15. Riley
Riley
Riley sat on the top step outside the loft and pulled the first lace through its eyelet.
The leather fought her fingers after months of shop dust, and the knot slipped loose before she could cinch it.
Behind her, the phone lay facedown on the deck where she had left it after breakfast. Palmetto leaves scraped across the gravel lot below, dry and restless in the midmorning breeze.
“Come on,” she muttered.
She worked the lace through again, slower this time.
The bitter taste of burnt coffee still coated her tongue, a souvenir from the cup she had forgotten on the counter until it went cold.
There was no reason to check the time. No reason to wonder whether the lights were up in New York, whether the cameras had started firing, whether Nicolle was standing beside him in something expensive while Graham gave the world that practiced smile.
The second knot held. Riley shifted to the other boot and reached for the loose ends. Twenty-four hours of silence had been enough to prove the point. Graham had packed the duffel, put it in the car, and left the gravel lot because the corporate machine had called him back.
Whatever he had done in the shop, whatever he had endured during the outage, whatever had passed between them while she taped the cut on his collarbone—none of it had changed the final choice.
She caught a twist in the lace. She pulled it free, threaded it flat, and started again. The phone remained behind her, untouched, and she intended to keep it that way.
Turning it over would be the first concession.
One glance would become a search. A search would become a video, then a headline, then another photograph she could never scrape out of her memory.
Riley had spent too much of her marriage standing outside the picture while other people decided what version of her husband the world deserved.
“Work,” she said under her breath.
The word sounded better than his name. She drew the laces tight and tied the knot.
The shop would be moving below her: presses cycling, cutters working, somebody complaining about a jammed guide or a dull blade. Machines made demands she understood. A machine failed for a reason. You opened it, found the problem, fixed it, and put it back into service.
People were harder, and Graham had been hardest of all. Riley pushed herself up from the step. Dust marked the knees of her jeans. She brushed it away with two brisk passes and left the phone where it was.
“He walked away. The choice is permanent.”
She looked down toward Copper Shank. The first stair waited beneath her boots, followed by the workday she had promised to get through without giving New York another thought.
Shut it out. Get off these stairs and keep moving.
She faced the stairs.
Riley put one boot onto the first step.
A blur crossed the gravel below.
Maisie came running from the direction of the shop with her phone clutched in both hands, sneakers kicking dust behind her. She held the screen sideways, and crowd noise poured from the speaker in a tinny wash that carried all the way up to the loft.
Riley kept moving.
“Slow down before you fall.”
Maisie reached the bottom stair and started climbing without breaking pace. “Then stop making me chase you.”
The screen flashed in Maisie’s hands as she came up. Blue-white stage lighting. Movement. A packed crowd somewhere far north of Georgia.
Riley looked up toward the shop roof instead.
Of course Maisie had found the gala. Half the sports world had probably stopped working to watch Graham Delaney return from his mysterious absence and stand beneath another wall of sponsor logos. Riley had spent twenty-four hours refusing to give that spectacle one second of her attention.
She was not starting now.
“Move,” Riley said. “I’m already late for the floor.”
“You can be late for thirty seconds.”
Maisie reached the narrow section of stairs and planted herself directly in Riley’s path. She kept the phone raised near her chest, the viral replay still running. Whatever was happening onstage had the crowd surging, but Riley kept her eyes on Maisie’s face instead.
“Kill the video, Maisie. I explicitly banned any coverage of that gala.”
“I know what you said.”
“Then this should be easy.”
“It would be, except the gala fell apart.”
Riley shifted toward the railing, intending to slip past. Maisie moved with her and blocked the path again.
Irritation scraped away the thin layer of calm Riley had built upstairs.
This was exactly why she had banned the coverage.
She did not need another photograph of Graham and Nicolle engineered to live forever on a thousand websites.
She did not need strangers dissecting his smile while she stood in Georgia pretending it meant nothing.
She pointed down the stairs. “Maisie.”
“Stop fighting me and watch the replay, Riley! There was zero posing happening here! He burned the franchise to the ground on live television!”
Riley stared at her.
