Page 107 of Breaking News

“No,” I answered, honestly. “Did you get a hold of Randy? The admin of the group?”

“He wasn’t in yet,” Graham said, loosening his tie. “But it doesn’t matter. That post has been shared and screenshotted and shared again. It’s out there.”

“We need to figure out who posted it,” I said, holding his gaze. “Whoever it was, they don’t like us very much.”

“I don’t care who it was.” He shrugged, a deep crease forming between his brows. I wished the other two weren’t standing there with us so we could have an actual conversation without an audience, but we didn’t have that luxury at the moment. He glanced away for half a second, like it hurt to hold eye contact. And when his eyes found mine again, he said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s over, Jill.”

My heart dropped.

Xander let out a low, “Fuck.”

Graham’s head snapped toward him. “I meant the secrecy,” he spit out, like Xander’s reaction was uncalled for.

“Jesus, Dad,” Olivia muttered, scrolling on her phone. “I thought you were breaking up with her.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he told her, his voice even more raw and desperate than a moment ago. And then he turned to me, standing close enough that I needed to tilt my head back to look into his eyes. “I have to go deal with this.”

“How?”

“Emergency board meeting. I called it myself,” he said, searching my eyes for a reaction. I nodded, listening. “They already know. Someone forwarded Arthur Briggs the post while I was on the phone with him.”

A lot had happened in the last twenty minutes.

“What will you tell them, Graham?”

He rubbed his forehead as though he were trying to smooth out the worry etched there. “I have no idea. I want to come clean, but then again, denying it could protect you and your career. I could explain it away like Isaiah just misinterpreted—”

“No.” I shook my head, closing my eyes. “I don’t want you to lie. Whatever happens, happens.”

At that exact moment, Olivia looked up from her phone and said, “Whoever the anonymous OP is, they just said the CEO is probably the one who made Jill cry on-air.” She looked at me. “There’s like, almost a hundred comments.”

Graham shook his head, looking at me. “Don’t read them, ‘kay? Reading them isn’t going to help you at all.”

I had a feeling he’d already scrolled through them himself with Olivia, and some of the things being said about me weren’t kind. He was protecting me from them. “Okay,” I said, knowing I’d probably have a moment of weakness later and scroll through them anyway.

He shot Xander and Olivia a sideways glance like he suddenly wished they weren’t standing there. There was probably more we could say to each other, too, but these were the last two people in the world who wanted to hear us spill our feelings out loud.

Graham must have decided it didn’t matter anymore, because he stepped forward and placed a hand on my waist before leaning down to kiss me. The kiss didn’t linger, but for the few seconds his lips were on mine, I felt the weight behind them—the fear, the frustration, the feeling like he was trying to tell me something he couldn’t say out loud. Not yet. Not here.

I wanted to say it, too. I hoped he could feel it in the way I kissed him back.

We pulled apart, finding Xander and Olivia facing away like they couldn’t bear to see us like this—each of them for their own reason.

Graham ran his fingers over his bottom lip like he was savoring that kiss. He opened his mouth to say something, but his phone buzzed in his pocket. We all watched him bring it to his ear. “Yeah, I’m on my way down there. See you in a second.”

When he hung up, he let out a long sigh and slipped the phone back into his pocket before wiping his hands on the front of his pants.

“Time to go face the music,” he said, glancing around at all of us with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. We stepped out of his way to let him through, all of us wishing him luck as he went down the hall toward the conference room. I watched him go, wishing I could be in that board meeting with him. I felt useless just standing there, hoping it would all work out.

My chest tightened when Graham turned the corner and disappeared from view. Xander let out a breath beside me. “Well,” he said, stretching. “That was a lot before nine a.m.”

“CEOs can’t get fired, can they?” Olivia asked, looking back and forth between the two of us. Xander and I exchanged a quick, uneasy look, neither of us sure how to answer.

Then, maybe trying to add some humor to the situation, Xander said, “Get ready to eat a lot of ramen, kid.”

I let out a sigh, covering my face with my hand. “Xander, you are the absolute worst,” I said, and he just smirked.

The truth was, if there really were hundreds of comments rolling in about this scandal, I didn’t see an outcome where we both kept our jobs. Someone had to take the fall.

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