Chapter Twenty-One
#PathfindersNation
“You played a really great game tonight.”
Cash grunted, brooding out the window at the city as it zoomed past.
Poppy deflated like a pricked balloon. Every one of her attempts at making conversation had been met with, at most, monosyllabic
answers.
“Cash,” she begged. “Talk to me.”
“And say what?” He sighed and dragged a hand over his face. Two weeks’ worth of scraggly stubble darkened his jaw. “That I
honestly had myself convinced Lyric was going to be at the game?
That I was going to step out on that field and look up and she was going to be there.
She was going to look at me and she was going to smile, and everything was going to—” Cash cut himself off with a painful-looking swallow.
“I’ve been telling myself that maybe she just needed a little more time, but .
. . she wasn’t there, Poppy. She wasn’t there and it sucks.
Is that what you want me to say? That it fucking sucks? ”
Cash was acting like he’d forgotten Poppy had spent the last week drowning in the same sea of despair as him.
“You’re not the only one who was hoping she’d show.” Poppy had held her breath each time the door to the suite had opened,
hoping that it would be Lyric. That Rosaline would be with her. “You’re not the only one who’s disappointed and you’re not
the only one going through it right now, either. I got my heart broken too, Cash.”
His eyes slammed shut. “Fuck. I didn’t mean to insinuate that—”
“It’s fine.”
Their spirits were low, tensions running high, frustration bubbling over. If Cash was anything like her, he wasn’t sleeping
great, waking in the night to reach for a body that wasn’t there, staring at the ceiling and watching the phone, wishing it
would ring, aching each time it didn’t.
She wanted to believe it could still happen, that at any moment her phone would light up with Rosaline’s name on the screen,
with a picture Poppy stared at when she couldn’t sleep, tracing the lines of Rosaline’s face with her fingertips. She wanted
to believe, but she wasn’t sure how much hope she had left in her after four weeks of radio silence.
Poppy cupped her hand around her eyes and squinted out the window. “I don’t think this is the way to the hotel.”
She didn’t know when it had happened, but they were on the 101 heading north.
“That’s because we’re not headed to the hotel.”
Poppy did not have a good feeling about this. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going, or am I supposed to guess?”
“Ninety-nine percent.” Cash’s foot bounced against his knee. “That’s what that AI expert said. That he could say with ninety-nine-percent certainty that manipulation was present.”
#CashCurranIsNoLongerCanceled was still trending days since the story broke, sympathy pouring in all over social media with
cries echoing Cash’s plea for legislative action.
“Everyone knows it wasn’t you in the video.”
“What if it’s going to take more than some guy at Carnegie Mellon to convince Lyric it wasn’t me?”
Some guy? “Professor Schillinger is the foremost expert on—”
“And he still could only say with ninety-nine-percent certainty that it wasn’t me. That’s still a one-percent chance that—”
“Ninety-nine percent is as good as that sort of score gets. The article made it clear that it wasn’t you. I—I don’t know what
else I can do to make her believe that—”
“Poppy, no.” Cash set his hand on her knee and squeezed. “You’re the best defense I could ask for, but I think it’s time I
do what I do best and play a little offense.”
Outside, a road sign welcomed them to Ventura County. The time for speaking in riddles and sports metaphors was officially
over. “Where are we going, Cash?”
“Rosaline was right about it being easy to look up someone’s address in the county records.” He handed Poppy his phone.
“Jesus Christ.” On the screen was the Ventura County Assessor property search results for Ansel Daily, his address listed at the top. “This
is your plan to fix things with Lyric? Beat up her ex-boyfriend?” She shoved the phone into his chest. “You’re going to get
your ass arrested and kicked off the team. You’re going to be single and jobless and have a criminal record and I’m not going
to know how to spin that.”
“I’m not going to touch a hair on his head. I just want to talk.”
“You want to talk?” Poppy demanded. “Cash, we don’t even know for certain that Ansel’s the one behind the video.”
“And I plan on asking him. I deserve the truth and so does Lyric. And if she hears it from him, she’ll know for sure it wasn’t
me in the video.”
“Oh, well, good thing Ansel’s such a great guy and will totally be willing to do all that for you out of the goodness of his heart.” She rolled her eyes. “You realize we’re talking about
the guy who potentially created a deepfake of you for the purpose of ruining your relationship with Lyric and destroying your
career, right?”
“He doesn’t have to know I’m not planning on kicking his ass.”
“Oh my god.” Poppy rested her head against the window, the glass cool against her skin. All the many ways this night could
and likely would go wrong filled her head as the driver took the exit for Hampshire Road and made a slight right on the ramp
to Thousand Oaks. “This is nuts. Totally batshit fucking crazy. You realize that, right?”
