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My brows dip together. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Did you stay the weekend with the guy?”
I blow out a breath. “I don’t need to defend myself to you. Marcus already knows I had to stay with him, so you can kindly go fuck yourself.”
“Hell of a way to talk to someone who has shit on you. You should really watch your back, Bailey.”
“Why? To keep you from stabbing me in it?” I hiss.
He laughs, and it’s a little sinister.
I glare at him. “You don’t have anything on me.”
“I have pictures,” he says.
“Pictures can be manipulated. Everybody knows that. It’s not proof of anything.” I’m bluffing, but he doesn’t have to know that.
“We’ll see who everyone believes when I publish them, then.”
I roll my eyes at his empty threat. He won’t use them because if he does…then he has nothing on me anymore. No other way to threaten me. “What do you want from me? I’m sorry I was promoted over you, but I got this job fair and square.”
“Because you’re female. That’s the only reason you got it. Not because you’re a better reporter than me,” he hisses.
I let the insult roll off my shoulders because I have to. I can’t let it affect me every time someone says I got the job because of my vagina or I’ll spend my entire life affected. “You believe what you want to believe. The fact remains, I’m the correspondent. You aren’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” I turn away from him and back to my desk.
“We’ll see for how long,” he says, and the threat feels like much, much more than just a guy who didn’t get the job he wanted.
Rivera and I go back further than our time here at the station as colleagues. He and my ex—Jonah’s father—are close friends.
I’ve never trusted Ryan Rivera, and I never really liked him…but I was never scared of him. Until now.
I head home for lunch so I can chat with Sam ahead of Lincoln coming over, and I tell her about my run-in with my scorned colleague.
“He’s just jealous,” she assures me. “You got the job because you’re better at what you do than he is. Plain and simple.”
“I know that. You know that. Rivera, however, does not know that. His threats scare me. I don’t know what he’s capable of, but I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him.”
“Good thing you don’t have to throw him, then,” she murmurs.
I twist my lips. “I guess. On a totally different topic, Lincoln will be here soon, so fire away any questions you may have.”
She glances up at me. “I just have one. How’s it going to look to your parents when your best friend is supposedly sleeping with the enemy?”
“That’s a great question, and one I hadn’t really thought of the answer to just yet. I guess we just…see what happens?”
“Or we have a public falling out.” She shrugs.
“Then where will Jonah and I live?”
“Stay here. It’ll make it all that much more of a story, right?”
I wrinkle my nose. I’m not sure whether she’s right or not. I don’t necessarily want that to be the story.
I blow out a breath. “Fine.”
“Hey, are you really okay with this?” she asks quietly.
“For the sake of my career and my family, I don’t think I have a choice but to be okay with it.”
