you sound like a person I can walk into a studio,” she says. “Text Riley. Use your words, not optics. If she’s a maybe, it’s a no. If she’s a yes, we move.”
I thumb open our thread. My reflection in the screen looks like a man I don’t want to be—jaw iron, eyes hot. I breathe until I look like the one I promised her last night.You decide,I type.If you want to speak, we set rules. If not, I hold the line alone. Either way, I’m with you.I hit send before I can edit myself into something paler.
Julia watches the hall, not my face, like a goalie watching the weak-side winger. “Riley says jump, we ask how high,” she says. “Until then, hydrate.” She presses a paper cup into my hand.
Water tastes like nothing and also like the first clean thing I’ve had all day. The phone buzzes. I don’t look yet. I hold Julia’s stare until my pulse drops out of the red.
“Results,” I say back to her.
She nods once. “Results.”
The reply lands fast enough to make my grip tighten.
Riley:Yes—if we set rules. No medical details. No ultrasound. No staff named. We speak together or not at all.
A second bubble appears before I can breathe it in.And we condemn harassment. Out loud.
I don’t realize I’ve been bracing until something in my back lets go.Together,I type.Your terms.Then:Calling.
I step into the empty copy room because it’s the closest place with a door that latches. The smell of paper and warm toner hits me like a childhood library. Riley picks up on the first ring.
