Chapter 17 #3
Then I decide someone has to go first, and it should be me, because my sentence has been ready for two weeks.
“I wasn’t using you.”
Silence. Okay. Great start. Sticking the landing as usual.
“It did cross my mind.” Because if I’m doing this, I’m doing it with the whole truth, not the flattering cut.
“I wanted to write about Danny and the drugs, I’d worked out the drugs were his, not yours.
The day of the shed, I came to that practice fully intending to ask you, casually, how Danny’s doing these days.
Get some intel. Mom voice, journalist agenda.
” I make myself hold his eyes. “And then the shed happened, and you said what you said, and it stopped being that story. It stopped being a story I’d write like that at all.
I have the drafts to prove it, plural, dated, the whole sad evolution.
After that night it was never about the story, Nate. Not once.”
There. The thing I should have said weeks ago, standing in the room I should have said it in.
“I didn’t know it was a PR setup.” His voice comes out rough.
He shifts the ice pack, not looking away from me.
“Not at the start. I was told I needed to fix my image in case someone ran with the photos, youth sports was on the menu Morrison built. Grant and I had suspicions the field wasn’t random.
I confirmed it later, walked into Morrison’s office and asked him to his face.
And by the time I confirmed it”, the swollen mouth twists — “I’d already fallen for you, which made the truth expensive, and I’m a coward about expensive things.
Our PR guy is terrified of what another Callie Carter story does to the organization and to his career, so his grand plan was: she sees Rivers being a good guy, she hesitates before publishing.
Honestly, it worked better than he drew it up, because David Morrison is a heartless viper, and the scenario where the two people in his scheme fall for each other is not one that man’s imagination can render. ”
Silence again, on both ends.
Because I believe him. Against every self-preservation instinct I’ve spent eight years installing, against the takedown sitting armed on my laptop, against my own closing arguments, I believe him.
It makes sense, all of it, and my anger has been the worst advisor the last couple of weeks.
Priya’s question sits in the middle of the room, answered: they were the same man the entire time.
“Where are the boys?” he asks finally, and of course that’s his first question, and something in my chest un-clenches another notch.
“With Briggs. He’s… reliable, right?”
“Yeah.” No hesitation at all, which settles the last of it.
“He’s got kids; he knows what he’s doing.
He’ll get them autographs, and honestly, after that ass-kicking, the guys could use some Finn-level entertainment.
” He slides off the table and comes toward me, slow, careful, like I might bolt, fair assessment.
“Callie. The things I said at the fence, I don’t think them.
I don’t believe them. I knew they weren’t true while they were coming out of my mouth, and I said them anyway because I was hurt and I wanted the hurt to have company.
” He stops in front of me, close enough that I have to tip my head back, and the last of the armor comes off his face.
“I love you. That’s the truth, and it’s been the truth for a while, and I’ve been a wreck for two weeks trying to outrun it. ”
I look up at this enormous, battered, ridiculous man, split lip, plastered skull, one functional hand, and I want to cry, and for the first time in two weeks it’s the good kind.
“I love you too, Nate.” His breath actually catches; I feel it. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the pictures. I meant to, at the lake, I was one syllable in when your phone went off. My sin was silence. I own it.”
I step in and wrap my arms around him, careful of the hand, and his good arm comes around me and holds on like I’m the thing keeping him upright, which, given today, might be accurate.
It doesn’t solve everything. Not by a long shot.
There’s still an article on my laptop with tomorrow’s date on it, and a rival outlet holding the same photos, and his PR situation, and whatever the league does to him for today, we have a docket, the two of us.
But standing in a medical room that smells like antiseptic, with his heartbeat going under my ear at a speed I decide not to report to his trainer, things do not look grim.
For the first time in two weeks, things look like a fourth quarter we might actually win.
“Come on.” He presses a kiss into my hair and steers me toward the door with his good hand. “Let’s go rescue the two little guys before Darius teaches them how to swear.”
We go rescue them. Three days to publication. Four before the Herald’s clock runs out. Tonight, both clocks can tick without me watching them; that’s what the fourth quarter is for.