CHAPTER 93
CHAPTER 93
"You've got talent and scars. That's what real journalism is."
Queens Arrows leaned back in her leather chair like she wasn't handing me my life. Like she hadn't just relinquished the goddamn golden ticket to every late-night sob fest I'd survived since the age of thirteen.
Her office was chilly and intimidating. Chrome trim, blue walls, the Manhattan skyline dripping behind her like oil. Her desk covered with heirloom—printouts with Pulitzer stickers, black-and-white photographs of war and protest, a coffee mug that declared: Bleed, then write.
My hand hovered above the contract she'd pushed across to me.
Full-time staff.
The New York Times.
My name in print, actually this time.
I should have been screaming.
But I couldn't breathe.
"I… I don't know what to say," I whispered, and my voice was too small for the room.
Queens watched me. She always watched. Not the way people stared at you, but the way you see through a lens—waiting for the right crack in the face to fire.
"I expected a yes," she said. "You spent three years going after this. Interned here. Worked harder than most of the damn veterans. You're not just a name, Mackenzie. You're a statement. You carry blood in your ink."
God. Her words should have fueled me. I wanted them to.
I set my hands on the table, trying to feel substantial. "What if the blood's not mine?"
She leaned to one side. "Does it matter? Journalism doesn't care who's suffering. It cares who's telling the truth."
But that was the point—I wasn't sure if I knew anymore what truth was.
Mine kept shifting shape.
She drummed the folder. "Take the night. Walk it off if you have to. But I need to hear back by morning. We go to print Friday, and if you're on board, your first byline is page three."
Page three.
God.
I departed the office under the heaviness of victory on my shoulders.
\---
New York city at night is a breathing monster. Too loud to sleep, too restless to rest. A city in which spirits could perhaps get lost in headlights.
I roamed aimlessly, camera bag slung against my leg. I hadn't pulled it out in weeks—not for myself. Just work. People I didn't care about. Shadows I didn't want to chase.
But I reached in, hands wrapping around the familiar chill of my Canon. My thumb slid over the trigger like second nature.
Click.
The homeless man puffing on the street outside a boarded-up deli.
Click.
A Chinatown couple fighting beneath an awning.
Click.
A girl crying on the L train platform with smudged eyeliner and her phone pressed to her chest as if it might save her.
This is where it began for me. This was before all of it.
Before Tony.
Before that picture.
Before my name was spoken with spite in locker rooms and courtrooms and tabloid threads.
Before I turned a boy into a villain—and made myself worse.
\---
I found myself under the Brooklyn Bridge, heart pounding against my chest like it was trying to escape.
The city was quieter here. I crouched over the rail and looked down at the water. It moved like liquid glass, smoothing over all the ugly truths with a smooth surface. Just as me.
I thought about calling Arizen. Letting her know I got the offer. That it was real. That I was going to be who I was supposed to be.
But I didn't.
Because I wasn't sure if I was that woman anymore.
I thought of Tony.
He hadn't called since the last time we'd spoken—really spoken. Since Rose had given me his letter. Since he'd admitted the truth about the file and Wells and all that I'd refused to believe.
I hated him.
I needed him.
Both things were true.
Maybe that's what journalism had done to me—it made me examine every aspect of every story until I couldn't find my own anymore.
\---
I snapped another photo—vandalism on a brick wall that read: "Don't sell your soul. Not even for your dream."
The memory of the ink on the contract seared in my head.
You've got the talent and the scars.
I sat on a bench by the park, the camera in my lap, and whispered to the air as if it would respond to me.
"Is it enough?"
The wind was silent. So was my phone.
I closed my eyes and let the stillness envelop me. The sort of stillness I hadn't known since my mother died. Since the night I came to understand that the cost of a photograph is not always paid by the photographer.
I was sitting there for at least an hour, watching the city go on without me. I wished desperately for all the things I'd done to come to this place—every fight with Arizen about going on with this dream, every tear I'd sobbed into my pillow because Tony Zacks'd stared at me like I was a disease.
I remembered his eyes the day he showed me his scars. Not just those that were on his skin, but the ones that lay below his words when he said to me:
"You didn't ruin me. You exposed what was already broken."
And I remembered mine.
How I kept chasing the dream because it was easier than facing the possibility that maybe I didn't know me without it.
\---
My phone buzzed.
Tony: You awake?
I read the note like it could burn me.
Me: Yeah.
Tony: Be at the gym.
Me: Why?
Tony: Because you need to break out of pretending like you're not still lingering around in the wreckage you built. And because I don't want to be the only presence here anymore.