Page 130 of Hard Pass

That does break me a little.

“I love you too.”

When the call ends, I’m so grateful she didn’t ask a question about Cole because that probably would have broken me completely.

I look around the apartment, hating the silence that feels like it’s holding its breath and waiting for me to explode, and pick my phone back up to read the last line of the article.

Neither Locke nor Valor responded to requests for comment.

I laugh then. It’s a broken sound that fills the apartment, and I’m not sure which is worse—the silence or my hysteria echoing in my laugh.

Of course we didn’t respond. We didn’t even know our lives were being rewritten until the ink was practically dry.

Fuck me.

Has Cole seen this yet? Has his team—his agent, Josie, anyone—reached out to him to tell him how to respond? Will he actually listen?

I set the phone down and stare at nothing, contemplating what hurts worse—the article, my career, or the look on Cole’s face when I told him we were done and he left. Believed me.

No. That’s not right. He didn’t believe me. That’s what hurts. He knew I was lying and he left anyway because I asked him to.

He did exactly what I asked. So why does it hurt that he didn’t fight me on it? That he didn’t tell me to shush with my ridiculous requests and that we’d figure this out together?

My chest caves around the thought.

How did this get so real so fast?

Not the scandal. Not the fallout.

Him.

Me.

The terrifying reckless thing I let myself feel before I understood how much it would cost?

And now I’m sitting here with my name and reputation in tatters, my phone lighting up, my job up in the balance, and the one person I want to call is the one I pushed out the door.

For once, there is no pattern to follow.

No data points to trust.

No controlled next step to analyze.

There is only the mess of my own making . . . and me, standing in the middle of it with no idea how to fix it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Cole

I shouldn’t have opened the link.

Not because I didn’t want to know what it would say—I could already assume—but because I knew once I did, there’d be no unseeing it.

And I was right.

There is an undercurrent in the locker room around me that tells me other players have seen what I’m currently looking at. The headline that feels like it’s burned into the screen of my phone, backlit, and staring right back at me.

LINKED ROMANTICALLY.