Olivia knew the series had broken out of the usual media bubble when her cousin sent a screenshot of a Facebook argument.
*Maribel*: *Girl, you got my boss and my landlord fighting in the comments. This is your fault.*
Below, a thread:
- *LandlordGuy88*: “If you people want ‘perfect buses’ maybe don’t defund everything????” - *TransitNerd*: “We’re literally talking about a private company, Todd.” - *SouthSideSis*: “Todd you raised my rent and still don’t fix the hot water, sit this one out.”
Her byline floated at the top, above a heated discussion of code ownership, union jobs, and whether Jake Morrison was “hot enough to be forgiven.”
She threw her phone onto the couch like it had personally offended her and went back to staring at the blinking cursor for Part Three.
The spine had started to form. Reyes’s draft bill. Berlin’s nationalization argument. Jake’s reluctant agreement that “less Morrison” in the system might actually be good.
The words, though… stubborn.
Her phone vibrated on the cushion.
*Raj*: panel invite came in. u see?
Her email pinged in the same second.
> From: events@nyumediaforum.org > Subject: Invitation: “Holding Power to Account in the Age of Code” – Panel
She clicked.
Dear Ms. Martinez,
We would be honored if you would participate in our upcoming panel discussion…
She skimmed. The other names jumped out.
Leah Gordon, CityWatch. Professor Amelia Sharp, Columbia Law. And: Jake Morrison, TerraNova.
“Oh, you have *got* to be kidding me,” she muttered.
She scrolled further.
We believe your recent series in *Metro* has sparked one of the most important civic conversations of the year. We hope you will join us onstage to continue it, alongside Mr. Morrison and Ms. Gordon…
Her pulse ratcheted up.
Panel. With Jake. In public. Not just as interviewer and subject, but as co-panelists. Equals. Debaters.
It was flattering as hell.
It was also a minefield.
She forwarded the invite to Laura before Raj could get his claws in.
> You see this? she wrote. > Please tell me this is either a prank or you’re going to say no for me.
Laura’s reply came fast.
> Ha. > No, and no. > You’re doing it. > This is what we *want*—your work setting the agenda.
Olivia groaned.
> Isn’t there some rule about not sharing a stage with your… she paused over the word. > …subject?
> Only rule: disclose and do your job, Laura wrote. > You’re not his PR. You’re not his opponent. You’re a reporter who knows the material better than anyone. > Also: panel fee. We like money.
Olivia snorted despite herself.
> How bad is it going to look? she asked. > Me and Morrison up there like some kind of double act?
> Depends how much you flirt, Laura sent back. > (Kidding. Don’t kill me.) > Seriously: You set the tone. Be sharp. Be fair. Don’t let him turn it into “Look, my ex still talks to me.”
A hot flush crawled up Olivia’s neck at the word *ex*.
> I hate you, she typed.
> You love me, Laura replied. > Think of it this way: you get to call him out *live.* No editing.
That… did have a certain dark appeal.
Her phone buzzed with another incoming text.
*Jake*:
> Panel?
She stared.
Of course they’d invited him. It would be malpractice not to.
> Apparently, she wrote back. > Guess we’re taking this show on the road.
> You going to say yes? he asked.
She glanced at Laura’s email again.
> Looks that way, she sent. > Unless you’re scared.
> Of sharing a stage with you? he replied. > Always.
> But no. > Let’s do it.
His confidence came through even in text. It did something unpleasant and familiar to her stomach.
> Don’t expect mercy, she wrote. > Panels don’t have “off the record.”
> Wouldn’t want it any other way, he sent back.
She tossed the phone aside and finally dug into Part Three.
***
Four days later, standing in the green room of NYU’s media center, she wondered why she’d agreed.
The room was too warm—overcompensating for the chill outside. The makeup artist had dabbed something under her eyes and dusted powder over her nose. Her hair, loose and slightly waved, felt like a wig she couldn’t quite own.
On the far side, Leah perched on a stool, scrolling through her notes. In jeans, boots, and a CityWatch hoodie, she looked exactly like herself, just with better mascara.
Professor Sharp, all austere gray blazer and severe ponytail, adjusted her glasses and murmured with the moderator.
No sign of Jake yet.
He was probably doing whatever tech founders did before public appearances. Power stances in the bathroom. Practicing charm in the mirror. Brushing his teeth with stock options.
“You look like you’re planning an escape route,” Leah said, hopping off the stool and joining her by the table of sad fruit and coffee.
“I am,” Olivia said. “I’m calculating the odds of faking a fire alarm.”
“You going to be okay?” Leah asked, quieter now. “No shade, but it’s different when you’re not the one holding the notebook.”
“I’ll be fine,” Olivia said. “Talking is… easier than writing, sometimes.”
“Sure,” Leah said. “But writing, you can edit. Talking, you say something half out of anger and suddenly it’s a meme.”
Olivia winced.
