Page 73 of Breaking News

Olivia’s head snapped toward me so fast I thought she might give herself whiplash. “Can he say that?” she whispered with wide eyes.

“No. No, he cannot,” I said, covering my face with one hand as I bowed my head.

Chase fumbled through his next story, and Jill jumped in to help, overcompensating with a little too much cheerfulness in her voice. By the time they made it to commercial, it felt like we’d all aged five years.

I barely had time to exhale before I heard a loudclunkin control room—which came from Marco, who’d just thrown down his headset. My jaw clenched as he marched straight toward me, his face red with fury.

“We should never have jumped into this,” he spat out. “It’s a fucking disaster.”

“I’ll admit that that was… not great. But—”

“Not great?” He scoffed, stepping closer. “Do you have any idea how much the FCC fines for that? I doubt it, because you have no fucking clue how things operate around here.”

Humiliation washed over me, knowing everyone in that room, including my daughter, was watching. However, it was quickly drowned out by the anger taking over every cell of my body. “No, I’ve seen how things operate around here. You’ve had an anchor who’s been doing the work of two people for almost a year now, and I’m the first one to step in and do something about it.”

“Jill was handling it fine.”

I could have exploded. “Jill was handling itfine?” I repeated, my voice louder than I intended. “You think that woman breaking down on live television wasfine?You think her holding it together by a damn thread wasfine?”

Marco’s mouth opened, but I didn’t give him the chance to respond.

“We all knew this transition was going to be a little rough. But I’m not pulling the plug on this after just one day, and I’m damn sure not going to sit back and watch us burn out the one person who’s been keeping the whole morning broadcast from collapsing this entire time.”

I stopped to catch my breath, and the room went still.

“Uh, fifteen seconds,” one of the production assistants called out, breaking the silence.

Marco’s nostrils flared before he got one last jab in. “If this crashes and burns, it’s on you,” he muttered before returning to the control room.

I left the studio the opposite way, ignoring the eyes that followed me all the way to the studio’s double doors. I pushed through them and kept walking until I reached the front doors of the building, but I didn’t step outside. I just stood there, pressing both hands against my head, already second-guessing the words I’d just spewed aloud for all to hear.

I prayed like hell I hadn’t just humiliated Jillian.

The sound of footsteps approaching from behind startled me. My heart was beating so loud in my ears, I hadn’t even heard Meghan following me out.

“Graham,” she said, stopping a few feet away. I couldn’t quite read her expression. It was a little too soft for Meghan, who wasn’t exactly known for her sweetness. She tilted her head to the side. “You really care about her, don’t you?”

I let out a slow exhale. “More than you know,” I said, running a hand through my hair. And with that, I turned and headed toward my office without another word.

chapter twenty-eight

Jillian

Afew years ago, during a live interview with a woman who had over a hundred windchimes in her rural yard, the words“I bet you caught a lot of hell for that!”came out of my mouth before I could stop myself. She’d just told me she started her windchime collection back when she lived in the suburbs, and her neighbors hadn’t exactly found it charming.

The expletive just slipped out, almost like I forgot it was a swear word altogether.

WWTV didn’t get fined. We didn’t even get a warning.

I recounted this story to Chase, who was spiraling a bit after the show ended. Marco was so peeved he locked himself in his office, and Graham had disappeared, too. That left Meghan and me to reassure Chase that he wasn’t getting fired and nobody hated him.

“The people love you,” Meghan said, scrolling through some online comments as we stood around the news desk. “In fact, someone said, ‘I would die for this awkward man.’” She glanced up. “Hope she can fight.”

That got a laugh out of Olivia, who was sitting close by, jotting something down in her pregnancy journal. It thrilled me so much to see her using it, I didn’t care that she was supposed to be emailing the library director about a story.

Meghan glanced over at her before shaking her head at me with a mock pout. “I’m having some intern envy right now. The mouth-breather they assigned to Xander and me isn’t as fun.”

“Really?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “Because it seems like you’re having a lot of fun torturing that kid.”

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