Chapter 7 #3
Holy shit. It worked. Niko wasn’t sure why he felt like he’d just hit a three-run walk-off, but he did.
It’s not like Tiana was actually his girlfriend.
She’d agreed to pretend to be his girlfriend, but from the little bit of recon he’d done at the wedding, he figured that was as good as it was going to get.
From all accounts, she had a no-dating policy.
It made Niko wonder just what that shithead had done to her. She’d wanted to warn Gianna about him, and even though she’d insisted he wasn’t physical with her, clearly something had gone on.
Niko pulled out his laptop and went to YouTube.
He started by searching ‘Brock Bartlett red carpet interview,’ expecting maybe thirty seconds of narcissistic flexing and the usual post-game idiocy.
Instead, he found an entire digital graveyard of Brock’s life, catalogued in high-def and timestamped with each year of his relationship with Tiana.
The first video was from the ESPYs, year one.
The first time he’d seen her. Brock’s hair was shellacked in a way that only a professional athlete could get away with.
Tiana stood beside him in her red dress, smiling so hard her eyes crinkled at the corners, her body language so open and trusting that Niko almost felt like an intruder.
She laughed at Brock’s corny jokes, touched his arm, and leaned into his side like he was her entire universe.
In the middle of the interview, Brock pulled her into the frame and introduced her as “the real MVP.” Tiana blushed, ducked her head, and then turned back to the camera, her confidence dazzling.
Niko could read her like a scoreboard, this was a woman who never doubted her place. Not for a second. Not then.
He clicked to the next year. By now, Tiana was a regular on the circuit, her wardrobe elevated and her presence sharper and more assured.
She still smiled, but it was a shade less spontaneous, her gaze flickering to Brock before answering questions, like she was waiting for a cue.
Brock was louder, and his humility thinned.
He called Tiana his “better three-quarters,” and Niko swore he saw her laugh a beat too late.
There was a party after this interview, one Niko remembered hearing about from the league gossip pipeline.
Someone had said Brock drank too much and made an ass of himself.
He wondered how Tiana had felt about that.
Niko watched the video again, fixating on the two-second interval where Tiana’s eyes flickered to Brock and her lips flattened as he cut her off mid-sentence.
By year four, Brock had a different tailored suit and the same smug confidence.
Tiana was beside him on the red carpet at a charity golf tournament.
She wore a white dress and smiled politely, but now she stood with her purse in front of her body, like a shield.
Niko paid attention to the way the light had completely left her eyes, her laughter polite and distant, and the space between herself and Brock was just wide enough to be noticed if you were looking for it.
The interviewer asked about their upcoming wedding anniversary, and Brock made a stupid joke about how he was celebrating by getting a tattoo of a ball and chain, because that’s what he thought of when he thought of marriage.
Tiana’s smile was fixed, her eyes glassy.
The next video was a year later, the local news spot before the playoffs, with Brock’s team favored to go all the way.
This time, Tiana didn’t appear until midway through the clip, summoned only so the reporter could get a “wife’s perspective.
” She was noticeably thinner, her clothes expensive but hanging off her frame, and her beautiful curly hair was pulled up off her face in a ponytail.
She did her best to joke along with Brock, but her voice was quieter, her hands twisting together in her lap.
When the segment ended, Brock patted her on the knee and stood first, leaving her to gaze after him before catching herself and looking away.
Niko felt a strange pressure in his chest, equal parts disgust and pity.
Year six was a black-tie gala in LA. Brock posed for photos with Tiana, he held her arm and then placed his hand on the small of her back instead, controlling, not affectionate.
The interviews were shorter now, and Tiana’s personality seemed to have been bleached out of her.
She answered questions with generic responses, always turning the spotlight back to Brock, never drawing any of it for herself.
Niko watched her eyes dart around for someone—anyone—to rescue her from the conversation.
Even her laugh had changed, pitch-perfect but hollow.
The last year of their marriage, the only interview Niko found was a two-minute segment on a daytime talk show.
Tiana sat stiffly beside Brock, hands folded in her lap.
Her hair was in a bun on top of her head, her skin was pale, and she had dark circles beneath her eyes.
The host started to ask about family plans, but Brock cut her off, saying, “No kids for us. We’ve got a dog, and that’s plenty for her to handle.
” Tiana’s mouth twitched. She looked at the host, then at the camera, and for a moment her eyes were completely flat and dead.
Not angry, not sad, just resigned. Brock kept talking, but Niko didn’t hear any of it.
He was too busy staring at Tiana, trying to understand how someone could lose their light so completely and how nobody had noticed until it was too late.
Niko let the autoplay scroll through a half-dozen more videos.
Tiana, vibrant and alive, was then slowly hollowed out by proximity to a man who saw women as accessories, not partners.
He wondered if it had happened gradually, or if there was a single day where she realized she had to leave or lose herself forever.
He found himself hating Brock more than he had for anything that had happened back in their college days.
After seeing those videos, he was even happier about their arrangement. As his fake girlfriend, Niko could take care of her, he could make sure that asshole didn’t get anywhere near her. And that’s exactly what he planned on doing.