“Reassuring,” she said.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” Leah said. “Just… don’t let him control the frame. He’s good at that. Charming. Self-deprecating. People eat it up.”
“I know,” Olivia said.
“Then do your thing,” Leah said, squeezing her arm. “Stab where it counts.”
Professor Sharp approached, hand extended.
“Ms. Martinez,” she said. “I’ve been assigning your series in my seminar.”
“Oh,” Olivia said, thrown. “I hope your students aren’t sending me hate mail.”
“Quite the opposite,” Sharp said. “They’re very taken with the idea that journalism can do something other than chase clicks.”
“Don’t tell my ad department that,” Olivia said.
A shadow fell across them.
“All the celebrities in one room,” Jake said lightly. “Should I be asking for autographs?”
He wore dark slacks, an open-collar shirt, no tie. Clean-shaven, hair a little too artfully messy. He looked good.
Olivia hated that she noticed first.
“Mr. Morrison,” Sharp said, shaking his hand. “Nice to meet you in a venue where I’m not yelling at your filings.”
He smiled. “The feeling is mutual, Professor.”
His gaze flicked to Olivia.
For a second, the room shrank.
“Liv,” he said.
“Jake,” she said. Nothing in her tone gave away the small, unwanted leap in her chest.
“You look…” He paused, as if catching himself from saying something inadvisable. “Ready to eviscerate me.”
“Always,” she said.
He laughed, short and genuine.
The moderator clapped his hands once. “Okay, folks, five minutes. We’ll intro, then we’re doing some seated chat. No slides, promise. Just conversation.”
“Bless,” Leah muttered. “If I had to sit through another founder deck, I was going to riot.”
They filed toward the stage.
Backstage, the murmur of the audience grew louder. Students. Journalists. City staff. Tech people. Activists.
A whole cross-section of the city she’d been writing for and about.
She stepped into the wash of light.
For a moment, it was blinding.
Then her eyes adjusted, and she could see faces.
Front row, Laura with her arms crossed, a small, fierce smile on her face.
Two rows back, Raj holding up his phone like a proud dad.
Near the aisle, she caught a glimpse of a familiar profile—Mrs. Morrison, sitting between a woman who looked like one of Jake’s PR staffers and… her own mother.
Olivia’s step stuttered.
“Are you serious,” she breathed.
“Breathe,” Jake murmured beside her. “They promised not to heckle.”
She shot him a look, but her lungs obeyed anyway.
They took their seats in the soft armchairs laid out like a talk show.
The moderator did his thing—welcomes, bios, a mildly cringey joke about “tech being the new religion.”
Then: “Olivia, your series in *Metro* sparked a lot of this conversation. I want to start with you. When you began reporting, did you anticipate… *this*?”
She glanced at the audience. At Jake.
“At the risk of sounding like a clickbait headline… no,” she said. “I thought I was writing about a platform. Maybe a guy. I didn’t expect to be writing about whether half our public life now runs on proprietary code.”
A ripple of laughter.
She relaxed fractionally.
The questions moved. Leah on surveillance. Sharp on code as law. Jake on intent versus impact.
When it came back around to her, the moderator asked, “You’ve been criticized from both sides—some say you’re too hard on TerraNova, others say you’re not hard enough. How do you navigate that?”
“Unhappily,” she said, to scattered chuckles. “Look, my job isn’t to balance praise and critique. It’s to tell the truth as best I can, with the information and time I have. Sometimes that means writing that a company does something genuinely innovative. Sometimes it means writing that their system contributed to a man getting hit by a bus.”
Jake’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
She didn’t flinch.
“Jake,” the moderator said smoothly, turning to him. “Do you feel… fairly portrayed in Olivia’s work?”
The room tensed.
He could have dodged. He could have said something bland—*We appreciate the attention to the issues*—and moved on.
Instead, he looked at her.
“I feel… seen,” he said. “More than I usually am in coverage. Sometimes uncomfortably so.”
Laughter, softer.
“Do I agree with every angle?” he continued. “No. Do I wince at some lines? Yeah. But I’d rather have a reporter who knows where I’m vulnerable than ten who just copy-paste my talking points.”
Olivia’s chest did an alarming little flip.
“Leah,” the moderator cut in, “you’ve said publicly that ‘we can’t rely on individual conscience to safeguard public systems.’ Hearing Jake say he’d rather have his vulnerabilities exposed… does that change anything for you?”
Leah snorted. “No,” she said, to laughter. “I mean, good for him? But that’s… about him. And he’s not the system. That’s kind of the whole point.”
As the talk went on, Olivia slipped into a rhythm. Push and parry. The moderator lobbed questions; they batted them around. She challenged Jake on “hero narratives.” Leah needled him about contract secrecy. Sharp talked abstract legal theory that had half the audience nodding and the other half Googling terms.
At one point, a student asked from the audience, “Ms. Martinez, do you ever feel like you’re… too close to the subject?”
