CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SIENNA
The morning after I kiss Darius Vale, I wake up with three missed calls from my producer, one half-finished edit on my laptop, and the awful realization that kissing him was the easy part.
My hotel room is too bright.
The curtains are half open, sliced by morning sun that cuts across the desk, the floor, and the travel packet I carried upstairs last night like it might protect me from my own choices.
NEW YORK/NEW JERSEY FINAL WEEK ACCESS stares up from the top page.
Official training.
Media village.
Fan-zone windows.
Broadcast centre credentials.
Final stadium pathways.
Every line looks like a warning.
My phone buzzes again on the nightstand.
MAREN.
I reach for it, miss, knock over a bottle of water, and watch it roll across the carpet until it bumps against one of my shoes.
Excellent start.
I grab the phone on the next buzz and swipe to answer before my brain can assemble anything resembling a professional voice.
“Morning,” I say.
“You sound terrible.”
“That’s an aggressive greeting.”
“That was an observation. Were you asleep?”
“No.”
The silence on Maren’s end says she does not believe me, which is fair because I am sitting in yesterday’s clothes, my hair has staged a small rebellion, and my laptop is still open on the desk with the Briarwood timeline frozen halfway through an export.
The image on the screen is Darius at the old goalpost, face turned toward the field, late light catching the edge of his jaw.
I look away too fast for a person alone in a room.
Maren exhales. “Please tell me you have the revised cut.”
“I have most of it.”
“Most of it is what people say before asking for more time.”
“I’m not asking for more time.”
“Good. We don’t have it.”
I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The carpet is cool under my bare feet. My head feels packed with cotton. My mouth tastes like mint, coffee, and very bad judgement.
No.
Not bad.
Complicated.
That is worse because bad decisions are easier to regret cleanly.
I press two fingers to the place near my jaw where Darius’s hand rested.
Soft.
Careful.
Room to say no.
My stomach flips hard enough to annoy me.
“Sienna,” Maren says.
I drop my hand. “I’m here.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Because the Briarwood cut is strong. I’ll give you that.”
I blink.
Praise from Maren before eight in the morning is suspicious behaviour.
“Thank you.”
“It’s warm. Specific. The coach is gold. The child asking if captains get scared is gold. Darius saying fear doesn’t get the only vote is very good.”
My eyes move to the laptop again.
That line is not in the version she should have seen yet.
“I haven’t sent the final export.”
“You sent the preview link to the shared folder at two thirteen.”
I stare at the screen.
I did.
Right before I went downstairs to print the travel packet.
Right before Darius found me in the business centre.
Right before everything became harder and softer and completely impossible to file under professional developments.
“Right,” I say.
Maren’s voice sharpens. “Were you working alone?”
My spine straightens.
The room changes.
The air conditioner hums. A car passes outside below my window. Somewhere in the hallway, a room door shuts.
“Yes,” I say.
It is technically true.
It also feels like standing too close to a cliff.
Maren doesn't ask the question beneath the question.
Not yet.
“The piece is good,” she says. “But good isn’t enough before New York/New Jersey.”
I close my eyes.
There it is.
“Maren.”
“Do not Maren me in that tone. The Final bubble is going to be chaos. Every outlet will have fan-zone colour, tactical previews, underdog angles, sponsor fluff, charming kid shots. You have something they don’t.”
My hand tightens around the phone.
“Access,” I say.
“Access to pressure.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
“They can be.”
I stand, because if I stay on the bed, I will start sounding like someone having feelings, and that is not a category Maren respects during production hours.
The floor is a small disaster. Notebook. Jacket. One earring. The packet. A protein bar wrapper. My press credential lying on the desk beside my laptop, lanyard twisted around the coffee cup I did not finish last night.
I pick up the credential and untangle the strap with one hand.
“I’m not building an injury speculation package from visual clues and half-context,” I say.
“You keep saying speculation.”
“Because that’s what it is.”
“No. It was speculation two days ago. Now it is a pattern.”
“A pattern without confirmation.”
“Sienna.”
“No.”
The word comes out sharper than I intend.
Maybe sharp is still allowed when it is pointed in the right direction.
Maren pauses.
When she speaks again, her voice has the careful calm she uses before she makes a cut I cannot stop.
“You are not Darius Vale’s publicist.”
The credential slips from my hand and swings against the desk.
Once.
Twice.
I watch it move until it stops.
