“Why is that even something you want?” I threw my hands up, gesturing around the offices. “What good would it do you to ruin him when isn’t even in your industry?”
“That’s none of your concern, Michaels,” Kent said. “Just try being a little grateful for once in your life; thanks to this article, you’re going to be getting that promotion you were looking for.”
I stared at him in shock; my anger still burning away at me from the inside. “You’re giving me a promotion?”
“Consider it a lesson in the industry,” Kent said, smirking. “If you want to get ahead in this world, Michaels, you’re going to have to deal with having blood on your hands, and you’d better not be squeamish about lying.”
I stared at him for a long time, trying to work my mind around what he was saying. He had falsely put my name under the byline of a hit piece, opened me up to lawsuits for libel, opened up the newspaper itself to a lawsuit, and he was lecturing me about the industry?
“I’ll go public about this,” I said, shaking my head again. “I’ll tell everyone that I had nothing to do with that piece, that the Inquisitor put it out without my participation or knowledge.”
“You’ll never be able to prove it,” Kent told me, shrugging. “On top of which, if you try to tell anyone that you didn’t write it, the paper will take you to court. You’ll be so tied up in legal proceedings that you won’t be able to say a damn thing to anyone about what’s going on, and no one else in the industry will hire you while you’re being sued by us.” Kent grinned at me. “You’re stuck, Michaels—might as well take the promotion and the pay raise.”
“I’m not going to take either,” I told him. “In fact, I quit!”
It was an impulsive decision, and it was probably a mistake, but I realized in an instant that I couldn’t just sit back and let my career be defined by giving into someone lying under my name. If I was going to fail, it was going to be on my own terms; if I was going to succeed, it would be because of something that I could be proud of.
“Good luck finding someone to work on your filler columns,” I said tartly, turning around and walking out of Kent’s office.
As I rode the elevator down to the ground floor where I was parked, I thought about that fact that I wouldn’t really miss anyone the Inquisitor. I’d miss Malcolm, but the thought that he might have been in on it, that he might have known about the assignment and been okay with it, chilled me. I got out of the elevator and walked out to my car in the freezing December weather.
I spotted Kent’s hulking Mercedes as I walked out to my car, and the anger in me boiled over once more. That asshole. Probably sold a ton of papers with the B.S. he passed off under my name—maybe enough to buy himself another Mercedes.
I shivered from the cold as I found my keys and walked around the corner to where I’d parked. I was still furious when I unlocked my car and climbed in, cranked the engine and turned up the heat. It wasn’t fair! And to make it worse, there was no way that I could think of to get to Finn, to tell him that it wasn’t me who had written that article, that I never would have said such terrible things about him.
I pulled out of the spot and turned the car around to leave the parking structure for the last time. I saw Kent’s car again as I came around the corner and my vision went red.
I knew it was stupid, I knew that it was probably going to hurt me as much as it hurt Kent, but I couldn’t help myself. I pressed down on the gas pedal and turned the steering wheel, hitting Kent’s car at an angle. The luxurious Mercedes crunched up at the rear, and the force of my strike sent it careening into the wall of the parking structure, smashing up the driver’s side. I went on my way before Kent could even think to check on his precious car—I didn’t think he could hear me up on the top floor, but it was possible that the security guards might come check out the noise.
By the time I got back to my apartment, my rage had subsided into grief, and I barely made it through my door before the tears began to flow. I curled up on the couch, feeling lonely and sorry for myself.
I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore, took a shower, and tried to think of some way I could redeem myself, some way that I could get through to Finn and make sure that he knew what had really happened. I thought about going to his apartment, but I didn’t know when he would be there, and I didn’t want to risk being arrested for harassing him. I went to sleep that night feeling utterly worthless. It was truly the worst Christmas of my life.
***
A few days later, having given up on trying to keep Heather on the phone long enough to explain to her what had happened, I went so far as to buy tickets for a Magpies game. Just the sight of Finn on the ice was enough to make me feel like I was being stabbed somewhere below the ribcage. I watched through the game, cheering for him, aching for him, and afterwards I made my way back to the locker room, hoping I could use my press credentials to get in again.
“Sorry,” the guard at the door said, shaking his head. “We’ve been advised that no one from the Inquisitor is allowed back—and especially not you.” He gave me a pitying look, and I knew that he thought I was some confused groupie. I was so humiliated that I couldn’t even bring myself to wait until Finn came out of his own accord. I went back to my apartment trying to think of what I could do to set the record straight.
