Focused: A hate to love sports romance(57)

Rick pulled his laptop out and set it on the desk, angling it so both Beatrice and I could see the screen. "There's a reason for that, as you can imagine."

"I certainly hoped that was the case." Her face was pleasant, but the edge to her voice was clear. "Should Molly be present for this? She assures me that you maintain open lines of communication, and there haven't been any issues since the season started."

My stomach clenched tight, and I fought to breathe evenly. I hadn't been in the same room as her since she left the airplane upon arriving back in Seattle.

"Not just yet," Rick said. When he sat back, he took a deep breath and gave both Beatrice and me a protracted look. "I'd like to make a change in the direction we're taking with Noah's story."

Her eyes narrowed. Mine didn't. Probably because I couldn't bring myself to care much about the documentary anyway. The change he most likely wanted to make was firing my ass from sheer boring footage.

"What kind of change are we talking?"

"An entirely new narrative," Rick said. "And the season would focus solely on him."

Beatrice sucked in a quiet breath. "I'm interested."

I rolled my lips together but kept silent.

"Marty and I found ourselves editing footage every week, and it became apparent to us—pretty much from the very beginning—that the reason we came to film Noah was the not the story that we should be telling." He gave me an inscrutable look. "Noah's nickname is The Machine. Over his young career in the league, he quickly established himself as something more than human. His stats are beyond impressive. His discipline is well-known, and he's respected by teammates and opponents alike for the way he methodically dismantles the competition with his body and his brain."

"All of which we knew," Beatrice supplied.

"We did," Rick agreed. "But nobody knows the very human side of him. He's created his career to mask it. No one questions what's underneath The Machine because the fa?ade is so impressive. And from day one, Marty and I noticed something. Something that had both of us glued to the screens as we went through the hours and hours of footage from your day-to-day life, Noah."

I lifted my chin, mind racing but face implacable. "And what's that?"

His face softened, and there was an apologetic glint to his eye that made me want to clap a hand over his mouth even before the words came out. "We watched her dismantle The Machine with hardly any effort. We watched you fall in love with her. And her with you."

The bottom dropped out, and everything I'd been so carefully juggling in the air crashed down with his simple statements. I hardly registered the way Beatrice sat back in her chair.

I was shaking my head immediately, my heart thrashing wildly, my stomach an icy, iron block of denial. I felt like someone had opened a hidden trapdoor, the one I’d worried about on the very first day of this entire project, and now my feet dangled helplessly over an endless black pit. It was all I could do not to plummet inside of it. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"Molly? We're talking about Molly?" Beatrice asked quietly.

Rick nodded. Then he turned his attention back to me. "Noah, don't bullshit me right now. It is my job to see the stories where they unfold in people's lives. You can't tell me it's not true. We watched the way she was with you, and the way you were with her. Every single day, that woman singlehandedly brought out the human side of you. It wasn't me, and it wasn't Marty, even though we're damn good at working with the people we film. And it was a beautiful thing to watch. It was real and heartbreaking and compelling."

Bracing my elbows on my legs, I gripped the sides of my head. Over the roaring sound of my pulse, I registered the sound of Beatrice asking him what he caught on film. I lifted my head.

"Did you film us without our consent?" I asked in a low, dangerous tone. "Did you get footage of her without her knowledge?"

Rick started to speak, and I stood, whipping around to Marty. "Turn that camera off." He didn't move quite as quickly as I wanted. "Turn it off or I will break it with my bare hands," I yelled.

Marty clicked a button and dropped the camera. His face was drawn and pale. "I never filmed anything when you didn't know I was there. I swear to you, Noah. I'd never do that to either of you."

My chest heaved with jagged, uneven breaths as I struggled to rein in my temper.

"Did you sleep with my employee?" Beatrice demanded.

I glared at her. "Remind me why that's any of your business."

Her face went glacial, but she was the least of my problems. "Rick," I said, "you better start talking now."

"Beatrice," he said quietly, "can I have five minutes with Noah, please? I should have insisted I speak with him privately first, and that's on me."

"I'm not sure I should be kept out of the loop anymore," she snapped. "This is unacceptable."

He pinned her with a deadly look. "What's unacceptable about it? That Washington stands to make more money if he gets his own season? That we found a story that's real and true and is the kind of television we dream of making? It's not up to you to decide whether it's unacceptable or not. I'm telling you about this as a courtesy, but the decision will be made by Noah and Molly." He pointed a finger at me. "And you will hear me out before you do so."