Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Nelson
Jimmy wasn't exaggerating.
The words had been living in my head for three days.
I'd tried to evict them. I'd tried logic — Jillian was being Jillian, it meant nothing.
It was the kind of throwaway compliment people gave each other all the time.
Jimmy and Jillian were best friends, and they talked about everything.
It would be strange if my name hadn't come up at all.
Then I'd tried anger — how dare he discuss me with Jillian Morris? Jillian had some nerve saying it to my face. How dare any of this be happening in my building?
Nothing worked. The words sat there, warm and uninvited, and every time I thought I'd buried them they surfaced again, always at the worst possible moment.
Like now, as I sat in Bruce's office listening to him talk about ratings with the breathless excitement of a man who'd just discovered he might survive the quarter.
"The numbers are extraordinary, Nelson. Extraordinary.
" Bruce was standing behind his desk, because sitting down would apparently not adequately convey his enthusiasm.
His hand was on his tie. It had been on his tie since I walked in.
"The 25–54 demo is up six points in two weeks.
Six points! The Vasquez interview alone generated more social media engagement than our last three sweeps periods combined. The network is thrilled."
I watched his hand move from the tie to the desk to the tie again. Knot, straighten, release. Knot, straighten, release. A metronome of anxiety disguised as celebration.
"The network is thrilled," I repeated.
"Thrilled," he confirmed. "Nelson, the board wants to talk about expanding the format. A possible second hour. Weekend specials. They're looking at this as a model for—"
"Bruce."
His hand froze on his tie.
"You hired an executive producer for my show without my knowledge or consent.
" I said it the way I said everything that mattered — quietly, precisely, without heat.
Heat was for people who needed volume to be heard.
"You signed a contract with Mr. Goodman and let me discover the hire during a live broadcast. The fact that the numbers are up does not erase this. "
Bruce's fingers tightened on his tie. I could see the exact moment his survival instinct kicked in — the calculation, the risk assessment, the frantic search for the response least likely to get him killed.
"Nelson, I understand your frustration—"
"Do you?"
"—but you axed every candidate we brought you. Three EPs in eighteen months. The talent pool was drying up. Nobody wanted the chair. Jimmy Goodman was—" He swallowed. "He was the best option available, and his credentials are—"
"His credentials are not the issue and you know it."
Bruce's hand dropped from his tie. For a moment he looked at me with something that was almost honesty. "Nelson. The show is the best it's been in years. You know this. The numbers don't lie."
He was right. The numbers didn't lie. The numbers were obscene, and they were obscene because Jimmy was brilliant. The show was better, my delivery was sharper, and none of these facts made me feel anything other than trapped.
I stood.
"If you ever make a hiring decision about my broadcast without consulting me again," I said, "I will not write a memo. I will walk into the board meeting myself and tell them exactly what I think. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," Bruce said.
I walked out. Behind me, I heard him exhale the breath he'd been holding since I sat down.
* * *
The earpiece went in at 6:55.
It was a small thing — flesh-colored plastic, molded to the curve of my ear canal, no different than the one I'd worn before. Every anchor in television wore one. It was a tool that delivered information from the control room to the talent, and that was all it did.
Except that for the last two weeks, putting in the earpiece had become something I had to prepare for. The way you prepare for a needle at the doctor's office — you know it's coming, you know it's necessary, and you still have to brace yourself for the moment it pierces skin.
I fitted it into my ear and felt the familiar weight of it settle.
In a few minutes, Jimmy's voice would be there.
Not across a room. Not through a phone. There.
Inside me. Closer than a whisper, closer than a breath, arriving without warning directly against the most delicate nerve endings in my body.
I straightened my jacket. Charcoal tonight. Then I positioned my water glass and looked at Camera Two.
Marla glanced at me from her chair. "You look tense, Mackenzie."
"I'm not tense."
"Your shoulders are up near your ears."
I forced my shoulders down. Marla returned to her phone. She didn't say anything else, but the corner of her mouth did something I chose not to interpret.
The countdown began. The theme music rolled, then the red light ignited.
"Good evening. I'm Nelson Mackenzie, and this is Beacon News Tonight.
We begin with a developing story on Capitol Hill, where the Senate Commerce Committee spent nearly six hours today grilling the CEOs of three of the nation's largest technology companies over allegations of anticompetitive practices, consumer data violations, and what one senator called 'a systemic failure of corporate accountability. '"
I hit the pivot without a breath. "At the center of today's hearing: a whistleblower report alleging that Nexus Technologies, the parent company of three of the most widely used social media platforms in the country, deliberately suppressed internal research showing its algorithms were driving misinformation to younger users at rates far exceeding what the company disclosed to regulators. "
This was the kind of story that rewarded an anchor who could synthesize complexity on the fly — dense, fast-moving, layered with legal and political implications the audience needed delivered in language they could hold on to.
It was one of my best skills. I could take a six-hour hearing and distill it into ninety seconds of clarity without losing a single essential fact.
Tonight I would do that, and I wouldn't think about the voice in my ear.
"Toss to the package, Nelson. Clean four seconds on the turn." Jimmy's voice arrived the way it always arrived — low, precise, faintly clipped — and it landed in a place that had nothing to do with my brain.
