Chapter 5
five
ISABELLE
My breath fogged out lightly as I sat on the hard bleachers of the ice hockey rink, watching one of my best friends, Eve, finish her ice dancing practice.
She was amazing on the ice, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
Her boyfriend could barely keep his eyes off her, let alone focus on his hockey practice.
Eve had nearly been my roommate in freshman year, until a mix-up had landed her in a room with her brother’s grouchy bully of a best friend.
The rest was HHU history. The stunning ice dancer and her billionaire’s son boyfriend, lead defenseman on the Hellions hockey team.
She skated over when she was done, and I looked at her accusingly.
“‘Meet up at the rink,’ she said. ‘It won’t be that cold,’ she said.”
“Hey! Cold helps me focus on studying, its science.” She grinned and sat down next to me.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true, but whatever, it beats sitting alone in my room, considering how my life has gone down the drain as I finish up my weekly gossip column… the only thing I’ll succeed in getting published before the end of college.”
“Everyone loves your column. It’s the only thing I read in the Harbor Herald.”
I gave her a grateful smile, but I knew she was just being a good friend.
“Thank you, your loyalty is noted. But seriously, people like reading salacious gossip about campus couples; that’s hardly surprising. No self-respecting newsroom is looking to hire that journalist, though. It’s a nothing contribution to the world.”
Eve sighed and nodded. God, I was such an asshole, as I knew for a fact that we had this conversation at least once a week, and she always managed to cheer me up. I was such a needy bitch. Hitting the glass ceiling at the school newspaper was basically my villain origin story at this point.
“Yes, but you still have time to get a killer story, and if that fails, I’ll just get Beckett to buy me a newspaper and put you in charge,” she said with a wink.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “How fucked up is it that I can’t tell if you’re joking?”
Eve laughed. “Time will tell. So, midterms,” she said. “How’s it going?”
I looked in disgust at the books laying on the bench beside me.
“I’m hoping if I nap on top of them, I’ll absorb the information by osmosis or something.
Honestly, it’s fine, I guess. Though my dad did refer to my degree as a ‘time filler’ the other week at family dinner, so that was nice.
Really inspires a girl to work hard and reach for the stars. ”
Eve pulled a face. “Ouch. Well, he’s just taking his sweet time to accept that you won’t be a carbon copy of your mom. That’s fine. You don’t have to change anything, you just have to let him come to terms with that fact. Your dreams come first.”
I nodded. It sounded perfectly reasonable when someone else said it, and yet, I knew from a childhood of being cajoled into all kinds of things I didn’t want to do, that in practice it was far from straightforward.
“You didn’t forget about Marcus’ party, right?” Eve interrupted my thoughts right before I started to spiral.
Marcus, my friend for pretty much my entire college career. What were the chances Marcus would let something slip about his own brother?
Slim, but probably not zero, right?
When I couldn’t stand the cold anymore, I said goodbye to Eve and walked the short distance to my dorm room.
My building was on the new end of campus and had more modern amenities that the older dorm buildings lacked, such as private rooms. Unfortunately, my father wasn’t inclined to spring for an off-campus apartment for me, and I could hardly argue since I wasn’t the one paying.
I had decorated the sterile white walls with concert posters and pictures to try to brighten up the room.
My favorite books, mostly biographies and political commentaries, lined the shelves I’d put up in the corner.
I was impressed by the structural integrity of the furniture, considering I’d missed half the screws when I’d put it together.
The throw pillows and plush blankets on my bed added to the coziness of the space, but the stillness of the room was deafening after spending the afternoon at the rink.
In the hallway just outside my room, a couple was kissing against the wall.
Seriously? I pushed past them, feeling prudish and more than a little jealous.
Out of all my freshman-year friends, only one other was still single.
Aisha. Unlike me, she had the excuse of being premed and busy as hell.
If she had more time, there was no way she wouldn’t have someone.
Whereas I had plenty of time as I studied for my “time filler” degree, and was still resoundingly single.
