Page 21 of Her Rival

"What if she figures out I'm a wreck and starts to feel bad for me," I said.

"Dani."

"Yeah."

"What if she does."

"I don't want her to feel bad for me. I want her to —" I stopped. "I don't know what I want her to. Apologize, maybe. But I don't even know if I want the apology. I want her to know I'm not the kid she made anymore. I want her to look at me and see the man I built and feel like she has no claim on this version of him. I want her to do her article and go back to wherever and never come near me again."

"Okay."

"What."

"Just okay."

"That's not just an okay, Stone, I know you. That's an okay with teeth in it. What."

He shrugged. Took another sip. Looked at the fire.

"You want a whole lot of specific things from a woman you don't want to come near you again," he said. "Just an observation."

I sat with that.

He let me sit with it.

After a while he opened the cooler at his feet, pulled out another tonic water, and handed me a fresh beer without asking if I wanted one. We sat on the deck without talking for another half hour while the fire burned down and Vegas blinked away at the bottom of the valley.

When I left around eleven he walked me to the Pontiac. At the door he put one hand on my shoulder for about three seconds and then took it off, which from Rhett was approximately the most physical affection a man could expect to receive in his lifetime, and he said, "Come over Friday. Same time. Don't make me ask twice."

"Friday."

"Friday."

"All right."

I drove home up the hill road with the windows down and the desert cold coming in and the radio off, and somewhere about halfway to my own driveway I realized I'd been carrying my shoulders an inch lower than I had in three days. Nothing about the situation had actually changed. One other person on earth knew what it was. That turned out to be the only thing that needed to change for the night to feel survivable.

I went inside my empty house.

I went to bed.

I slept.

9

DANI

Thursday came whether I wanted it to or not, which was the only reliable thing about Thursdays.

I'd spent the two days between sessions doing the careful boring work of becoming someone who could walk back into that arena without throwing up in the parking garage. I transcribed the first interview. Flagged every dodge in red and every honest answer in green, and there was so much red and so little green that the document looked like a crime scene. I wrote a list of fifteen new questions, threw it away, wrote a smarter one. I took a long walk in the desert Wednesday morning and let the heat bake out whatever was left of Monday's adrenaline. I called my old editor in New York about freelance options that would let me quit this assignment. There were none. I looked at my severance balance. The math had not improved.

I pulled the boring public stuff for the by-the-numbers box every profile needs, too. The cap hit. The career earnings. The agent of record. The endorsement deals a man with his face and his game should have been drowning in and somehow wasn't. The number a hockey site will give you for what Jett Sturgill has earned in eight years is a large number and a knowable one, and it sat there on my screen being large and knowable and not, quite, explaining anything. I starred it. A thing that doesn't reconcile is a thing a good reporter comes back to. I came back to it, eventually. Not for a while.

I was doing the article. The article was doing me. We were in this together.

By the time I drove back to Caldwell on Thursday afternoon I had something that approached professional armor on, and I'd told myself the lie I needed. That I was going in as a journalist with a job to do, and a man who had information I needed, and the personal dimension of the whole horror was a separate matter to be processed later. On my own time. In a private room. With the door closed.

That lasted right up until Brynn texted me at the elevator. small change, video review room not media room, second floor, Jett wants to watch tape while you talk. Don't ask me why, he's being weird.