I felt it at the base of my skull first. A warmth that spread downward, tracing the back of my neck, pooling low in my gut and then lower, a slow heavy heat settling behind my fly.
My body's response to Jimmy's voice had graduated from recognition to something else over the past two weeks, something I didn't have a clinical name for and refused to give a poetic one.
It was physical. Involuntary. And tonight it was not going to be ignored.
I delivered the toss. Four seconds. Clean.
The package ran. I took a breath and realized my breathing had changed — shorter, shallower, high in my chest. I corrected it the way I'd been correcting it all week, pulling air deep into my lungs and releasing it slowly through my nose.
The audience couldn't see me breathe. But Jimmy could see me on his monitor, and if my chest was moving differently, he might notice.
Jimmy wasn't exaggerating.
The words surfaced again, unbidden. He'd been talking about how I looked.
To Jillian. And now Jimmy was in my ear, and the knowledge that he thought about me — combined with the feel of his voice arriving inside me — sent another pulse of heat downward, and I felt myself begin to respond in a way that no amount of discipline was going to talk me out of.
No. Not here. Not now.
The package ended. I turned to Camera Two.
"Stay on the wide shot for the panel intro.
You've got three guests. Give each one a beat.
" Jimmy murmured in my ear, and the murmur did me in.
My body committed an act of open mutiny.
I hardened against the front of my trousers and the sudden, intense restriction of my underwear was excruciating.
Every micro-shift of my hips on the leather chair caused the rough, heavy wool of my suit pants to press directly against my erection. I couldn't move, couldn't adjust.
I gave each guest their beat. My voice remained steady on the air, but beneath the desk, my knuckles were white.
I gripped the thick, polished edge of the anchor desk so hard my fingernails dug into the wood, my forearm muscles straining beneath my sleeves.
I was thirty-five years old, the most-watched anchor in American cable news, and I was sitting behind an Emmy-winning desk with an erection so hard it was a physical ache.
My teeth were clenched so tightly my jaw began to throb.
The panel ran. I moderated it like a machine, but the sensory overload was blinding. The studio lights seemed too bright, the air too cold, the contrast of my burning, throbbing lower half too intense.
"Tighten up the close on this segment. We're running hot."
Running hot.
The technical phrase felt like a deliberate provocation.
Spoken in Jimmy's low register, the words landed like a hand sliding down my stomach.
My body answered with a throb so violent I had to swallow a groan, my throat clicking on a dry breath.
I knew—with a certainty that bordered on despair—that Jimmy was watching my monitor, watching the pulse jump in my neck, knowing exactly what his voice was doing to me.
Was he was doing this on purpose?
We moved into the C-block. I tried everything.
I recited tax figures in my head. I stared at the climate scientist on the screen.
Tried focusing on the freezing draft hitting the back of my wet collar.
Slowly, grudgingly, the agonizing tension in my trousers began to ease.
I let out a ginger breath, my shoulders relaxing a fraction of an inch.
And then, during the final segment, Jimmy’s voice slid back into my ear.
"Nelson. Thirty seconds. Take it home."
My name. Spoken with the soft, devastating intimacy of a confession whispered in a dark bed.
The progress I'd made evaporated in a single heartbeat. The heat surged back, rushing to my groin with such force it felt like a physical blow. The fabric of my trousers caught against me again, a friction so agonizingly sharp my breath caught on air.
On camera, it looked like a dramatic pause—a beat of solemn gravitas before the close.
But I had to physically brace my weight against the desk, my hands flat on the wood, my arms locked to keep myself from trembling. My heart was hammering against my ribs, loud enough that I was terrified the lapel mic would pick it up.
I delivered the close and held for three seconds.
The red light on the camera died.
I didn't wait. I yanked the earpiece out, my fingers trembling as I set the small, warm piece of plastic on the desk. My skin was tingling where it had been.
Marla was looking at me, her eyebrow raised. "Good show," she said, gathering her things. "You sounded different tonight."
"Different how?" I croaked, my jaw still aching from how hard I’d been clenching my teeth.
She considered this. "Warmer," she said. "More... intensely present."
She left. I stayed seated behind the desk, clutching my water glass like a lifeline, waiting while the studio cleared.
The freezing air conditioning finally began to cool the sweat on my neck, but beneath the desk, the heavy wool of my trousers still felt like a cage, my body taking its sweet, agonizing time to release me.
When I finally rose, my thighs felt weak, the friction of my clothes a lingering, maddening reminder of the last hour. Harry approached and I waved him away with a curt goodnight.
Ten minutes later, I closed my dressing room door and locked it. Then I stood in front of the vanity mirror, staring at myself. My collar was damp. The skin of my throat was flushed a deep, telltale pink, creeping up from beneath my tie.
I reached up, my fingers shaking as I finally loosened the silk knot, pulling it free like a man escaping a noose.
I’d spent thirteen years building myself into an anchor who felt nothing. Tonight, in front of millions of viewers, Jimmy Goodman had reached through a piece of molded plastic and dismantled me without a single touch.
“What the hell is happening?”