Chapter 2 – Avery

I was three minutes from signing off when the studio door opened without a knock.

That alone should have told me something was wrong. Nobody walked into the campus radio booth like they owned it—especially not at 11:47 p.m. on a Thursday.

I kept my voice steady into the mic. “That’s all for tonight on Off the Record. Keep questioning the stories they sell you. And if you’re one of the guys who think a jersey gives you a free pass to act like a goddamn animal…” I let the silence stretch just long enough. “Maybe sit the next one out.”

I killed the feed, yanked off my headphones, and spun the chair around.

A woman in a blazer too expensive for this building stood in the doorway holding a tablet. Behind her was a guy with a camera already half-raised, like he’d been told to start rolling the second I looked up.

“Avery Quinn?” the woman said, smiling with too many teeth. “I’m Dana from the Campus Heat production team. We need five minutes.”

I stared at her. Then at the camera. Then back at her.

“No.”

She kept smiling. “It’s about an opportunity. A significant one.”

I stood up, grabbed my bag, and started packing. My hands were already shaking. I hated that they could see it. “If this is about the segment I did on the hockey team last week, you can tell your producers I stand by every word. Especially the part about privileged athletes who treat the ice like their personal rage room.”

Dana’s smile didn’t move. She stepped fully into the booth and set the tablet on the console between us. The screen lit up with a photo of Jax Harrington.

My stomach dropped so hard I felt it in my knees.

The clip was already playing on mute: Jax’s fist connecting with Carter Vale’s face in slow motion, blood spraying, the empty look in his eyes. Underneath it, three words in bold.

PROPOSED RELATIONSHIP.

I laughed. It came out sharp and ugly. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“We’re not,” Dana said calmly. “The network wants a redemption arc. Harrington’s people want damage control. You have the exact public image they need, someone who doesn’t kiss athlete ass, someone students actually listen to. The show will follow the two of you as you ‘fall for each other’ over the next three months. Full stipend. National streaming exposure. And a clause that lets you keep your radio show running the entire time.”

I stared at the tablet like it might catch fire.

“I’m not dating the guy who just turned a hockey game into a crime scene.”

“You wouldn’t be dating him,” Dana said. “You’d be performing. And performing pays better than this booth ever will.”

That landed.

I hated that it landed.

My rent was two weeks late. The scholarship letter sitting in my inbox still said “pending review.” My mom’s medical bills weren’t going to pay themselves, and the part-time campus job barely covered groceries. I knew exactly how much money they were dangling. I could do the math in my head without even asking.

Dana watched me do it.

“Think about it overnight,” she said, voice softer now, like she was doing me a favor. “But the offer expires at noon tomorrow. Harrington’s team is already drafting the first joint statement. They want you in the photo.”

The camera guy shifted, lens still pointed at my face.

I felt heat climb up my neck. Rage, humiliation, the sick awareness that they had chosen me because I was the perfect contrast...the girl who hated everything Jax Harrington stood for. The girl who would make the fake relationship look real simply by how hard she fought it on camera.

“Get out,” I said.

Dana nodded like she’d expected that. She left the tablet on the console, screen still glowing with Jax’s bloodied knuckles and my name underneath them.

The door clicked shut.

I stood there in the sudden quiet of the booth, heart slamming so hard I could hear it in my ears. My hands were still shaking. I wanted to throw the tablet against the wall. I wanted to call my sister and scream. I wanted to pretend the number on that stipend didn’t already feel like a life raft I was too proud and too desperate to refuse.

Instead I sat back down, pulled my headphones on, and stared at Jax Harrington’s face until the screen went black.

Somewhere across campus he was probably being told the same thing I just was.

That the only way out of the wreckage was through each other.

I already hated him for it.