Guilt pricked, immediate and automatic. My parents had drilled “respect your teachers” into me. Somewhere along the line, I’d swapped teachers for editors and never rewired the reflex.
“Sorry,” I said, exhaling. “I’m … tired.”
“I know you’re still angry,” he said, gentler. “I don’t blame you. But I went to war for you in that newsroom, remember? You were radioactive, and I fought to put you back on air. Back in print. Whatever metaphor you prefer. You’ve spent two years clawing your way back to being the woman people trust to tell them what’s real. I don’t want to see you lose that.”
The words landed with the weight of history.
I thought of late nights at my parents’ kitchen table, my father reading the newspaper aloud, my mother fact-checking him with a raised brow and a laptop. Of my mother pushing the local paper into my hands at eight, telling me, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you not to ask questions.”
They were boring, by most metrics. Nice, normal. No secrets, no dramatic affairs, no mysterious absentee relatives.
“Secrets rot,” my mother used to say, wiping counters. “Sunlight disinfects.”
It was practically a family motto.
Truth wasn’t just important. It was oxygen. It was how we loved each other—by saying the thing, even when it was hard.
It was how I’d built my career—by going where other people didn’t, asking what other people wouldn’t, refusing to look away.
And now, for the first time in my life, I was considering opening a window and only letting part of the air out.
“I’m not going to tank my credibility,” I said. “I promise you that. I just … need more time. This isn’t a simple hit piece. It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?” he asked immediately. “Legally? Ethically? Logistically? Is someone threatening you?”
Yes. No. Sort of. Not yet.
“Complicated like …” I searched for words that weren’t names. “… I’m embedded in the story. More than usual. It’s not just spreadsheets and shell companies. It’s people. Families. There’s a lot at stake.”
“That’s always true,” he said.
“Not like this.”
I could still feel Levi’s heartbeat under my ear from the night before. Hear the raw crack in his voice when he’d saidI love you. See the way he’d looked at his father like he wanted to both punch him and hug him and didn’t know which urge hurt more.
“Is this about the soldier?” he asked, too casually.
My body went rigid. “What soldier?”
“Amelia,” he said, and there it was—the tone that said he’d put up with a lot from me, but not self-delusion. “You think I didn’t notice how personal that last debacle was for you? The way you took it, the way you shut down afterward? I may not know his name, but I know there was a man in that sandpit you didn’t just want for his quotes. Is he in Charleston?”
The yacht shifted under my feet, the water slapping the hull in a rhythm that sounded suspiciously like my pulse.
“Yes,” I said. Lying would have been pointless. He’d smell it through the phone. “He’s here.”
A soft, humorless huff crackled in my ear. “Of course, he is.”
“This isn’t some ill-advised romantic vacation,” I said. “He’s part of the story. Whether I like it or not.”
“And do you like it?” he asked, too sharp for the question to be neutral.
I thought of Levi on the veranda, breaking apart in my arms. Levi in the tent, years ago, telling me about his father making fires from wet wood. Levi over me in the dark stateroom, sayingI love you.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I do.”
He exhaled. “You realize how this looks from my end.”
“I do,” I said. “And I wouldn’t ask you to trust me if I didn’t trust myself.”
