Chapter 8
ALOIS
My body hadn’t caught up to the room yet.
Everything felt a step behind, like I was moving through something thicker than air, my shoulders tight beneath fabric that had been worn too long, my skin still holding onto the night in a way I couldn’t shake.
The shirt clung where it shouldn’t, rough at the collar, damp in places that had long since cooled.
My hands rested against my forearms, the tape still wrapped around my knuckles, edges lifting, adhesive worn thin.
Every small movement pulled at it, a quiet reminder that I hadn’t stopped moving long enough for anything to settle.
I shifted my weight against the wall, letting it take some of it, not because it helped, but because it gave me something solid to press into while the rest of me felt off.
Across the room, something kept pulling my attention without asking for it.
I didn’t know her.
That was the first thing that registered, quiet but immediate.
New face. Wrong room for it. She sat at the table like she was trying to keep pace with something already in motion, pen moving steadily across the page in front of her, not fast, not frantic, but constant.
Like stopping would cost her more than pushing through.
She didn’t interrupt. Didn’t insert herself into anything that didn’t directly land in front of her. Just listened.
A strand of hair slipped loose near her temple, and she pushed it back without looking up, the motion quick, almost automatic, like she’d already done it a dozen times and hadn’t managed to make it stick. It fell forward again a minute later. She did it again.
I looked away before it turned into something I had to think about.
Voices circled the space, overlapping, sharp in places, controlled in others. Decisions being made. Positions taken. People talking like they already knew what this was and how it was going to play out, like the version of it in their heads had settled into something they could work with.
I let it pass through without stepping into it. Didn’t feel the need to. Not yet.
My fingers flexed once against my arm, the tape pulling tight across my knuckles, and that was enough.
Concrete.
Fluorescent lights.
The hum of something overhead that didn’t quite fade into the background no matter how long you sat with it.
I could still feel the bench under me if I thought about it too long.
Cold. Unforgiving. Bolted into place like it expected you to test it.
The kind of place that moved you through steps whether you were ready for them or not—name, ID, questions asked without interest in the answers.
I’d sat there long enough for the adrenaline to drain out of my system, long enough for everything else to settle in behind it.
By the time they brought me in front of a judge, the sky had already started to shift, gray light pressing in through windows set too high to see anything through. Charges pending. Release granted. Words that sounded routine, like this wasn’t the first time they’d said them that morning.
It probably wasn’t.
I had seen worse hits go unchecked.
The thought landed where everything else had been sitting, steady and unmoving, not loud enough to pull attention but not quiet enough to ignore either.
The room hadn’t slowed down while I’d been catching up to it.
I shifted my weight slightly, the fabric of my hoodie pulling across my shoulders, grounding me in something real while the conversation kept circling without me.
I could have stepped in. Could have corrected half of what they were saying.
Could have told them exactly how it had gone down. I didn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered.
Instead, my attention settled fully on the stranger across from me.
She still hasn’t spoken since she answered my question, but she was tracking everything, eyes moving just enough to follow the shifts in conversation without drawing attention to it.
Like she knew she was being watched and had decided not to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her figure it out in real time.
I held her gaze for a second longer than necessary when she finally looked back at me, letting the glare pressurize just enough to see if she would break under it.
Her expression didn’t shift. Her posture didn’t collapse. If anything, she settled more firmly into it, like she had decided—quietly, without making it obvious—that she wasn’t going to be the weakest person in the group.
That was new.
The room moved around us, conversation sifting, decisions starting to form as Charlotte began dismissing people with clipped instructions that didn’t leave room for questions.
Legal first, already halfway out the door before she finished speaking, then operations, each one peeling off with a task and a timeline like this had been expected, like they had all been waiting for the moment something like this would land on the table.
“Draft the holding statement,” Char barked, her attention already split between the room and the phone in her hand as she moved through directives without pausing to confirm anyone was keeping up. “No speculation, no added detail. I want language that holds under pressure.”
