28. The Vouch #2
"You're quitting?" Sloane whispered. "Why? The numbers—the contract—Cooper, you’d be blacklisted. NovaWave would bury you. You’d never work in this city again."
"I don't care about the city," I said, the words coming out more jagged than I intended.
"I care about the show. And I care about you.
Graham told me the only way to save the 'Donovan' brand was to give the audience a villain.
He wanted me to be the source of the leaks.
He wanted me to testify that you were unstable so they could force you into a secondary role. "
I leaned forward, the table between us feeling like a mile of glass.
"If I quit, if I walk away and take the blame for the 'creative differences,' the focus shifts. They can’t frame you if the person you’re supposedly clashing with isn't there anymore.
You keep the mic. You keep the studio. You keep the life you built for Milo. "
Sloane was shaking her head, a slow, rhythmic movement of denial. "No. No, Cooper, that’s... that’s insane. You worked for years to get this spot. This was your shot. You don't just throw that away for a co-host you’ve known for three weeks."
"It hasn't been three weeks," I said, and the intensity in my own voice surprised me. "It’s been a lifetime. I’ve spent my whole life trying to be the guy who fixes things, the guy who makes everyone smile so they don't notice the floor is rotting.
But I'm not doing this to fix the show, Sloane.
I'm doing it because I can't be the reason you lose the only thing that makes you feel safe. "
Lena watched us, her expression unreadable but her hand still steady on Sloane’s arm.
"He’s a fixer, Sloane. It’s his greatest strength and his most dangerous flaw.
He thinks he has to be the sacrifice to be the hero.
But a partnership doesn't work if one person is always standing in front of the bullets. "
Sloane looked away, her gaze drifting to Milo, who was currently flying a LEGO spaceship over a pile of sugar packets.
The light from the window caught the moisture in her eyes, making them look like cracked glass.
She sat there for a long time, the rigid line of her shoulders finally, slowly, beginning to curve.
It wasn't a collapse; it was a surrender. The final wall, the one built of suspicion and Marcus’s betrayal and ten years of single-motherhood, didn't just crack. It dissolved.
"You’re an idiot," she whispered, though there was no heat in it.
She turned back to me, and for the first time, I didn't see the podcast host or the 'No-Bull' investigator.
I saw the woman who had kissed me in a dark cabin while the world ended outside.
"You are a complete and total idiot if you think I'm letting you walk away so I can sit in a studio and pretend you didn't just try to save me. "
"Sloane—"
"Shut up, Cooper," she said, reaching across the table and finally, finally, interlacing her fingers with mine.
Her grip was bruising, desperate. "We don't do sacrifices. We do the truth. That’s the brand, remember? No bull. If we’re going down, we go down together.
But nobody is quitting. Not you. Not me. "
She looked at Lena, a flicker of the old fire returning to her eyes. "He’s not resigning. Tell him to delete the letter."
Lena smiled, a small, knowing thing that made her look exactly like our mother. "I think he just did."
I looked down at our joined hands, the contrast of her pale skin against my tanned knuckles.
My heart was doing a slow, heavy roll in my chest, a sensation of vertigo that had nothing to do with height and everything to do with the way she was looking at me—like I was a person, not a project. Like I was home.
"We have twenty-four hours until the next drop," I said, my voice returning to its professional weight. "If we’re going to do this, we need to move fast. We need Tessa. We need Inez. And we need to make sure Graham and Rhea don't see us coming."
Sloane squeezed my hand, her thumb tracing the line of my palm. "They won't. They think they’ve won because they think they broke us. They don't realize that all they did was give us a reason to stop playing by their rules."
She looked at Milo, then back at me, her expression softening into something so tender it made my throat tight. "Thank you. For Milo. For... everything."
"Always," I said. I didn't say the rest. I didn't have to.
The truth was there in the quiet of the café, in the smell of the coffee, and in the way her hand didn't let go of mine.
It was a bone, jagged and hard, but for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid of the weight of it.
I reached out with my free hand, brushing a stray hair from her forehead, my touch lingering on the warmth of her skin.
The battle wasn't over—the countdown was still ticking, and the network still had their fingers on the trigger—but as the sun began to dip below the city skyline, painting the café in shades of bruised purple and gold, I knew one thing for certain.
I wasn't just her co-host anymore. And she wasn't just my partner.
We were a front line.