chapter twenty-two

chase

Never in my life had I wished I could read minds more than I did in the quiet car ride back to the studio with Meghan. Then again, I didn’t need to be Professor X to sense she was regretting that kiss. She fidgeted with the hole in her skirt, stretching it and making it bigger, while gazing out the passenger window like she couldn’t bear to look at me.

I couldn’t decide whether I should turn the music on to fill the silence or leave it off in case she wanted to speak. When the silence stretched on for too long, and it became apparent she wasn’t going to talk, I figured the ball was probably in my court and I needed to do something about it.

I cleared my throat, glancing her direction a couple of times as I drove, taking a deep breath. But before any words escaped my mouth, Meghan spoke first, slowly turning toward me with a gentle, “Chase…”

“You don’t have to say it,” I interrupted, cutting her off before she could even begin.

A crinkle formed between her brows. “I don’t?”

I shook my head, trying to keep my voice steady. “No, I get it. The kiss was a mistake, right? And I know you’re sitting over there stewing, trying to figure out how to walk it back. But you don’t have to—it’s okay.”

I thought I’d save us both some time by making the rejection a little smoother. I wasn’t sure what kind of response I expected from her, maybe a heavy sigh or even a “thank you” for understanding. Instead, she turned back to the window again, staring at the snapped and uprooted trees in quiet contemplation. And then, without warning, she shifted in her seat, crossed her arms, and said, “You’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

But her lips parted before slowly coming back together, because we both knew I was right. “I’m just confused. You and I—” She stopped abruptly, letting out another loud sigh.

“What? Me and you… what?”

“There’s so much history. So much… hurt. I can’t just forget all of that, and I know you can’t, either.” Meghan stared at the now gaping hole in her skirt. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

She wasn’t.

I bit the inside of my cheek, feeling the weight of her words settling in. “I bet you’re wishing you’d pushed me off that waterfall, huh?” I said, trying to keep my tone light, but the sting of her almost-rejection was a little hard to mask.

Meghan kept her eyes on my face as I drove. “You go down, I go down with you.” In the corner of my eye, I caught the flicker of a smile on her face, and that was enough to give me the tiniest sliver of hope.

**

Back in the newsroom, I stared at my computer screen daydreaming about Meghan for God knew how long. Five minutes? Ten minutes? A fucking hour? And when I finally managed to think about work, I noticed she’d renamed our shared folder Feel-Good Stories & Other Bullshit , and all hope was lost. While Bernard was over there talking about a 20% chance of rain, there was a zero percent chance of productivity for me that afternoon.

I didn’t snap out of it until Jillian flounced into the newsroom in a pink pantsuit, returning from her assignment with Xander. When she spotted me working at my desk, she pivoted, making her way over toward me. “Candy?”

She held up a white box from Coleman’s Candies, their gold logo glinting beneath the overhead lights, popping off the lid as she made her way toward me. Inside was an array of assorted chocolates that looked too tempting to pass up. “Wow, Meghan’s going to wish she hadn’t passed the story onto you guys,” I said, taking what I hoped was a plain milk chocolate piece.

“Yeah, what the hell’s that all about?” she asked with a laugh, setting the chocolates down on my desk. She helped herself to one, using her free hand to take off her heels. “She said something about going to the woods?”

“That we did. And,” I said, reaching for my sleeve, “we got matching tattoos.” I removed the clear wrap, unable to remember a word Mae said about the aftercare because I was too busy internally screaming about holding hands with Meghan.

Jill wiped caramel from her lip, leaning around my monitor to get a closer look. “Aww, I love it,” she said, flipping her hair off her shoulder. “And I’m sorry, hon, but it sounded like you said ‘matching tattoos’? I know I’m hearing things wrong.”

“You’re not.” I was desperate to tell her—or anyone—about the kiss, but that wasn’t my news to share.

She finished the chocolate in her hands and swallowed. “There’s no way Meghan got a matching tattoo with you today.”

“Ask her,” I said, leaning back in my desk chair with my hands folded behind my head. Jillian squinted at me, calling my bluff, but I could only laugh. “Why would I lie about this? She got a tattoo on her… chestal region.”

Jill pulled her phone from her pocket to send Meghan a quick text. “I told her to get down here right now. She would never get a tattoo without consulting with me first.”

“‘Kay. Let’s wait.”

As we waited for Meghan to come downstairs, Jillian shared more chocolates with me. I always liked Jill. When Meghan and I ended things, Jill was obviously on Meg’s side, but she didn’t display any animosity toward me at work. She kept things professional, and I treated her with the same level of respect I always had.

