I folded my hands into balls to keep them steady. "Tamar Rosenfeld, sir. I started four months ago."

"Oh?" His expression purpled. "Four months, is that it? And after four months you think you know enough about this business to undermine everything?"

I couldn't come up with anything to say.

He closed in on me. "At least most reporters sleeping with their subjects have the good manners not to write about it!"

I raised my chin. "It wasn't safe."

"Then write it in your diary! You know what else isn't safe? Losing the money that keeps us in business and putting your whole team out of a job!"

My eyes widened. "That wasn't my intention."

"I don't care what your fucking intention was, I care about results. And you..." He ran a hand through his hair, and then jabbed a finger at me. "You're fired."

Pain sliced through me like a dull, dragging dagger.

Tanya stepped up behind him. "You can't fire my reporters."

"Don't get me started on you," he warned. "You're lucky you're not out of a job, too."

She got right in his face. "You fire my reporter, I quit too."

He stared at her. We all did. She had to be bluffing, but boy, it was quite a bluff. Because what if he called it?

He threw up his hands. "The fuck is this, a mutiny?" He spun around and glared at the guys. "The rest of you want to throw in the towel, too?"

Beside me, Mduduzi and Jin were silent, and I thought of how Mduduzi sent half his money back to his family in Zimbabwe each month, and how Jin's fiancee had recently been laid off, and how they needed this money. And I didn't blame them.

But I was surprised when Carlos stepped forward, and his voice didn't quaver in the least as he said, "I will."

Stuart regarded all of us with disgust.

Tanya lowered her voice. "Look, this is a real story."

"That's going to lose us a hell of a lot of money."

"And bolster our reputation."

"You should've run it by me!"

She lifted her head. "Better to ask forgiveness."

"You're fucking crazy, you know that?" He shook his head. "Let's get a room."

They stormed off, each attempting to outrace the other as they entered a conference room along with the other adjuncts. Mduduzi let out a low whistle. "Hope they're not taking her to the guillotine."

"Am I fired?" I asked. "Do you think I should pack my stuff?"

Carlos shook his head stubbornly. "Not without Tanya's say-so."

Jin let out a low whistle from bent over his computer.

My stomach tightened. "What is it?"

"You got some reviews coming in."

Of course I did. But I couldn't even bring myself to care. I'd told the story, and that was that. They either believed me or they didn't. They hated me or they didn't. I couldn't change people, and I didn't want to.

Billy, the receptionist, ran back into the room. "Where's Tanya?"

We nodded at the closed conference door. "Why?"

"Greg Philip is on the phone." He knocked once and then let himself in, and out again before any of us had managed to look away.

Seconds or hours passed before Tanya leaned out of the room. "Rosenfeld, get in here."

Mduduzi saluted me. I frowned at him. "I'm not going to my execution."

The guys looked unconvinced.

I entered the conference room slowly, and closed the door when she gestured toward the table. No one was sitting, so I stood there too, with Tanya and Stuart and two other high-ranking Today Media staff that I'd never spoken to before. "How bad is it?"

"Pretty bad." Tanya sounded more pleased than I'd ever heard her. "Philip wants a retraction and an apology."

Stuart scowled.

I sat a little straighter. "For the truth?"

Her smile, though thin, was genuine. "They call it libel."

I let out a shaky breath. "So what happens?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. We wait." She leaned back in her chair. "We're standing behind this story every inch of the way. Aren't we, Stuart?"

He threw up his hands, and then glared at me. "This better be true."

"Please, Stuart," Tanya said. She'd calmed down an awful lot. "You live for this."

He grunted, but he'd also calmed down a little, if I could judge at all by the fact that his face was merely pink, rather than magenta. "Do you know how much ad money you just cost me?"

"Talk to me tomorrow after marketing looks at our stats." She looked back at me. "You're not fired. Get back to work. You still have three stories due this afternoon."

Somehow, I wasn't even surprised. I took a shaky breath, and found that having a direction helped to stabilize me. "Will do."

I went back to my desk but actually couldn't concentrate on anything, so I swiped up my phone and climbed up to the fourteenth floor, where anyone in the building could check into a phone booth. I closed the door behind me, automating the light, and dialed Mom.

She picked up on the first ring. "Hi, sweetie."

Her voice was so calming and normal that the world steadied a little bit. "Hi, Mom. How are you?"

