Darius leans forward. “I want to know why you tried to rip us apart with a pair of copy-pasted fucking hate crimes.”
Vincent doesn’t flinch. “Because you wouldn’t talk to me otherwise.”
For a second, I think I misheard. “Excuse me?”
He shrugs, almost apologetic. “That was the story. Not the hockey. Not the shooting. Not even the coming out. It was you two. I saw it before you did. I thought if I could break it, I could see what made it work.”
I stare at him, trying to process the math of it. “You lied about a Black separatist group. You lied about a white supremacist group. You made us think…” My voice catches. “You made us think the only thing we had was a fucking delusion.”
Vincent folds his hands, looks down at them. His nails are chewed to the quick, the cuticles ragged. “I don’t know how to explain it. People are stories. That’s all they’ve ever been to me. It’s the only way I know how to get close.”
Darius is silent, but his knee is bouncing hard enough to shake the table.
I say, “You ever been in love, Vincent?”
He smirks, but it’s a tired one. “Define love.”
“That’s the problem,” I say. “You can’t.”
He laughs, sharp and sour. “I’m not the villain. You know that, right? I just…wanted to understand. You made it look so easy.”
“It wasn’t,” Darius says. “But you made it a hell of a lot harder.”
Vincent’s eyes flick to him, then to me, then back to the closed notebook. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Not for the article. That was always going to happen. But for the rest. For making you doubt each other.”
The air is heavy, thick with caffeine and old pain.
I watch his hands, the way his fingers twitch around the rim of the glass. I want to hate him. I want to punch his perfect teeth out. But all I feel is tired.
"For the record," Darius says, voice flat, "the league's media office has everything. The fabricated screenshots, the doctored photo context, the pillow-talk quotes you used without consent. You're done covering hockey. And if any version of that article goes live, Ash's attorney will make sure the only thing you're writing is apology letters."
Vincent's smile dies. For the first time, his hands go still.
“We’re done here,” Darius says, standing. He’s taller than the table, taller than Vincent’s reach.
Vincent stands too, but slower. He tries to meet my eyes, but I don’t give him the satisfaction.
“Hey,” I say, voice flat. “For what it’s worth? I hope you find someone who makes you want to be honest.”
He smiles at that, for real this time. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”
We walk out, sunlight stabbing through the window, and I don’t look back.
Outside, I breathe in the sharp, wet air. Darius squeezes my hand, just once, and I know it’s over.
Vincent sits alone in the window, staring at his reflection in the glass. For the first time, he looks like someone who’s just been told a story with no ending.
I hope it hurts.
A little.
———
There’s a nervousness to it, a shake in my hands that I can’t blame on adrenaline or low blood sugar or even the giddy aftermath of public vindication. It’s just nerves, pure and unfiltered.
The apartment is still a mess from last night’s collapse, my jacket on the lamp, his shirt on the doorknob, two empty bowls stacked on the coffee table, and a trail of socks like a demented, striptease version of Hansel and Gretel.
But neither of us moves to fix it.