Jillian had just handed me another chocolate when Silas strolled in with his usual cloud of self-importance. He paused just inside the studio, eyeing the two of us. Jill immediately stiffened, her discomfort almost palpable when she said, “Hi Silas, do you want to try a chocolate from one of our local businesses?” She picked up the box from my desk. “Chase and I may have just devoured the best pieces, but they’re all good.”

Silas fidgeted with the button on his sport coat, hesitating like he would rather be anywhere else in the world than associating with us. But he took Jill up on her offer, walking over to accept a chocolate. And then, after the subtlest of glances at Jill’s hips in those pink pants, he said, “I would’ve thought you’d have to be on a strict diet—I mean, what is the expression? ‘The camera adds ten pounds’?” He chuckled, staring at the candy in his hand, but never taking a bite. “Better be careful, yeah?”

I almost choked on the raspberry creme in my mouth. Jill let out a tight, forced chuckle, but she was too stunned by Silas’s comment to speak. But I wasn’t. “What a weird thing to say to the face of our network,” I blurted, maintaining eye contact with the guy, as uncomfortable as his long stare was making me feel. I knew I’d chosen just the right words to get under his skin without getting myself in trouble. Did I call him a misogynist? No. Did I say he was rude? Nope. But “ weird” felt like the perfect word to rattle him without crossing any lines.

I wished I would’ve had the nerve to speak up when he chastised Meghan in front of me, but at least I was saying something now. And if nobody ever shut him down, he was probably just going to get worse.

“Uh—” Silas opened his mouth to start what might have been ahalf-assed apology, when two men confidently stepped into the room behind him. It was the superintendent again, this time with a member of the school board. Their arrival saved Silas from having to own up to his body-shaming remark. Without another word, he quickly ushered them to the conference room at the far end of the studio.

Jill was a statue, staring down at the box of chocolates in her hands. “I hate that bastard,” she whispered. I nodded in agreement just as Meghan took a cautious step into the room. My heart forgot how to beat for a second when she came into view.

“Jill? What’s with the 911 text?”

Jillian dropped the box of chocolates on my desk, closing her eyes with a deep inhale, like she was resetting her thoughts after that encounter with Silas. When she turned around, she put one hand on her hip and demanded, “Show me your chest.”

Meghan looked from me to her overly brazen friend, a smile stretching across her face. “Wow, Jill, that’s a whole new level of forwardness, even for you.” With a playful roll of her eyes, she glanced over at Bernard and his cameraman to make sure they were distracted before pulling up her sheer top to reveal her ghost tattoo. “It’s still a little red, but here it is.”

Jill stared at Meghan with wide eyes. “Okay—that’s different for you, but I like it,” she said, nodding her head a lot. “So, you two actually got matching tattoos. There’s a lot to unpack there.”

I really hoped she wouldn’t. Not now. Thankfully, Xander chose that moment to pass by the newsroom door and came to a halt when he saw the women standing in front of my desk. He lifted one eyebrow in curiosity as he stepped all the way into the room. “What’s going on in here?”

“Meghan and Chase got matching tattoos,” Jillian answered.

Xander’s eye lingering on Jill for a couple of seconds before he was distracted by the men behind the soundproof glass wall in the conference room. “Thought I smelled something,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes at them. “Guess they’re moving forward with Grissom relocating here, huh?”

“Looks like it,” I said. “I think they’re fine-tuning all the details.”

“Then why isn’t Sarah Gardner in there with them?” Jillian wondered aloud, looking at each of us before staring at the group of men behind the glass.

“Because she’s a woman,” Meghan said. “And Silas Brown doesn’t respect women.”

Jillian, casting a subtle glance my direction, sighed and said, “You’re telling me. He just came in here and body-shamed me.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Meghan blurted, her face turning red with anger. “What’d he say? Tell me what he said, Jill.”

Jillian shook her head, glancing at the floor. “Just something about how I need to be careful because the camera adds ten pounds.”

“That’s pretty rich coming from a guy with a receding hairline and three failed marriages,” Xander noted. He crossed his arms as he stared at the three men in suits who appeared to be exchanging documents across the table. “Look at them. Birds of a feather flock together. Noah Sherman’s a fucking misogynistic prick, too. Oh, and fun fact—my report about his sexist Facebook posts getting brought up at the school board meeting has been wiped from the website.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Who deleted it?”

“Good question. Graham didn’t know anything about it when I asked, but I found out Silas golfed with the guy the next day.” Xander nodded toward the men in the conference room. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

“So, he’s protecting his little buddy,” Meghan scoffed.

