Page 91 of Lovefool

“Holy shit. Do you think he’s in on it?” Ellaria exclaims.

Slamming my laptop closed with a groan, I stare up at the bland ceiling popcorned with dark stains of water damage, and no matter how hard I try to slow my heart, I’m still one second away from imploding from bystander remorse.

I glance longingly at my boyfriend, who is now curled up on his side. He’s worked so hard to get to the semifinals, and it’s my job to protect him from anything that could go wrong this weekend.

Buford feels like my responsibility. If I try to confront him, he won’t tell me anything, and I don’t want him to know that I’m onto him. I have to stop this before he ruins their chance at the championship game.

“I don’t know, but I have a bad feeling about this.”

Going to Coach Lawson right now seems like the most extreme course of action.

If I report on what I found in my newest article, I’ll have to ask him for a comment, but I want to get my ducks in a row first—which means consulting my editor in chief. She’ll have solid advice on how I should handle things. It’s a good thing she was recruited for this trip.

I need to include Buford’s illegal gambling from a moral standpoint, but if he finds out that I know what he’s been up to, who knows what kind of shit he’ll pull during the championship game. Not to mention that all the press surrounding it will be focused on the Mustangs’ reputation rather than the actual match.

The sky is tarnished in gunmetal gray by the time I plop myself down in Tamara’s hotel room. I sit in some interrogation-style configuration that she’s formed out of a desk chair and a lamp. Tamara is the kind of person who craves authority, even when she knows she doesn’t have it.

Ellaria said I should go to the police, but I…I don’t know, I feel like that’s a step too far. Would it be nice to see Buford behind bars for his actions? Yeah, it would. Do the Mustangs deserve all the backlash that would follow the arrest of one of their players? No, they don’t.

I wring my hands in my lap, and there’s a twinge in my belly that wasn’t there before. I haven’t been able to focus on anything else since last night. I spent hours gathering all the facts I could. Thankfully, Sutton has been too distracted today to pay much notice.

“What do we do?” I ask Tamara after I lay it all out, dread blooming in the hollow spaces between my bones, hot and unrelenting and so fucking impossible to extirpate.

She ponders me for a moment, turning up her aquiline nose that seems like it was built solely for looking down on other people. Her expression is disturbingly writ with apathy—as if I’m inconveniencing her with this little tidbit of information.

I don’t know how I expected her to answer, but what she says only manages to dredge up more panic in my potpourri of emotions.

“Lake, this is amazing work. We need to publish the article now,” she replies.

I burst out into a putter of nervous laughter before I can stop myself, because, of course, her first priority would be to exploit everything happening behind the scenes in hopes of driving more traffic to the newspaper. Not to ignore it, not to de-escalate it, but to paint the targets on our backs a brighter shade of red by headlining it all over the internet for millions of people to see. A leviathan of an article lurking in the bioluminescent-dappled depths of an unexplored sea.

After I realize that this is definitely not a laughing matter, I compose myself. “This could affect a lot of people. People who aren’t a part of this.”

“What did you expect me to say, Lake? You’re sitting on a gold mine of information. We’re journalists. We report on everything that happens—the good, the bad, the ugly. This is what people want to see. People deserve the truth. People want to revel in the social suicide of others so they don’t have to think about how painfully unfulfilling their lives actually are.”

“This isn’t just cheap entertainment. These are people’s real lives we’re playing with.”

“Yeah? Maybe Buford Montgomery shouldn’t have committed a fucking crime, then, if he was so concerned about protecting his reputation.”

If this was a hockey player on a different team, I’d have no qualms about doing the right thing, but Buford’s actions will have repercussions that will make everyone associated with him look bad. Including Sutton.

“I can’t publish the article,” I whisper, my voice tinged with guilt, my patchwork memories from the last twenty-four hours coalescing into a bigger picture of siren lights and crime scene tape.

My pulse takes flight; my eyes dart to the door. Tamara isn’t the kind of person you say no to. She gets whatever she wants, and she doesn’t care who she has to stab in the back to make it happen.

“If you won’t do it, you’ll lose your job. And I know how much you want to be editor in chief next year after I graduate.”

Losing the chance to run the newspaper and actually make a difference sucks, but the alternative is to alienate myself from all my friends.

“You’ll ruin the Mustangs’ reputation forever. They’re playing in the Frozen Four this weekend, Tammy. Do you know how many news outlets will be swarming the games?”

“A ton, which is exactly why now is the perfect time for the newspaper to break the story. This is the job, Lake. Either you move forward with the article, or your career at the newspaper is over. When you accepted this assignment, you agreed to report on anything regarding the team, disregarding your personal attachment to anyone involved. You’re letting your feelings cloud your judgment, and that makes me question if you have the backbone to be a journalist.”

I stand up abruptly, shoving the legs of my chair against the carpet grain. “I do have the backbone to be a journalist, but this will affect the Mustangs as a whole. It will affect Sutton.”

“Sutton was a means to an end, remember? Your career is permanent. Relationships aren’t. You need to ask yourself what’s more important.”

“I didn’t use Sutton to get dirt on his teammates,” I hiss.