Nova
Myphonehasseventeennotifications before I even get to the parking lot. I check in the elevator, put it away, then check again at the red light like the number might have changed out of mercy.
It hasn’t.
I don’t need to open anything to know what it is.
I open it anyway.
The piece iseverywhere.
Mine.
My name on an article I knew was wrong and sent anyway because Griffin Novak said he had a source and I was still dumbenough to believe him. Because I wanted the story. Because wanting it felt easier, at the time, than asking better questions.
I have four minutes before I need to walk into that building.
So I open the piece.
Not the quick wince-and-close I’ve been doing. The whole thing. Top to bottom. Every line.
It’s way worse than I remembered.
The problem is not even that it reads cruel. Cruel would at least require conviction. This reads careful.
Calculated.
It lays implication over implication and lets the reader do the dirty work. Clinical rehab absence tilted sideways until it starts to look like disciplinary action. A quote from a source I never actually verified. All that tidy, plausible phrasing built to say something ugly without ever quite having to stand behind it.
I see Griffin’s fingerprints all over the angle.
I see my own all over the execution.
That part is harder to sit with.
Because I knew better.
Maybe not enough to stop it, apparently, but enough to feel sick while it was happening. I lock the phone, unlock it again, then force myself to put it face down in the cup holder before I can keep reopening a wound I already know is there.
I get out of the car.
Brody’s read it.
I know because he’s the first person I see, and he’s doing that aggressively normal thing he does when he knows something bad and is trying not to make it worse. Too warm. Too fast. Too much eye contact. Brody’s version of grace.
I appreciate it more than I can say.
“You good?” he asks, already knowing the answer.
“Great,” I say.
He gives me a look that sayssure you areand, mercifully, leaves it there.
Sebastian and Caleb either haven’t read it or have decided it’s above their pay grade, which is honestly generous of them. I get what I need for Tuesday’s practice notes and keep moving.
Liam Steele looks at me once across the ice.
Just once.