“Maybe this works, maybe it doesn’t. But if there’s even a one percent chance that I can fix this? I have to take it. I have
to try.” The car pulled into a quiet neighborhood and stopped in the driveway of a single-story stucco house painted the same
shade of peach as the rest of the houses on the tree-lined cul-de-sac. Cash unfastened his seat belt. “I’m not asking you
to do anything except have my back, okay?” He reached for the door handle. “You can even stay in the car.”
As if. Poppy reached for her seat belt. “You’re delusional if you think I’m going to sit here and let you go in there and
face this by yourself.”
Cash told the driver they’d only be a few minutes and met her around the front of the car. “Ready?”
Not really, but Poppy nodded anyway, falling into step beside Cash.
“You realize he’s probably going to slam the door in our faces, right? If he even answers it.”
“Just trust me.” Without warning, Cash rang the bell, then dove behind the pot of bamboo growing beside the front door, hunching
to hide.
“Damn it, Cash,” she hissed. “What am I supposed to—”
The question died on her lips as her heart clambered into her throat. She could hear footsteps, then the heavy clunk of the
dead bolt turning, and finally the screech of the hinges as the door swung open revealing Ansel, barefoot and shirt unbuttoned
to his belly, his hair hanging loose around his shoulders.
A lit cigarette hung from his lips and a bottle of whisky dangled from his fingertips. “Poppy Peterson.” He exhaled a cloud
of acrid smoke in her direction. “Isn’t this a surprise?”
“Ansel.” She coughed, not even trying to hide her disgust. “We need to talk.”
“No offense, but what could someone like you”—he tipped the bottle in her direction—“and someone like me have to talk about?”
Her eyes flitted to Cash’s hiding spot behind the planter, then back to Ansel. They really should’ve rehearsed this. “I want
to talk about the video.”
Ansel ashed his cigarette against the doorframe. “Video?” He tossed the butt on the ground beside her feet. “What video?”
Poppy glared. Responsible or not, he knew damn well what she was talking about. “The video of Cash that was debunked as a
deepfake.”
“Oh, yeah. I heard about that.”
“And?”
“And what? You want to know if I had something to do with it?” He laughed and stepped back, a hand on the door. “Do you seriously think, if I did, I’d tell you? God, you’re even dumber than you look.”
Before Ansel could fully shut the door on her, Cash stuck his foot over the threshold and bullied his way inside the house,
forcing Ansel to take several stumbling steps back or be mowed down. “If you won’t tell her, maybe you’ll tell me.”
Poppy had never seen someone go so pale so fast as Ansel did in that moment.
“This is private property. You’re trespassing. You’re—” Ansel’s back hit the wall, and Cash kept him pinned there, palms flattened
against the wall to either side of his head. “This is a home invasion.”
“I just want answers, man. Did you do it?”
Ansel scoffed. “Fuck you, dude. I didn’t do shit.”
Cash grabbed the front of Ansel’s shirt in both fists and dragged him up to his full height and farther still, until Ansel
was squirming on his tiptoes.
“Did you do it?” Cash demanded, giving Ansel a hard shake. “Tell me.”
“Fine, fine!” Ansel cried, folding faster than Poppy expected. She’d figured it would take at least ten minutes before he’d
crack. “It was me. I did it, all right? Just let me go.”
“Why’d you do it?” Cash jerked him higher up the wall until his toes barely brushed the floor. “Did you think it would be
funny fucking with me?”
Poppy chewed on her thumbnail, wondering whether she should step in and tell him to ease up, if this was too close to the
ass-kicking he had promised not to give.
“Yeah, okay, I—I thought it’d be funny,” Ansel stuttered, bare feet thrashing, leaving smudges on the baseboard. “Lyric always gets the last fucking word. I was—I was sick of it.” He squirmed harder. “Fuck, dude. Are you happy now? I told you. Let me go.”
Cash gave Ansel a rough shove and stepped back. “Am I happy? Fuck you. No, I’m not happy. You put me through fucking hell
because you didn’t know a good thing when you had it.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and swiped his thumb against
the screen. “But I’ll be a hell of a lot closer to happy after you tell Lyric the truth.”
“Wait.” Poppy had a better idea.
She poked her head into the living room beyond the doorway Ansel was currently slumped beside and—aha, his phone was on the coffee table beside a pack of Parliaments and a lighter. Poppy swiped it, bringing it to the foyer
and shoving it into Ansel’s chest. “Start recording.”