I almost settled on a letter to one of the nationally-syndicated papers in the area, but the thought of what Kent would do to me if I threw him—and the Inquisitor—under the bus stopped me. I still needed to find a new job, though, and while Kent might have already dripped poison in industry ears, I thought I might be able to slip by. He might have decided that I wasn’t worth it. If I came out publicly against him, however, I was certain that he would make sure that it was impossible for me to work in journalism ever again.
The thought of letting Kent win—of letting him separate me from someone I cared about, as well as ruining my professional reputation—made me weep with rage, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t afford to move; I’d have to play nice. I’d have to just let it go, and hope that the truth came out on its own eventually. Even then, I knew I might be waiting for a long, long time.
TWELVE
Finn
About three months after my disastrous fling with Amy, I let Heather set me up on yet another date; she’d lectured me on how important it was to try and salvage my reputation after the Inquisitor had shredded it so thoroughly, and I had to admit that I agreed with her.
The first few dates after the Inquisitor piece had broken had been difficult; the up-and-coming talent—models, and near-unknown actresses—hadn’t wanted anything to do with me. I suspected that Heather had paid some of them off to convince them to go out with me, but I didn’t have any proof. I went on one date after another, with beautiful women who I had absolutely nothing in common with. I took them out to dinner, I went with them to bars and clubs and concerts, and tried to find a way to enjoy myself.
Somehow—I never found out how—Heather had gotten in touch with the manager for Eliza Fefferman, the star of some cable drama I’d never seen but heard about from the wives and girlfriends of my teammates. Heather had sold the date to me on the grounds that Eliza had a wholesome, well-loved public persona, and would be the perfect counterpoint to the mud that had been slung at me months before. But no sooner had I sat down to dinner with her, I’d realized that there wasn’t going to be anything between Eliza and me.
She was beautiful: blonde, with warm brown eyes, long arms and legs, and a pretty smile. She was able to hold a conversation, but there didn’t seem to be much of anything going on in her life beyond her work.
Normally that wouldn’t be so much of a problem; I tried—I swear I tried—to see things from her perspective as we sat at the table together. “So it must be exhausting working on a TV show, but satisfying, too, right?”
“It’s pretty routine,” Eliza replied. “Some of the days run long, but I can pretty much guarantee where I’m going
to be five days a week for a couple of months per year.”
“Do you think you’ll try and get into film someday?”
Eliza shrugged, sipping her wine and taking a bite of her salad. “My agent is talking about trying to find me the right vehicle. He says that if I strike at the right moment, I’ll be able to pick and choose whatever projects I want. For the moment, though, I’m pretty happy where I am.”
She looked at me with those doe-like brown eyes and I wished that I could think of something—anything—that would elicit more than a basic, strategic response from her.
“What do you know about hockey?”
“I know it’s incredibly popular around here,” Eliza replied. “Have you ever thought about transitioning to TV, Finn? You’ve totally got the looks for it.”
“Not really my scene,” I told her. “I’m pretty much all hockey all the time. I tried doing a couple of commercials, but it just feels so fake, you know?”
“Oh it is,” Eliza said, “but a show—that’s a whole different deal. If you started out in comedy you’d probably have an easy time of it; it’s easier to make that transition, and with your name recognition, you wouldn’t have to work that hard to get an audience.”
“I’ll think about it, if I ever get injured or something,” I said. “What about music?”
“I love Katy Perry,” Eliza said. “And Lady Gaga, and of course Beyoncé.”
She proceeded to rattle off a list of artists that I knew were on the radio, but their names didn’t really mean much of anything to me. I listened, and I tried to keep my interest up through the rest of the date, but it was obvious to me that there was really nothing that we had in common.
I called Heather after the date, just like she’d asked me to. “So how’d it go with Eliza? Was she totally charming?”
“Equal parts charming and boring,” I told her, glancing up into the front of the car where the driver was. Part of me wished that it might be Amy again; that she might have reenacted that stunt, as a way to get to me. But I knew it was stupid. There was no point in wishing that I could see her again when she’d done nothing but betray me.
“Come on, Finn. You have impossible standards.”
“It’s impossible to want to date someone I actually get on with?” I let my head fall back against the seat. “It can’t be that damned hard to find someone I have at least one thing in common with.”
“Did you both like the restaurant?”
“As far as I can tell,” I replied flatly.
“Then you have at least one thing in common with Eliza,” Heather pointed out.
“You know what I mean,” I insisted. “I’m tired of going on dates purely for the sake of going on them, just to be seen with some pretty girl who the press will speculate about. It’s boring, annoying and a waste of time.”
“It’s only a waste of time if you’re not interested in repairing your reputation,” Heather told me firmly. “It’s only been three months since that debacle, and you’re only just now starting to regain the respect you lost back then.”
“There’s got to be a better way,” I said. “Going out on these dates is pointless. Won’t it make me look worse to go out with a bunch of different women?”