In fact, I was more than single, really, considering the only guys who approached me were blind dates my rich and insufferable father set up for me.
Spinsterhood was looking pretty good at this point.
I’d started out so optimistically only a few years ago.
I could still remember ticking things off the bucket list that had been going around campus with quintessential college experiences.
I was pretty sure Aisha was the only one still laboring to finish that thing.
The problem for me was that while I’d had plenty of fun, I’d reached a standstill professionally.
I’d thought getting in with the paper meant I’d graduate with a real portfolio of published stories.
Instead, I had nothing but a gossip column.
I kicked off my shoes and slipped into my emotional-support hoodie before curling up on my bed and pulling out my laptop.
A Word document stared at me, unfinished, judging me.
I needed to make progress on my paper, “Privacy vs. The Right to Know”, for my journalism class, but my brain rebelled, and my fingers hung loosely over the keys.
What was the point? Was I ever going to use these theoretical questions in the real world?
My phone screen lit up, a welcome distraction from my paper, until I saw the sender of the message.
Mom: Don’t forget the fitting for your dress for the garden party. Your father and I expect you to be there. Kisses.
I sighed and threw my phone back on the bed.
It was just like my mom to worry about keeping up appearances rather than my upcoming midterms. My parents could have offered a master class in keeping up appearances.
Everything about my family had to be perceived as pristine and tailored, but it was all fake.
What my mom failed to mention in the text was that my parents needed me there to keep the peace between them.
It was easier for my mom to ignore my dad’s new “assistant” if I was there to fuss over.
My dad, a real estate mogul, had had a string of twenty-something “assistants” for as long as I could remember, but my mother kept her head happily buried in the sand as long as the money kept rolling in.
Growing up in that house with my parents felt like living in a snow globe. It was pretty and perfect from the outside, but suffocating on the inside.
I wanted something real. I wanted the truth.
So instead of writing my dry, dusty paper, I opened a saved tab and stared at the story I’d all but memorized over the last few weeks.
The ritual of searching the local news sites for my big break, whatever it might be, had started in earnest a few months before, as the end of college loomed and the chance to have CV-worthy experience slipped further and further away.
I had been looking for anything far removed from my perfectly curated life. Something with teeth.
The local news was pretty tame. Hade Harbor was a small, safe town, or at least that’s what the local papers led readers to believe.
Petty theft, drug busts, and embezzlement investigations that went nowhere, or were quickly wrapped up.
But then I’d hit the jackpot. Rumors of an illegal gun trade hidden right here in our manicured little Maine town, and a name. One I’d heard before.
Cole Bailey. Marcus’ brother and his mysterious social club had been niggling at my reporter instincts for over a year, but I’d never found anything concrete enough to put too much effort into it.
Now, this article, plus the conversation with Rosie in the kitchen just a week ago meant only one thing.
They were signs that it was time to blow the MC story wide open, or so I’d convinced myself.
I got up and walked to the pinboard on my wall.
I’d draped a scarf over it so my friends didn’t think I was a psycho stalker.
After last night, I was beginning to feel like one.
I tugged the scarf down and stared at my findings so far.
Any snippet of information I’d been able to dig up was here on this board.
There was a grainy shot of Cole from the newspaper, right after he’d been shot last year.
I’d pulled on all the threads surrounding that situation, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere.
In fact, it seemed to have more to do with Marcus’ girlfriend than with anything illegal.
So, I’d reached the end of my digging, and had to make the leap I’d known was coming.
Contact.
Last night had been my first attempt. A spectacular fail of an attempt at that. But you made contact, I reassured myself. I was just getting started. There was a real story here, I just knew it, and I’d be the one to break it if it was the last thing I did.
I’d get my headline story, and Rosie would get the peace of mind of knowing her son wasn’t going to end up like his father. Now that I’d seen how desperate Finn was to join the MC, I knew that Rosie’s fears were more than founded.
Cole Bailey and his MC were full of secrets, and I was going to find them out, no matter what, like the stubborn bitch I was.