21. Chapter 21
Claire
The headline loads before the rest of the page.
DARIUS WEBB'S FAIRY-TALE ENGAGEMENT WAS FAKE, INSIDER CLAIMS
My stomach drops.
The article identifies me in the second paragraph. Not Claire Wells. Not fiancée. Not even girlfriend. Just Darius Webb's publicist, as if reducing me to a job title somehow makes me easier to throw under the bus.
Darius's arm is still around me in the middle of a prison parking lot, and I can feel his heart hammering against my shoulder. A minute ago we were talking about finding his father. Now TMZ is telling the world our relationship is a lie.
I lock my phone and look up at him.
"We need to get in the car."
***
He drives. I read the whole article out loud because he needs to hear the exact language before he reacts to it.
Four sourced details. The contracted twelve-week timeline.
The NDA structure, down to the penalty clauses.
The fact that I proposed the arrangement myself, in a conference room, in front of witnesses.
And the framing that ties it all together — that the entire relationship was engineered to manipulate public perception.
Four details. Only five people were in that room.
"She gave them everything," Darius says. Hands at ten and two. Voice level.
"Not everything." I scroll back up. "She stopped short of misconduct. She's saving that." I find the line and read it slowly. "An unnamed source claims several women may be willing to speak."
"May be willing." He says it like he's tasting something rotten. "She hasn't found them yet."
"She doesn't need to find them. She needs the league office to wonder if she could."
I close the browser.
"We have maybe ninety minutes before every major outlet picks this up," I tell him. "After that it stops being a story we can shape and starts being weather. We need to move."
***
His phone rings through the car speakers before we reach the highway.
EVAN CARTER.
Darius answers without looking at me. "Talk."
"You've seen it."
Evan doesn't ask if we're okay. He doesn't ask if the story is true. He goes straight to business.
"Okay. Gatorade paused the campaign twenty minutes ago. That's their word. Paused."
The way he says it tells me he's already had this conversation ten times. Maybe more.
"Pending what?" Darius asks.
"Pending whether the misconduct angle grows legs."
His voice stays calm. Too calm. Like we're discussing weather.
I hear papers moving on his end. A keyboard. The click of something being closed.
He's multitasking. Already working on the next problem. Maybe the next client.
"Darius." He sighs. "Listen. I've got six other guys with active endorsement deals right now. I can't be tied to this."
I stare through the windshield.
Not because he's wrong. Because of how easy it sounds. How practiced. Like he's had the speech ready before he ever picked up the phone.
"I can't represent you through this."
The highway hums under us.
"You're dropping me," Darius says.
"I'm pausing us. There's a difference."
"There isn't."
Another pause, longer. "I'm sorry, man. I am."
He means it about thirty percent.
Darius hangs up without saying goodbye. He drives in silence. I watch his thumb leave the wheel and find Ethan's name on his forearm, press once, and return.
"What do we do next?" he asks.
That's it. No spiral. No speech about loyalty. No fist on the dashboard. Just the question, steady and forward-facing.
I can see what holding it that steady is costing him. The muscle working in his jaw. The breath he takes through his nose before the question.
"Next, I call Don before he reads it cold," I say. "Then we write."
***
My phone buzzes before I can dial. Then again. And again.
By the time I reach for it, the screen is almost completely covered in notifications.
Katie. Hannah. My mother. Three numbers I don't recognize. A group text with thirty-seven unread messages.
"What now?" Darius mutters.
Katie's text sits at the top.
OPEN THIS!!!!!!
I tap the link.
The video starts playing automatically.
For a second I don't understand what I'm looking at.
Then I realize it's me.
"Oh my God."
The footage is grainy, clearly shot from far away. I'm walking through the amusement park with a half-eaten corn dog in one hand while Darius follows behind me carrying the prizes we won.
The video pauses.
Then zooms.
Directly onto my stomach.
A giant red circle appears on the screen.
BABY WEBB ON THE WAY?
The next image is worse.
Darius standing behind me near the Ferris wheel, arms around my waist, one hand spread flat across my stomach. I remember the moment. I was cold. That was it. Cold.
Now it looks like we're announcing a pregnancy to the entire state of Texas.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
"What?" Darius glances over.
I immediately angle the phone away. "Eyes on the road."
His hand shoots out anyway. "Claire."
I hold up the screen. Just long enough.
His eyebrows climb. Then climb higher.
"What the hell?"
I scroll. The comments move faster than I can read.
SHOTGUN WEDDING.
SHE TRAPPED HIM.
NO WAY A MAN LIKE THAT GETS TRAPPED.
THAT BABY IS SECURING THE BAG.
I refresh the page. The view count jumps. Then jumps again. Thousands. Then tens of thousands.
My pulse starts climbing.
Not because I think anyone should believe this.
Because they do.
The engagement story took days to gain traction. This one is exploding in real time.
Darius lets out a low whistle. "Well."
I turn toward him. "Well?"
He shrugs. "Apparently we're having a baby."
I stare at him. He keeps driving. The corner of his mouth twitches.
And for one completely irrational second, my brain betrays me. Because after weeks of pretending to be engaged to him, after family dinners and charity events and all the lines we've blurred together, the image flashes before I can stop it.