The words made no sense beside the event she had spent two days imagining. Graham did not burn franchises. Graham protected contracts, sponsors, executives, camera angles. He had once let a press handler move his wife out of sight rather than inconvenience a campaign.
New York was where that version of him belonged.
“You’re watching publicity,” Riley said. “They manufacture conflict because people click on it.”
Maisie shook her head and pushed the phone closer.
Riley stepped back from the glare before she could make out any faces. “Clear the stairs, Maisie. You can take their manufactured PR stunt somewhere else.”
“This is not manufactured.”
“Everything about Ice Royalty is manufactured.”
“That’s the point.”
Riley tried the other side. Maisie blocked her again, taking one hand off the phone long enough to brace against the railing.
“Would you stop doing that?”
“No.”
“I have a shift.”
“And I have eyes.”
The crowd on the phone broke into another burst of noise. A voice from the broadcast vanished beneath it before Riley could decipher the words.
Maisie looked from the screen to Riley. Her expression had lost the giddy edge of ordinary celebrity gossip. She was stunned.
That bothered Riley more than the noise.
“What happened?” Riley asked.
Maisie lifted the phone between them again. “He literally ruined Nicolle! This was zero percent a stunt!”
Riley kept her hand on the railing.
For one stubborn moment, she tried to fit Maisie’s words back into the explanation she already had.
Contract dispute. Publicity trick. Manufactured tension before an announcement.
Anything that allowed Graham to remain exactly where she had put him in her mind when his taillights disappeared down the road.
But Maisie had sprinted across the lot for this.
The phone kept playing between them.
Riley stayed on the stair while the broadcast noise spilled from the speaker.
Maisie still held it near her chest, the image jerking as the camera crew tried to follow whatever was happening onstage.
Riley stared at the glowing edge of the screen rather than the picture itself. Avoiding it had stopped making sense.
“Give it to me.”
Maisie surrendered the phone at once. “Finally.”
The glass was warm from her hands. Riley adjusted her grip and looked down.
Graham stood beneath the launch lights with Nicolle beside him. The sight was so familiar that Riley almost laughed. Of course. Different city, different stage, same polished setup designed to sell the fantasy that had chewed through their marriage.
Then Nicolle turned toward him.
Riley knew the move before it happened.
“That’s the pose.”
Maisie leaned over her shoulder. “Just watch him.”
Nicolle extended her arm toward Graham, angling herself into the same easy link the cameras had captured countless times before.
Riley gripped the phone harder. Months ago, Graham had accepted that touch without hesitation while Riley stood outside the ropes holding his water bottle like hired help.
The camera pushed closer.
Nicolle reached him.
Graham stepped left.
She caught empty air.
Nicolle lurched after the missed contact, one heel sliding across the stage before she steadied herself. Graham never reached back to steady her. He stood apart from her, leaving a strip of empty stage between them while the crowd reacted in one broken roar.
Riley backed up until she hit the loft siding.
Maisie pointed at the screen. “She nearly face-planted on national TV last night! He rejected the grab. Are you watching this?”
Riley could not look anywhere else.
The broadcast cut between Nicolle and Graham. Nicolle was speaking to him, but the crowd swallowed most of it. Graham answered without moving toward her.
The network interviewer rushed into the gap with his microphone raised.
“Whoa, it looks like that postseason adrenaline is still running white-hot up here on the stage today, folks!”
The attempted joke landed badly. Even through the phone, the room had changed. Executives moved at the edges of the shot. Someone near the stage stairs waved wildly at Graham.
He had broken the choreography.
Riley lowered the phone enough to look at Maisie. “The GM is going to bury him for this. Why would he do something like that?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“This could cost him the launch.”
Maisie gave her a pointed look. “I don’t think he cares.”
Riley brought the screen back up.
Graham had turned away from Nicolle. Instead of retreating toward the wings, he moved toward the interviewer. He kept his attention on the microphone.
No smile. No pose. No attempt to repair the picture.
Riley’s certainty from five minutes ago had nowhere left to stand. Graham protected sponsors. Graham absorbed humiliation if a contract demanded it. Graham had built their life around the conviction that money excused whatever the machine asked him to sacrifice.
But the man on Maisie’s phone was walking toward the one object that could turn a private revolt into a public disaster.