CHAPTER 21 JOLENE

When Sam walks through the door a little after midnight, I'm still awake. I'm lying on the couch as I stare up at the ceiling wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do now, and I didn't even realize what time it was.

"Hey," I say, and I sit up.

She smiles at me.

She smiles. I haven't seen her smile in days.

"What are you so happy about? Good night in the ER?"

"I, uh, actually wasn't at work. Devin called." She blushes a little.

"Devin called?" I repeat.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you and let you think I was at work while you managed the boys. I promise I won't do it again, but he called this morning, and you already said you'd handle things here, so I switched days at work and, well, yeah, Devin called." She's grinning by the time she's done babbling.

"And…what did he say?"

Her grin widens a little. "That he ended things with Maddy."

"He ended things with Maddy?" I repeat, and obviously I'm a fucking parrot tonight because I can't seem to come up with any of my own words.

"He said he never stopped loving me. When he saw I was with the coach, he felt like it was time to move on. But when he found out the truth, he realized he couldn't move on with the wrong woman." More blindingly bright teeth from the big smile. "We're taking things slow, but we're trying."

I stand and walk over to give her a hug. "I'm so happy for you," I whisper.

"We decided not to tell Cade until we're more sure of things, but I can already picture Christmas with the three of us and weeknights where we're doing homework and maybe down the road, a brother or sister." She sighs a little dreamily. "Look at us, bestie. It's all working out for both of us."

Oh, right. It's all working out for both of us.

I burst into tears, and at this rate I'm going to be dehydrated with all the crying I've been doing lately. I've been an emotional basket case thanks to all this shit with my job on top of the shit with Lincoln.

"Oh shit," she says, and she ushers me over to the couch. "What's wrong?"

I blow out a breath and hand her my phone where the article is already pulled up.

She scans it, and she twists her lips as she goes. She scrunches up her nose when she gets to the final paragraph. "Ew. That's horrible."

"I know. I have no idea who leaked it, but I can't prove it's false because I did go out with Austin, and he kissed me at the end of the meal, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was Rivera's doing. People keep trying to tear Lincoln and me apart, and I'm not sure how we're going to stay together when there's so much stacked against us." I'm rambling, but if I can't ramble to my best friend, who can I ramble to?

"Oh babe," she says, and I know she doesn't know what to say to me because there really is nothing she can say that'll make any of this better.

"I'm trying to figure out what to do. I don't know if I should let them win and end it with Linc or quit my job. Rivera hates me, and he will stop at nothing to take me down," I say.

"What if Rivera isn't working alone?" she asks.

"It's not like that thought hasn't occurred to me. I wouldn't put it past Jeremy, either. He doesn't like that I'm fighting for sole parental rights, so he could be trying to taint my image in the media." It's been a mere thought until I voice it to Sam, and suddenly I'm convinced it's true. "The worst part is that people already thought all this about me, anyway, and this just confirms it. I'm trying really hard not to let it get me down."

Sam reaches over to squeeze my shoulder. "You're the strongest lady I know," she says quietly. "Of course this won't get you down. And you and Lincoln, you'll figure out your shit. You'll make this work. I'm sure of it."

"I just…I feel alone, Sam. My parents won't talk to me because I'm with him. Hell, my dad hates Lincoln so much that Jonah barely mentioned the man's name at the dinner table one day and my dad lost his shit on the poor kid. My job is slipping away from me. Linc is slipping away from me. You haven't been talking to me…" I shake my head. "I just feel like I'm losing everything."

"I'm so, so sorry. It wasn't anything against you. I was nervous about what was going on with Devin, and I didn't know how to handle being in the media so I picked up more hours at work to lose myself in that instead." She slings her arm around me. "It was nothing against you, and I'm sorry I made you feel that way."

"It's okay. I haven't been the best friend lately."

"Stop it. You're the best friend always." She purses her lips at me. "So what are you going to do?"

I shrug. "I have no idea. Play it cool for now. Go to work, do my job, hope for the best, but I'm not sure there is a best I can hope for. If Marcus thinks it's a conflict of interest, he's never going to give the job back to me, and now that I've lost my dream job…I'm not sure where to go from here. I barely had time to celebrate actually achieving the goal I set out for myself when I first started this career before it was ripped away from me, and I don't know what's next. I don't know how to set another goal after this since I can't do the only thing I ever wanted to do."

She clears her throat. "How does that make you feel about Lincoln?"

I shake my head a little as I start to yawn. "Part of me resents him. Part of me feels like maybe there's some other idea I'm missing."

"What about the podcast?" she asks, and she sits up a little as if she just had an idea.

"What about it?"

She twists her lips as the idea forms. "Could you, I don't know…like get a behind the scenes view of games and stuff and expand your podcast so you're reporting on it in a different sense?"

I sit up, too. The plan for the podcast was to produce thirty-minute shows once a week. But what about a woman's take on the sport? What about a reporter's perspective? What about the coach's girlfriend's view of things? It's a dynamic that isn't well represented, and given the audience we've already built with our first few episodes, I think there could be something to this.

"Longer episodes mean more sponsors," she adds. "More sponsors equal more monetization."

She's right, and I start to get excited until I realize something.

"There's just one problem." I sigh. "The station owns the podcast."

"Do they? Talk to Ellie, babe. Read over the contract and make sure before you count it out. Because it sounds to me like you're fed up with VG-oh-three after what they pulled on you, but maybe this is your chance to keep doing what you love."

I think back to our contracts, and I know Ellie pitched it as Lincoln's podcast where he'd partner with a local news channel. I signed on as co-host, and I really didn't read through the finer details because they didn't really matter to me at the time.

But now they matter.

"I don't know whether Ellie sold the rights or Lincoln retained them, but if he owns it, maybe he'll sell me some shares so I can be a co-owner, and then we can pull it from VG-oh-three, I can quit, and I can produce it myself. I already know how to do all that…" I trail off as I think it through.

Maybe I'm just tired.

Or maybe this is the new goal. To own something of my own where I get to do what I love with a team and a man I love…and I get to make all the fucking rules.