Page 158 of Full Contact

I recognized the voice. I’d heard it outside his office as he told a staffer with a clipboard that they were on schedule. I’d heard it in the interview area while he moved reporters around. It was professional and designed to project calm amid chaos.

He was using it on me.

I almost told him to stop. I wanted him to say something that didn’t sound like a memo.

I didn’t.

“What do we need for work?” Mark asked.

We didn’t change anything. Leah would keep authority over my coverage and final approval on anything involving me, the Peaches series included. My availability and production decisions would go through her.

“Nothing changes on paper,” Mark said. “There’s no reason to announce anything, especially not in the middle of a series.”

He stood, and so did I. My hip caught on the way up. He carried both mugs to the kitchen counter and walked to the door.

I got there first and took his coat off the hook, holding it open. He put his right arm into the sleeve, then turned and took the coat out of my hands and found the other sleeve himself.

I stepped in. I didn’t know what I meant to do, and he didn’t wait to find out. He put his hand flat on my chest, over my heart, and held it there for one breath. Then he lifted it away.

“Drive safely,” I said.

“Thank you.” He looked past me. Peaches had come back from the kitchen and stood on the rug, watching him. “Goodnight, Peaches.”

She didn’t answer.

“Good luck Thursday,” he said to me. “Goodnight.”

Chapter twenty-four

Mark

We won Game Five at home, four–one, and went up three games to two. The team flew to Dallas the next morning with Leah running the trip. That left me with an evening to myself. Dana moved our climbing night, and I joined her with Felix at the gym.

The pink route was still beating me, but I’d gotten my hand on the far hold four times out of six. I came off the wall the last time with my forearms buzzing and a raw spot on the pad of my middle finger.

“You stayed on it longer,” Dana said from the bench.

“I stopped looking at it.”

“I told you that three weeks ago.”

“I’m finally listening.”

She handed me my water bottle. Felix was at the smoothie bar with his wallet out, explaining to the kid at the register that a medium couldn’t cost more than it had last week, because the cups were the same cups.

“They changed the price,” the kid said.

“Then they should change the cups too.”

He came back with three smoothies and the receipt.

“Dana lost,” he said. “She should pay.”

“Dana finished the route,” she said.

“After the time limit.”

“You’re making that up.”