Darius. Me. A baby.
I shove it away so fast it almost gives me whiplash.
Absolutely not.
The worst part is that Camille spent weeks building a story about a fake engagement, and the entire thing is already getting buried beneath a much bigger one.
Because nobody cares about contracts and NDAs.
People care about babies.
His hand crosses the console and covers mine. I let it stay for a second. Then I pull back, because the next call has to be made by the version of me with steady hands.
***
Darius is already ahead of me.
He taps the screen on the dash. "Call Brandon Walsh."
Brandon picks up on the first ring. "I'm reading it now."
"Then you know someone fed Camille four details straight out of a signed NDA." Darius's voice stays level, lower than usual. "I want it locked down. Whatever you need from us, you'll have within the hour."
"Preserve everything. Texts, voicemails, the summit timeline.
Nobody talks to press." I can hear Brandon writing.
"Whoever leaked that information violated the NDA — that's our exposure.
Camille's is different: she used it to demand a false confession.
That's coercion, and it gives me grounds to put every outlet she's briefing on notice before they run anything sourced to her. "
"Do it."
The call ends. Darius doesn't glance over to see if I noticed.
The man in that file answered a crisis with a burner account. This one answered with a lawyer.
***
"My turn," I say.
Don Hartwell picks up on the second ring. "Wells. Tell me you've seen it."
"I've seen both of them. Give me three minutes."
I give him what's changed since our meeting.
The article is live with four details only an insider could have sourced — someone who signed the NDA or had access to someone who did.
That's a separate problem from Camille, who used those details to attempt coercion.
The "several women" threat hasn't surfaced yet, which means she's holding it.
The pregnancy video is outpacing the article ten to one.
And Evan Carter dropped Darius eight minutes ago.
"Legal exposure runs two directions," I finish. "The coercion attempt, which is hers to answer for. And the leak, which we need to trace."
Don is quiet for a long time.
"I'm calling the franchise's legal team in the next ten minutes," he says finally. "You don't talk to any press. Not a denial, not a no-comment, nothing, until you hear from me. Both of you. Are we clear?"
"Clear."
He hangs up. I lower the phone and look at my hands and they are completely steady, and I have no idea how.
Somewhere underneath this calm there's a woman who wants to pull over and scream into the glovebox. I'll let her out later. There's no room for her right now.
***
Darius takes the exit for River Oaks instead of the Training Complex.
"Don said no press," he says before I can ask. "He didn't say no truth. We're not writing this in a building full of lawyers."
We sit at my kitchen table. The same table where he ate a muffin off his strict diet at midnight. I open my notebook to a clean page and we write.
Not a PR document. I've written a hundred of those and I could write this one in my sleep. This one we write like people.
It says the arrangement began as a strategic partnership.
It says that somewhere inside it, without either of us planning to, it became real — and that we understand if people doubt that, because we doubted it too.
It acknowledges that confidential details from a signed agreement were obtained and weaponized in an attempt to force a false public confession.
It is not a denial and it is not a confession.
It's a truth. Partial, but honest. The first fully honest thing either of us has put in writing since this started.
Darius reads the statement all the way through before setting the notebook on the table.
For a moment, he just stares at it.
"I want one more line."
I wait.
"About Atlanta."
His gaze stays on the notebook.
"I take responsibility for what happened. Not just Atlanta. All of it."
The room goes quiet.
"The teammates. The women. The mistakes." He shrugs one shoulder. "I'm not interested in explaining it anymore."
His thumb traces the edge of the page.
"I did what I did. Put that in."
"That gives her ammunition."
"She's not getting anything new from that." He looks at me, and he's serious. "If I let her rewrite my past into something darker than it was, she owns it. I'd rather own it ugly than let her own it worse."
I look at him for a long moment.
A few months ago, he would've fought every word of this. He would've argued over the phrasing, blamed the media, blamed Camille, blamed anybody willing to stand still long enough to listen.
Instead, he's asking for the harder thing.
The truth.
Not because a lawyer told him to.
Not because it makes him look better.
Because he means it.
I don't realize I've been staring until he catches me.
"What?"
A smile threatens at the corner of my mouth. "Nothing."
His eyes narrow. "That wasn't nothing."
I shake my head and reach for the pen.
For once, I don't feel the need to push him. He's already there.
I write the line exactly the way he said it.
When I finish, I slide the notebook toward him.
He reads it once and nods.
No edits. No arguments.
The room falls quiet.
Outside my apartment windows, the city glows against the dark sky. For the first time all day, neither of us is talking. Neither of us is fighting.
Just sitting together.
And maybe that's what catches me off guard. The fact that being here with him suddenly feels easy.
***
My phone rings.
MOM.
"Brace yourself," I tell him. "She's probably calling about the pregnancy rumors."
Darius laughs. "Good luck."
I answer before it can go to voicemail.
"Mom, I know what you're seeing online. I promise I was going to call you before—"
"Claire."
Everything inside me stops.
My mother never says my name like that.
Her voice is smaller than it should be. Thinner. Like she's trying very hard not to panic.
I sit up straighter. "Mom?"
There's a sound on the other end. Voices. Movement. A distant announcement over an intercom.
Then:
"Your father's in the hospital."