“When he’s not protecting his buddies, he’s forcing us to paint them in a positive light,” Jillian said, detailing how Silas approached her about covering a locally hated real estate developer who’d just wiped out a wooded area and a few houses to build another strip mall. When Jill expressed concern the town might not respond well to a feature on the man responsible for literal destruction, Silas persuaded her to twist the narrative. “He told me to focus on how it boosted the economy instead of all the trees and homes that were destroyed.”

I let out a sharp exhale. “Our CEO is manipulating the news to suit him. Somebody needs to do something about this.”

Instinctively, we all looked at Xander, who had a history of meddling with controversial politicians when he worked for the Chicago Tribune. But he shook his head, saying, “Don’t look at me. You want me to go after the CEO? Sure, let me just dust off my resume first, because that’d be the last you’d see of me around here.”

A silence fell over us as we watched the men chuckle and grin at each other behind the glass, that kind of casual laugh that only came from men who knew they were untouchable. Silas’s cozy relationship with the very administrators we were supposed to hold accountable was just another red flag. He had the reins of the local news, steering it exactly where he wanted, and there was nothing any of us could do about it.

When our conversation wrapped up, Meghan asked Jill to take a walk with her. She cast the tiniest, subtlest grin in my direction before the two of them linked arms and rounded the corner into the hallway like a couple of middle schoolers getting ready to gab about a crush. I was sure Meghan had a lot to say, and I was already bracing myself for Jill’s over-the-top reaction when she returned.

With the two of them gone, that left me alone with Xander, whose presence wasn’t quite as foreboding as Silas’s, but it came pretty close. I hoped he would walk away, but he made himself comfortable instead, sitting on the corner of my desk.

“Bust any ghosts lately?”

I rested my arms on my desk, blinking up at him in annoyance. “Do you need something?”

“Yes, actually.” He stole a quick glance at Silas and the other men before turning back to me. “Heard you were throwing some kind of nerd convention?”

“Comic con. Why, need some help with your Kylo Ren cosplay?”

Xander smirked. “I’ll get back to you on that. Anyway, I want the story. Let’s set up an exclusive interview.”

“Oh. Isort of assumed I’d handle the coverage myself, like I always do. And Meghan would be the one to do the write-up.”

Xander absentmindedly turned my Ant-man bobblehead around to face him. “Probably a conflict of interest to have you do your own reporting on it, right?”

“You just want to beat Meghan in this little competition.”

“If she really wanted to win, she wouldn’t be handing me her stories so she could run around the woods with you, would she? And let’s face it, I’m not expecting a mass influx of subscriptions by writing about lightsaber-wielding basement dwellers.” He paused to look in my eyes, smiling from one side of his mouth like he didn’t fully mean the insult. “Seriously, though, I’ll give you a decent write-up, and Jill can probably get you guys a primetime spot. Sound good?”

It almost sounded like he was doing me a favor, but I accepted it with a wary nod. “Then there’s really nothing in it for you?”

“Not at all,” he said, standing up to stretch. And then he dropped his arms at his sides, rolling his eyes. “Okay, there’s actually one thing.”

“Yeah?”

Xander scratched his temple with his thumb as he stared down at his feet, his usual cocky demeanor melting before me. What could he possibly need from me? And why was he having such a hard time saying it? “Think I could have a one-on-one with Ethan Killian the day of the event?”

I couldn’t decide what was more amusing, the fact that Xander knew who Ethan Killian was, or that he was embarrassed to admit he was a fan. As tempting as it was to laugh in his face, especially after the “basement dwellers” comment, I managed to keep my reaction to an amused grin. “Don’t tell me you’ve watched Starlight .”

“I never said that.”

I licked my lips, deciding to have a little fun with this. “Did you hear they’re rebooting it?”

Xander’s mouth slowly fell open. “Are you serious? When? Is that confirmed?”

“I’m lying. But your reaction tells me… a lot.”

Xander’s eyes narrowed as a smirk tugged at the corners of his lips. “Fuck you,” he muttered, turning to walk away with his hands in his pockets.

Finally, I let out the laugh I’d been holding. “You can have your exclusive interview with Ethan. But hey, there’s something else you could do for me.” I waited for him to turn back around and took a deep breath, deciding to be vulnerable for a second. “Could you talk me up to Meghan a little? I know she respects you, so, you know—put in a good word for me, I guess.”

His eyes locked on mine for a moment. “She got a matching tattoo with you today, my guy. You don’t need my help.” And with a little shrug, Xander turned and walked out of the studio.