Page 56 of Conner

“As I'll ever be,” she said as they pulled themselves away from each other and got out of the car to face the music.

31

Sasha

Conner walked Sasha all the way to her office. She was glad that Bill wasn't in yet. She needed a moment to collect herself before she messaged Hillary.

“I’m going to talk to Coach and practice, but you come and get me after you talk to Hillary. I want to be there for you,” he said as he pulled her in for a hug.

She nodded.

“I mean it, Sasha. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

He kissed her and squeezed her hand. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Thank you, Conner,” she said, trying to push down the lump in her throat. “Thank you for everything.”

“Baby, you don’t have to thank me. I'm here for you.” He pressed his forehead to her is a small gesture that almost broke her heart. “I’ll talk to you later.”

As he turned to leave her office she sat down at her desk. She really did need to talk to Hillary. This had gotten out of hand. She opened her laptop and saw Hillary was already signed into their communication app.

Sasha - Hey, do you have time to chat this morning?

Hillary - Yep! Swing on by whenever you are ready.

It was now or never. She dealt with this, or she left town, and that wasn't an option anymore.

She closed her laptop and made her way to Hillary's office. She hated that it felt like walking to a fire squad. She had done nothing wrong. She knew that logically, but there was a part of her that wouldn't shut up that made her feel like she had brought this on herself.

She made it to her office and knocked on the door.

“Sasha, come in! What can I do for you?”

Sasha took a deep breath and stepped into her office. She was a little shaky on her feet and fumbled trying to sit down.

“Sasha, are you okay?”

“Yes, I'm fine.” She was not fine. Her heart was racing. She hated feeling this out of control. Control over her image, over herself and her surroundings, Sasha found comfort in those things. In this moment she felt powerless and worse than that she felt like a burden. The shame and fear stopped all the words from out of her mouth.

“Sasha, what is it?” Concern was beginning to cover Hillary's face, Sasha just hated this.

Sasha closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “So, you know I was an influencer before I got my job here?”

Hillary just nodded waiting for her to continue. “When I started here, I had closed my accounts and said I was looking for a career change, and while all of that is one hundred percent true, it wasn’t the only reason. I had a follower who started crossing lines, started sending things to my house. It was scary and I kept blocking him. One day I came home and found a rose on my doorstep, and I knew he had been there. I left and went to my sister's house. From there I set my accounts to private and started looking for other jobs.”

Hillary just listened with an unreadable look on her face and every instinct in Sasha was telling her to stop, but she knew she couldn't do this on her own, and since he was contacting her using the Magic's social media, she had no other choice.

“When Bill added me to the website, I got a suspicious email. But then nothing for a while. But after the post about me being the social media manager the comments started coming. I was able to block them, but other accounts kept popping up.”

“Oh Sasha, I had no idea. I never would have posted that if I had known.”

“I know! You didn't do anything wrong.” She closed her eyes, coming to the hard part. Her knuckles were white from how hard she was wringing them. “The night of the gala, the comments got worse. Then they started to be comments only people at the event could know. Then the account received a DM with what I was wearing. Conner McPhee took me home because I was scared. The next morning when we came to get my car there was a note on my windshield.”

“Sasha, that's terrible.”

“I know, I'm so sorry to have created a headache for the organization. I wish –“

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