Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jimmy
Quick chat. No agenda. — Bruce
In the ecosystem of cable news, "no agenda" was the most dangerous agenda there was. It was the corporate version of "we need to talk."
I stared at the blinking cursor on my screen, my hand hovering over the mouse. A month ago, my professional instincts — honed by a decade of dodging mortar fire and political hit jobs — would have been screaming. I would have felt that familiar, icy prickle at the base of my skull.
But for the last ten days, those instincts had been offline.
They'd been drowned out by a different frequency: the low, terrifying hum of a life I'd spent thirteen years convincing myself I didn't deserve.
My internal radar was too busy tracking the memory of Nelson's hand in mine and the way his professional mask crumbled the second the dressing room door clicked shut.
I clicked Accept. Bruce was just twitchy about the upcoming sweeps. That's all this was.
* * *
Walking into Bruce's office felt like stepping into a cold front.
The air was different — heavy, oxygen-depleted, smelling of expensive furniture polish and impending doom. I had a notebook I wasn't going to open in one hand and a coffee that was already turning cold in the other.
The first thing I saw was the second chair.
Then I saw the woman occupying it. She was in her late thirties, wearing a navy pantsuit with edges sharp enough to draw blood.
Her hair was pulled back into a knot so tight it looked painful.
She had no coffee. No notebook. Just a laminated badge clipped to her lapel that felt like a death warrant: L. STEVENS, CORPORATE LEGAL.
The door clicked shut behind me, and the silence in the room was absolute.
"Jimmy. Thanks for coming in," Bruce said. He didn't look at my eyes. He was fascinated by a spot on the wall somewhere over my left shoulder. His hand drifted to his tie, then thought better of it. "This is Lauren Stevens, from Corporate."
"Lauren," I said. My voice was a flat line, a masterpiece of muscle memory.
Lauren didn't move or offer the reflexive, tight-lipped smile that usually greased the wheels of corporate discomfort. She simply sat there, hands folded over her lap in a way that suggested she had no pulse.
I sat. My coffee cup made a hollow, lonely thunk as I set it on the polished mahogany of Bruce's desk. A thin, white ghost of steam curled upward from the sipping hole, the only thing in the room that seemed to have any life in it.
Bruce leaned back, his leather chair groaning. He steepled his fingers, his voice dropping into that smooth, velvet-lined baritone he usually reserved for courting big-ticket advertisers.
"Jimmy, I want to start by saying the work you've done over the last few weeks has been nothing short of transformative," he began.
He used the word renaissance. He talked about "the demo" as if it were a living, breathing creature we had successfully tamed.
He leaned in, his eyebrows knit in a pantomime of sincere appreciation that didn't quite reach his eyes.
The words floated across the desk like heavy, perfumed static.
It was a practiced cadence — the slow, rhythmic build of a man who was trying to make sure I was comfortable before he cut my throat.
Every compliment was a layer of cotton wool, meant to dampen the sound of what was coming next, until the room felt so crowded with his praise that I could barely find the air to breathe.
I let him perform for exactly sixty seconds.
"Bruce," I interrupted, the sound of my own voice cutting through his rehearsed babble. "Stop. You've brought Legal into a room for a 'quick chat.' Just spit it out so I can get out of here."
Bruce's mouth snapped shut. He finally looked at me, and I saw it — the faint, pathetic shimmer of guilt.
"The network has decided to restructure the executive producer role," he said, his voice dropping into a hollow, corporate cadence.
"We're looking for a different direction for the post-cable era.
Strategic positioning. We're invoking the ninety-day probationary clause. Friday will be your last day."
It was like being hit by a slow-moving truck. I'd suspected the punch was coming, but the sheer, calculated cowardice of the "post-cable era" excuse made my blood turn to ice.
Lauren slid a manila folder in front of me. I didn't touch it.
"The ratings are up nineteen percent," I said, my voice dropping to that low, dangerous register I usually reserved for politicians who thought they could lie to my face.
"I just gave you the best quarter this show has had in a decade.
We both know this isn't about 'strategic positioning. ' What's the actual reason?"
"Jimmy, the decision was made at a leadership level—"
"What. Is. The. Reason?"
I saw Lauren Stevens shift. A microscopic tightening of her jaw. I was going off-script, and she didn't like it one little bit.
"There are concerns," Bruce said, leaning forward as if proximity could mask the insult, "about editorial independence. About a conflict of interest. About... optics."
Optics.
There it was. The slur of the C-suite. The word they reached for when the truth was too expensive to say out loud.
"Optics," I repeated. The word felt like broken glass in my throat.
"Let's talk about optics, Bruce. You put the first gay President of the United States on the air three weeks ago.
Called it the proudest night in this network's history.
Ran the promos. Sold the ad time. And now two men on your own payroll fall for each other, and it's a conflict of interest? "
"It's not the same thing, Jimmy—"
"You're right. It's not." I leaned in. "Airing that swearing-in wasn't a choice.
He's the President. You're a news network.
You don't get to not cover it — you'd have lost every viewer you had to the competition by nine-fifteen.
That wasn't bravery. That was the bare minimum of doing your job.
" My voice dropped. "But this? Firing me?