A voice answered from somewhere to my left, quick and automatic, already moving. “Understood.”
“Coordinate with media relations,” she continued, not looking up. “We need timing locked in before this gets out. I don’t want to be reacting to someone else’s version of this.”
“It already is,” someone muttered, just loud enough to be heard and immediately regretted.
The room abruptly halted. The air completely sucked out with three simple, shaky words.
The phone in Char’s hand buzzed. She didn’t respond to the comment. Didn’t ask for clarification. Instead, she went still in a way that felt more deliberate than anything she had done since I walked in, her focus dropping to the screen as she watched whatever had just come through.
And for the first time since I had stepped into the room, something in Charlotte’s expression changed. It wasn’t panic. It wasn’t loss of control. But it was close enough to both that it shifted the mood anyway, tightening it just a fraction more.
Ezra moved without hesitation, closing the space between them with quiet efficiency, his presence steady in contrast to the tension that had just sharpened around her. “Show me.”
Char turned the screen toward him without a word.
Rawlings didn’t wait for permission. He stepped in closer, leaning just enough to see over Ezra’s shoulder, his reaction immediate and unfiltered. “Shit.”
Charlotte didn’t comment. She turned the phone, setting it flat on the table with more force than necessary, angling it so the rest of the room could see.
I pushed off the wall then, not rushing, not drawing attention to it, just shifting forward enough to get a clear view as the video began to play.
It was short—too short—and clean in a way that told me everything I needed to know about how it had been cut.
Edited. Stripped down to the version that worked best.
It started with me already on my feet, no context, no buildup, no bottle coming at my head, no explanation as to why I had moved the way I had.
Just me, standing there, and then the punch—sharp, direct, undeniable—my fist connecting and the guy’s head snapping to the side, blood already there by the time he hit the floor in my favorite burger joint.
The video cut hard to a new angle, the kind that made everything feel official. Police. My hands behind my back. Escorted out pushing a false. And in an instant, the story was written before anyone bothered to ask for the rest of it, sealed up and ready to go.
The headline hit a second later, bold and clean across the screen—Public Enemy #91—already trending.
The shift was immediate, subtle but absolute, like everyone in the space had just recalibrated to a version of the situation that was no longer theoretical.
I let out a slow breath through my nose, the irritation settling in low and steady as I watched them react to something I had already lived through.
“That’s it?” I said, my voice flat, edged just enough to carry. “That’s what we’re worried about?”
Rawlings didn’t hesitate. “That’s exactly what we’re worried about.”
I rolled my shoulder once, working the stiffness out of it. “He threw a bottle at me.”
“It’s not in the video,” Char snapped without missing a beat.
I stepped forward, closing some of the distance between myself and the table without thinking about it. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“You think people want the truth?” Charlotte asked, her tone cutting clean through mine.
“I think it’s easier than whatever this is.”
She let out a short, sharp cackle. “Northbend will eat you alive if you try to feed them that,” she sneered, eyes narrowing. “Because this is what people are going to see.”
People. Fans. Sponsors. Media. The same list, like it was supposed to mean more than the actual moment.
“It’s a bar fight,” I barked, the words landing flat and deliberate. “Not a murder charge.”
The coach exhaled through his nose. “It’s a bar fight you’re not supposed to be in.”
Fair. Didn’t change anything.
“They’ll move on,” I added. “Everything will be fine in a week.”
“Not this time,” Rawlings growled, the edge in his voice enough to pull my attention fully to him.
I looked at him fully then. “Why?”
“Because this fits,” he shot back, immediate, certain.
That landed harder than it should have, because he wasn’t wrong. It slid too easily into something people already believed about me, something they didn’t need context to accept.
“Then fix it,” I snapped at Charlotte, the edge creeping in despite myself.
She didn’t blink. “That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“No,” I countered, stepping fully into the room now, done leaning on anything, done pretending I wasn’t part of the conversation. “You’re overcomplicating it.”
“We’re containing it,” she corrected.