"I'm good. I'm grading memoirs. How are you? Aren't you supposed to be at work?"

I let out a shaky breath. "I am at work. I, um, we just published a kind of controversial article I wrote and I'm kind of freaking out."

"Oh, sweetie, I'm sure it's okay."

How was she sure? I wasn't sure. She was my mom; it was her job to say everything was okay.

Then again, that was why I had called her.

"It's about concussions."

"Oh." She sounded slightly interested, which was about three degrees warmer than she usually sounded when discussing football. "That sounds interesting."

"Yeah, it is-except, I don't know, it's kind of a personal article that I wrote and now people are mad at me and I don't really know what to do."

"Is it a good article?"

I tried to think clearly. Was it a good article?

It was an honest article. It was a heartfelt article. It was written to the best of my abilities.

I took a deep breath. "It is a good article."

"Then you remember that, and you don't let anyone shake you."

Easier said than done.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

I went straight to Abe's apartment after work. I'd barely shut the door behind me before I asked, "How is it?"

His fingers gently reached out and combed back my hair from my face. "Don't freak out."

I started freaking out. "Me? Never."

"They issued the standard. No one's to talk to you. Or to anyone from Today Media."

My stomach fell out of my body and left me unanchored to reality. He'd warned me, but it was different actually having it confirmed. "All of Today Media? Not just Sports Today?" I shook my head, trying to make sense of it. "But who else would you talk to? It's sports. It's football."

His hand fell away. "It's not just football. It's Loft's parent company-Kravenberg, Inc."

I almost gagged on my breath. "And what if you do? You get fined?"

He nodded.

"How much?"

He wouldn't meet my gaze. "Not an insignificant amount."

I couldn't take the unbearable closeness anymore, and I spun away and walked to the window, where I could brace my hand against the wall for balance. Outside, the whole world was white. "I'm sorry."

He came up behind me and encircled my waist with his arms. "It's not your fault."

Maybe not. But it certainly felt that way.

The NFL held its silence for two days.

The other news channels were not so merciless. It went straight to the top of the networks. That first evening, every major channel reported on my story. We watched from the safety of the newsroom at anchors in expensive blue suits and the same faux serious expressions they used for typhoons and shootings.

"The NFL has been accused of favoring Loft Athletics." Aurelius Stevenson looked positively gleeful, though he hid it well. "The popular sports website Sports Today first broke this story..."

"Go home," Tanya said eventually. "Listening to this isn't helping anyone."

Abe had to attend an emergency meeting of the Leopards-that I'd caused-so I went back to my apartment. My roommates were all in their rooms by the time I got back, so I climbed into my bed in the quiet dark and nestled low with the blue-white of my laptop shining in my face.

What insidious, awful part of me made me search for "Tamar Rosenfeld" and limit the results to the past twenty-four hours? I was feeding myself poison and I couldn't stop, unable to look away from the train wreck of my online reputation.

I hadn't expected people to be so mad at me. Not strangers, not really. But they appeared in droves, and reveled in the word bitch like it had just been invented. How dare I besmirch their beloved players? How dare I suggest anything that might threaten the game? How dare I...

I read until I realized that tears had started falling, and then I pressed the laptop closed and stared into the sudden darkness with wide, wet eyes.

In the morning, I straightened my shoulders and headed in to work. Davis, a security guard whom I'd always been on good terms with, scowled as I entered the building. "Thanks for that, Rosenfeld."

I tried to smile and not let it get to me as I escaped into an elevator. "Any time."

Yet the elevator ride turned out to be even more excruciating. I rode up with two girls from the women's magazine and a guy from News. He snorted loudly and crossed his arms. The girls didn't say anything, but they watched me with wide eyes and nudged each other, as though communication was imperceptible simply because it was nonverbal.

At least the tension disappeared when I stepped into the office, and I gladly collapsed beside Mduduzi. He smiled at me sympathetically. "Rough morning?"

"It's a lot of pressure, the hatred of New York."

"Nah, I'm sure you're doing just fine."

I appreciated his vote of confidence, but it wasn't winning me a popularity contest anytime soon.

Work continued, as it always did. There were stories to be written and follow-ups to follow. I monkeyed at the keyboard until a derivative of Shakespeare appeared, and I answered emails and fended phone calls.