This is the choice. This is the part where nobody's making you do anything, and you get to show me who you actually are when the cameras are off. "
Bruce's jaw worked. He didn't have an answer, because there wasn't one.
"Say the conflict-of-interest part out loud, sure — the supervisor and the anchor, the org chart, all of it.
At least that part is real." I straightened.
"But we both know that's the part you're putting in the folder because it's the part Lauren can defend.
It's the clean version. It's the one that doesn't cost you a lawsuit. "
Lauren's eyes remained fixed on the mahogany desk. She was a professional witness to a crime she was helping commit.
"The network is not legally required to provide further explanation under the terms of your contract," Lauren said. Her voice was a dial tone.
"No. Of course not. Because the real reason doesn't go in writing.
" I looked at Bruce. "The real reason is that there are people upstairs who'll happily bank the ratings from a gay President they had no choice but to broadcast, and then get squeamish about two of their own employees in the same breath.
They'll take the money. They just don't want it in the hallways. "
He'd traded his spine for a corner office and a title, and in this light, he looked like a man who had been hollowed out.
"You're protecting the asset," I said, the realization settling into my chest like lead.
"Nelson is the face, and he brings in the money.
So he stays. But you can't have the producer sleeping with the star — and you really can't have it be another man — so I'm the 'strategic restructuring.
' Two birds. You get to solve your org-chart problem and your optics problem at the same time, and put a nice defensible reason in the file for both. "
"I'm sorry, Jimmy," Bruce whispered.
"No, you're not," I said, grabbing my notebook. I left the coffee and the folder behind. "You're just relieved it's over. You're relieved you don't have to look at me and remember that you're a coward — twice over."
If I'd been fired for a mistake, I could fight.
If I'd been fired for the ratings, I could scream it from the rooftops.
But they'd been smart. They'd wrapped the bigotry inside something true — a supervisor sleeping with his anchor, a conflict any HR department in America would rubber-stamp a firing over — so that the ugly reason underneath never had to see daylight.
You can't sue a company for the thing they didn't write down.
They'd timed it perfectly, too: right before the probationary period closed, when they could still cut me clean.
I walked out, my shoes striking a frantic, angry rhythm on the hardwood floor that sounded like a countdown.
* * *
I made it to the fifth-floor men's room before the world started to tilt.
I locked myself in the end stall, sat down on the closed toilet lid, and waited for the earthquake.
It started in my fingers — a fine, vibrating tremor that crawled up my arms until my whole body was shaking.
It was a familiar ghost. I'd felt this after being shot at.
It was the adrenaline of survival, but this time, there were no enemies wearing fatigues and helmets.
One of my enemies wore a navy pantsuit. The other was a weasel of a man who couldn't look me in the eye.
I wasn't crying. No, I was too furious for tears.
I was filled with a hot, roiling frustration at the invisibility of it.
If I'd been fired for a mistake, I could fight.
If I'd been fired for the ratings, I could scream it from the rooftops.
But how do you fight a "conflict of interest" that's technically, infuriatingly, true?
They'd timed it perfectly — right before the probationary period was over, when they could still cut me clean.
They were erasing me. And they were doing it to "protect" Nelson.
The irony of it hit me then, a sharp, jagged pain in the center of my chest. Thirteen years ago, I'd been the one who did the erasing — leaving a note on a kitchen table in a tiny apartment off Morningside and walking away without a word.
The guilt I'd been carrying since I walked back into his life flared up, hot and suffocating.
"What the hell am I going to do?" I put my face in my hands and exhaled into the empty stall.
The shaking took ten minutes to subside. I stood up, splashed cold water on my face at the sink, and stared at the man in the mirror. I looked sick. My freckles stood out like splatters of rust against a white sheet.
"Friday," I whispered. "I only have until Friday."
* * *
I went back to my office and dropped onto the couch — the couch where Nelson had been just days ago, looking at me with eyes that were finally, finally unguarded.
I picked up my phone and held it in my lap. I should call him. Tell Nelson before the newsroom vultures started picking at the carcass of my career. But I didn't dial. Because my inner demon had started up — that ball of insecurity that lived in the basement of my soul.
He'll choose the show, it hissed. Of course he will. He's Nelson fucking Mackenzie. He's spent his whole life climbing that mountain. Do you really think he's going to burn it down for you?
"Shut up," I muttered to the empty room.
The network is 'protecting' him, the voice continued, relentless and cold.
They're giving him a way out. They're removing the 'problem.
' You are the problem, Jimmy. Just like you were the problem thirteen years ago.
All he has to do is stay silent, let you go, and he gets to keep the bright lights, the town car, and the crown.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still see Nelson's face in the back of that cab. I could feel the way his hand had tightened around mine, the way he had looked at me like I was the only thing in his life that made sense.
Was I falling in love with him again?
The question nearly took my breath away. It wasn't just the nostalgia, or the chemistry. It was the way my heart hurt at the thought of him having to make this choice. It was the way I wanted to protect him from the very people who claimed to be protecting him.
I wasn't just falling for the Anchor. I was falling for the man I'd broken once before, and the thought of him being broken again because of me was more than I could stand.