All Chapters of Crossing the line : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Ethan’s POVTyler wasn’t supposed to be home.I realized that the second I pushed open the door to the condo and found him sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, staring at something on his phone with the kind of stillness that meant trouble.He didn’t look up when I stepped in. “You saw it?”My pulse kicked. “Saw what?”He finally lifted his eyes. Not angry. Not shocked. Worse—calm. Like the quiet before a building collapses.“Ava’s draft.”My stomach dropped.“How—”“It was sent to me,” he said. “Anonymous inbox. Probably someone from the newsroom. Or someone who wants to watch you burn.”A cold rush slid down my spine. I set my keys on the counter, careful, like sudden movements might set him off.“What exactly did you see?”Tyler held up his phone—screen glowing with paragraphs I recognized far too easily. That raw confession. That one line that had branded itself in my mind:Truth isn’t always clean. Sometimes it stains, and you wear it anyway.My chest tightened. “You read t

Ava’s POV The morning after Ethan’s game, the city sounded different — thinner somehow, stretched tight like a wire pulled too far. My phone hadn’t stopped vibrating since dawn, not with messages or calls, but with notifications from strangers, trending hashtags, clipped game footage looping on timelines like a wound on repeat. Ethan Cole Losing His Calm —Is Pressure Cracking Him? The Scandal Season Continues. No one was calling it what it really was: a man unraveling under the weight the world kept dropping on him. I shut off the screen and exhaled. My apartment was quiet, too quiet. The kind of quiet that didn’t soothe — it scraped. A reminder of how everything in my life had been ripped open and rearranged in the span of weeks. The Chronicle badge no longer hung on the hook by my door. My inbox was nearly empty. My notebook, once overflowing with interviews and deadlines, now held a list of shifts from my new administrative job at a literacy nonprofit. It was good work. Hone

Ethan’s POV I didn’t sleep. Not for more than a few minutes at a time. Every time I drifted off, something jerked me awake—noise from the street, the hum of my phone, my own pulse kicking too hard. By sunrise, I was up, showered, and pacing the length of my living room like an animal in a cage. Ava’s text from last night was still burned into my screen: Yeah. Tomorrow. No emojis. No softness. No breath between the words. Just a yes that didn’t feel like a yes at all. Something was wrong. Not “bad day” wrong. Not “work stress” wrong. Something deeper, sharper, the kind of wrong that gets under your skin and doesn’t let go. I felt it before I saw her. Felt it again watching that damned op-ed blow up online—everyone arguing about ethics and silence and scandals like they were entertainment. And somehow… Somehow her name kept circling the edges without ever being said out loud. I didn’t know why. I just knew she was in the middle of it. And I hated that she didn’t call me.

Ava’s POVMaya insisted on coffee.Not a phone call.Not a text thread.A face-to-face conversation at the small café near my apartment — the one with the chipped mugs and terrible background jazz that somehow made tense conversations feel less explosive.I barely slept, but I still got there early. Maya arrived ten minutes late, wind-tousled, overworked, and somehow still intimidating.She took one look at me and sighed.“Jesus, Ava. You look like you lost a boxing match.”She ordered us two coffees — hers black, mine with too much sugar — and slid into the seat across from me.“Okay,” she said. “Show me your face.”“My face?”“Your emotional face.”I groaned and rested my forehead against the cool table. “I’m overwhelmed, Maya.”“Of course you are. That letter was designed to do exactly that. ‘Remedial Action Notice.’ I swear, they hire lawyers specifically for their dramatic vocabulary.”My laugh was thin but real.She reached into her tote bag and pulled out a folder thick with p

Ava’s POVThe notification chimed while I was brushing my teeth.I froze with my toothbrush still in my mouth, mint foam gathering at the corner of my lips, because I already knew who it was before I even reached for the phone.Ethan.The screen lit up with his name, his message short, gentle—exactly the kind of thing that made my chest ache more than any grand gesture could.Glad you got some rest. Here if you need anything today. No pressure.Good luck with the meeting.I exhaled, the sound shaky and ridiculous for something as simple as a text.I’d told him I had a meeting. I didn’t specify what kind. Didn’t say legal. Didn’t say the Chronicle. Didn’t say anything even close to the truth.And he didn’t push.He never pushed.That was somehow worse. Because the space he gave me made it impossible to pretend he didn’t care.I rinsed my mouth, splashed water on my face, and sat on the edge of the bed. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard for a long second before I finally typed:Ava: T