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
The question lands clean because it is not unfair.
I look at the business centre packet on the floor.
The kiss flashes through me in fragments I cannot edit.
His hand beside my face. The open door. The printer coughing up travel schedules. You won’t be my secret. I will not make you content either.
I turn away from the packet.
“Responsible journalism is not soft coverage,” I say.
“No. But refusing to ask the obvious question because you like the answer less is soft coverage.”
“That is not what I’m doing.”
“Then prove it.”
My inbox chimes.
Not my phone.
Laptop.
A new message lands in the corner of the screen.
From Maren.
Subject line: SOURCE DOC.
My stomach drops before I open it.
I walk to the desk, sit, and click.
The attachment loads slowly because hotel Wi-Fi is apparently designed to test every moral failing in a person’s body.
A PDF opens.
Not long.
One page.
Forwarded twice, from the look of the header chain. A tournament operations routing mark sits near the top. Not medical records exactly. Not official treatment notes. More like a logistics-facing player availability advisory.
Charlotte Kings Player: D. Vale
Status: monitored load
Recommendation: avoid full-match workload if possible; Reassess pre-Final
Medical staff to coordinate with coaching staff regarding minutes management
The room tilts by one inch.
Maybe two.
I grip the edge of the desk.
Maren says nothing.
She doesn't have to.
The document glows on my laptop, black text on white, clinical and dull and powerful enough to turn a human being into a headline in under ten seconds.
This is not Darius’s face flickering for half a second when his knee catches.
This is not my camera catching an angle.
This is paper.
Not clean paper.
But paper.
“Where did you get this?” I ask.
“Tournament-side source.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the answer I have.”
I scroll to the forwarded header.
Parts are stripped. Not enough metadata visible. The document passed through an external inbox before reaching Maren. It is marked internal distribution. Not public. Not meant for broadcast. Not meant for me.
My mouth goes dry.
“This wasn’t given to us for use.”
“It was given to us.”
“There is a difference.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes that difference is what lawyers argue about after the segment wins.”
“Maren.”
“I’m not saying we publish the document. I’m saying it changes the question.”
I stare at the recommendation line.
Avoid full-match workload if possible.
Last night, Darius kissed me with one hand at my jaw and the other carefully nowhere it should not be.
This morning, his knee is in my inbox.
The contrast makes me feel sick.
“It changes the responsibility,” I say.
“It gives us corroboration.”
“It gives us a leak.”
“It gives us a way to ask.”
“A way to ask what? Whether the captain is injured? Whether the Kings are hiding it? Whether his medical staff has been trying to stop him from being reckless while we shove a camera in his face and call it transparency?”
My voice has risen.
I hear it.
Maren hears it too.
“That sounded protective,” she says.
I close my eyes.
There are moments in a career when the old version of yourself stands at the door and holds out exactly what you used to want.
A leaked document.
A national Final.
A guarded captain.
A producer with enough power to open rooms that have stayed closed for years.
My fingers hover over the trackpad.
I could download it into the shared folder.
I could build the package before breakfast.
I could ask the question on live television and make every other outlet follow me.
I could become impossible to overlook.
My phone is warm against my ear.
On the laptop screen, Darius becomes a line item.
D. Vale.
Monitored load.
Avoid full-match workload if possible.
“Who else has this?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a problem.”
“It’s also an opportunity.”
“No.”
“Sienna.”
“No,” I say again, quieter this time. “It’s a problem first.”
Maren exhales. “You need to be very careful here.”
“I agree.”
“Good. Because if you cannot handle this objectively, I will assign a second reporter to the injury angle.”
The sentence hits like cold water.
I stand so fast the chair rolls back and bumps the wall.
“You’re going to take my story?”
“I am going to protect the network’s coverage.”
“And hand the ugliest version to someone who wasn’t there?”
“If that someone can ask the necessary question, yes.”
My hand tightens around the phone until my knuckles ache.
The room is too bright. Too small. Too full of the version of me that would have taken this and run so fast no one could call me soft.
“You can keep the human-interest piece,” Maren says.
Human-interest.
Like a pat on the head.
Like the heart of a story is something decorative you sew onto real news so viewers cry before the commercial break.
The old wound opens with almost boring precision.
I look at my laptop.
Briarwood. Coach Miller. The kids. Darius’s face when he saw the title card.
The Captain Who Carries Everyone.
“No,” I say.
Maren goes silent.
I hear my own breath.