“Hence why I’m suggesting that you suck it up, go out with Eliza a few times, steadily, for a month or two,” Heather said. “She might be boring, but she’ll sure as hell boost your status.”
“I don’t want to date someone just because she’s going to boost my status.” I sighed heavily. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, Heather, but I’m not into it.”
“Just give it a chance,” Heather insisted. “Call me back tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it.”
I agreed to do that and ended the call.
As much as I hated to admit it, I hadn’t been able to quite shake the memory of the short time I’d been with Amy. She’d written the disgusting scandal piece about me, and I knew I should hate her for it, but something about the whole situation just struck me as beyond bizarre. I couldn’t quite make myself believe that she’d done it intentionally. She’d told me that Kent was looking for a hit piece, and I thought it was more likely that she’d been put up to it—but she’d gone way overboard, even if she was being pressured into it.
Any time I brought the issue up to Heather, wanting to get to the bottom of it, she told me that I needed to get my head out of my ass, and realize that I was being straight-up used; that Amy had never had any feelings for me, no matter how she’d acted when we were together. But I couldn’t believe that after being with so many different women, I could read someone so wrong.
Traffic slowed down, giving me more time to think, and almost against my will I started thinking about the night of the game, the night before Christmas Eve, three months before. How could an interview like that—and everything that happened after it—turn into something so ugly?
I knew that I had to accept that Amy had played me, but somehow I couldn’t. It hurt my pride to think that someone could pull the wool over my eyes—but worse, it hurt me to think that I’d actually opened up to her, only to have her write a bunch of lies about me the very next day.
Maybe Eliza isn’t that bad. Maybe I can make things work with her, at least for a little while. Long enough to get over Amy. Right? I wanted to believe it was true, but the fact that I still couldn’t quite make myself stop thinking about Amy after three months of being away from her told me that in spite of myself, I might always be plagued with thoughts of her, and what might have been.
I went up to my apartment and looked out over the city, wondering what she was doing at that moment. I hadn’t tried to contact her since the article had come out—Heather had said that it would just make matters worse—but there was a part of me that constantly wanted to. I’d blocked her number the day that the article had come out, and I wished that I could block her from my mind just as easily, but it was impossible.
Once or twice in the three months since things had gone so disastrously wrong, I’d taken the opportunity to buy a copy of the Inquisitor, but I hadn’t seen Amy’s name anywhere in it. Either she’d gotten another job or she had started writing under another name, I couldn’t be sure.
A few days later, I agreed to go on another date with Eliza. I left it up to Heather to plan it. My heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t see how I would ever be able to truly trust anyone after what had happened with Amy.
Thinking about her, late at night, I had to admit that even before she’d plunged the knife in my back, Amy had been smarter, more complicated, and just all around brighter than anyone I’d been with before her. She was a strong, fearless woman who knew her own mind, who would risk being arrested to go after the story she needed to write. If I could find someone else who had that level of ambition, I thought that, just maybe, I might be able to forget about her and move on. But I didn’t think that I would ever get that feeling again.
THIRTEEN
Amy
“Dammit,” I said, as I finished reading the fifth rejection that I’d gotten that week. Three months had passed since I’d quit my job at the Inquisitor, and I’d had no luck with any of the newspapers I’d applied to. I’d known when I quit that it was going to be an uphill battle, but I’d hoped that I could find at least one paper or magazine in the city that didn’t have an editor who was friends with Kent.
I’d started out so optimistic, immediately assembling my CV and putting together a portfolio of pieces from college, from my internship, and from my first weeks at the paper; everything up until the Finn McClane debacle.
I got an interview a week after I quit the Inquisitor, and I thought that I was going to be a shoe-in; after all, I knew good and well that I wasn’t in a position to ask for a big salary. I sat down with the editor of the Daily Tribune, hopeful that he might understand what had happened.
“And what would you say has been your greatest professional accomplishment so far?”
I heard the barb
in that question from Jim Trout, but I had to admit that even without the issue of the libelous piece that Kent had put out under my name, the man had a point.
“I think my greatest accomplishment is that I’ve done everything I can to maintain my ethics,” I replied.
Jim had raised an eyebrow at that, glancing down at the file with my CV and samples. “And would you say that the Finn McClane piece was ethical?”
I had stared at Jim for a moment at that question; I had anticipated that whether or not I included the piece in my portfolio, it would come up, but try as I might I hadn’t been able to come up with a satisfactory answer. I couldn’t tell the truth about it—Kent had made that much clear to me in our final confrontation—but I couldn’t personally claim the story, either.
Baby Maker - A Secret Baby Sports Star Romance Page 8
