I can’t believe I’m even contemplating it, but maybe I should bring things back to football, which is a thought I never expected to have in my life. At least it’d let him off the hook.
But as I open my mouth to ask something, anything—what’s a Butkus Award, how’d you grow your neck back—Adam rushes out a sentence that makes me stiffen where I stand.
“I need to tell you something.”
I blink up at him, that embarrassed clutch in my stomach transforming into something heavy at the serious expression on his face. I don’t even realize I’ve taken a step away from him until he gestures toward the chair by the window, offering me a seat.
I shake my head, cross my arms. My brain kicks up into an anxious, irrational register:This has been some kind of trick. There’s something about Mom or Lynton Baltimore here. This wasn’t really a break at all.
He looks as though he can read my mind.
“Everything’s okay.”
“Don’t tell me everything’s okay,” I snap, tightening my crossed arms. Pressing them against that heavy feeling in my stomach. “Justtellme.”
He nods and crosses to the chair, sits in it himself. He clasps his hands loosely between his spread knees and looks up at me. Whatever he has to say, he’s sorry about it. I can tell already.
“I’m at Broadside because I want to do a story about what happened to Cope.”
He pauses, his fingers flexing and unflexing.
“About other things, too. Young men and their mental health, and football and head injuries and . . . it doesn’t matter.”
I’m sure it does matter. Maybe it’ll even matter to me, if he doesn’t tell me something shitty in the next thirty seconds.
“Salem said if I get you to talk on the record about your mom, she’ll produce it.”
So, something extremely shitty then.
A trick, after all.
“That’s why you’ve brought us here?” My voice sounds too high to my own ears. Overloud. “That’s why you’ve been so . . . so . . .”
I’m at a loss. The only words in my head arewarm and wonderful.
“Did youagree?” I finally say.
He shifts in his seat. “I didn’t disagree.”
I start for the door. I’ll get Tegan. I’ll steal that fucking van if I have to. I let himhold my hand.
And all he wanted was for me totalk. My past, my pain in exchange for his goddamned podcast.
“Jess, please.Please.”
I don’t know why that should stop me even for a second, but it does. Maybe it’s that voice crack again, the same one I heard in the restaurant last night. I don’t look back at him, but I stay put. I can tell he’s standing up again. There’s a burst of collective laughter from the dining room, and I can pick out Tegan’s even from here. I close my eyes, wishing it could calm me down.
“Is Salem’s daughter even hurt? Has this been—did you and she have some kind of plan? I’d talk more if she was gone?”
“Jesus, no.” He has the nerve to sound shocked, and I whirl on him.
“Don’t do that. Don’t you dare suggest I’m crazy for asking. You pretended you were on my side, but all this time, you were on your own.”
I snap my mouth shut, surprised at what I’ve said. Since when have I needed anyone on my side? Since when have I even wanted it?
He lowers his head, runs a hand over his brow. I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for him. However, I do think I might cry, which is mortifying. I’m sure my shower later will be a realwhere’s-the-water-coming-fromguessing game.
“I’m on your side,” he says. “You have no reason to believe me, I know that. But I am. The other night at the pool, last night at the restaurant. Just now, Jess, when you said you don’t know what’s good for you anymore. You have no idea the things I want to ask you about your life. The things I want to know about you. Not about your mom, or Lynton Baltimore. Only you, because I—”