The room went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with acoustics.
Olivia’s throat went dry.
“That’s a fair question,” she said slowly.
Her eyes flicked to Laura, who was watching intently. To her mother, who had that *don’t you dare lie to me* look even from fifty feet away.
To Jake.
He didn’t look away.
“I grew up near where Jake did,” she said. No point in hiding that. “We knew the same streets. The same bus stops. That gives me context most reporters don’t have.”
A murmur.
“It also gives me bias,” she continued. “Bias toward caring about what happens there. Who gets left behind. That’s not something I can ‘turn off.’ So I try to be transparent about it. I ask for extra editing. I over-report. And when in doubt, I err on the side of showing more of the system and less of the hero.”
The student considered that, then nodded.
“And,” Olivia added before she could stop herself, “if I ever felt like my personal history with a subject was making me pull punches or sharpen knives unfairly, I’d recuse myself.”
She sensed Jake’s head snap toward her.
Sensors caught the energy in the room.
The moderator pounced. “You *have* personal history with Mr. Morrison,” he said, like a cat batting at a string.
Damn it.
She kept her face smooth.
“We grew up in the same neighborhood,” she said. “Everyone has history with everyone there.”
Leah snorted softly.
Jake spoke then, tone even.
“We dated,” he said into his mic.
A gasp, scattered, like someone had dropped a tray in a cafeteria.
Olivia’s heart tried to exit her body through her spine.
“Jake,” she hissed, too low for the mics.
He ignored her.
“Ten years ago,” he continued. “We were kids. We made each other better. We hurt each other. She left. I built a company. She built a career. Our paths crossed again when she wrote about my work.”
Silence, thick.
“This is relevant,” he added, “because it means when she writes about me, she’s not writing about a myth. She’s writing about someone whose worst moments she’s seen up close.”
He turned his head, met her eyes.
“And,” he said, “because if anyone here was wondering if she goes easier on me because of that… she doesn’t.”
A laugh broke the tension. Nervous, scattered, but real.
Heat crawled up Olivia’s neck.
“Thank you for that completely unnecessary disclosure,” she said through a clenched little smile.
He smiled back, more rueful than smug.
“Radical transparency,” he said. “You started it.”
The moderator, giddy at the revelation, tried to steer things into more personal territory. Laura’s stare from the audience dared him to push too far.
He didn’t. Quite.
By the time they wrapped, Olivia’s brain felt like it had been wrung out.
Back in the green room, she rounded on Jake.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded, voice low.
He held up his hands. “You said ‘if my personal history ever affected my work, I’d recuse myself.’ The room deserved to know what that history was.”
“They deserved…? They’re not my ethics committee,” she said. “You just turned us into a human-interest subplot.”
“They were *already* thinking it,” he said. “Go on Twitter. People have been speculating since your first piece.”
“That doesn’t mean you had to confirm it onstage,” she snapped.
Leah cleared her throat. “Should I… leave you two to it, or…?”
“Stay,” Olivia said. “Witness.”
Leah shrugged, sat on the arm of a couch, clearly settling in for a show.
Jake’s jaw tightened. “I’m not trying to turn this into a rom-com, Liv,” he said. “But you said you’d recuse if it ever became a problem. That’s not something you get to decide alone.”
“So what, the public gets a vote now?” she shot back. “Do we hold a referendum on whether I’m allowed to have feelings and a byline?”
He flinched.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I’m saying… if our history ever made me think you were misrepresenting me, I’d say so. You’d do the same if I started acting like a caricature of myself to play to coverage.”
“I do say so,” she said. “In print.”
“Exactly,” he said. “This is… messy. Hiding it doesn’t make it less so.”
Sharp, who had been pretending not to listen as she packed her bag, turned.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I agree with Mr. Morrison. Disclosed mess is easier to navigate than hidden.”
“Thank you, professor ethics,” Olivia muttered.
“Also,” Sharp added, “this will make your future conflicts-of-interest memos much more entertaining to read.”
Leah cackled.
“Okay,” Leah said, standing. “As fun as this is, I have a train to catch and twelve angry DMs from trolls to ignore. You two… maybe don’t make out in the hallway. Cameras.”
She squeezed Olivia’s shoulder, winked at Jake, and swept out.
Silence fell.
Jake scrubbed a hand over his face.
“I shouldn’t have blindsided you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I should’ve asked before I said anything.”
She crossed her arms, dug her nails into her sleeves.
“Yes,” she said. “You should have.”
He blew out a breath. “I didn’t like… the implication.”
“What implication,” she said tightly.
“That you’re the only one deciding where the line is,” he said. “That if it ever gets too… complicated, you’ll just quietly step away and I’ll never know why. I’ve had enough of you leaving without a conversation to last a lifetime.”
The words hit like a gut punch.
“You think I don’t agonize over that line?” she said. “Every time I type your name? You think this is easy for me?”
“I know it’s not,” he said. “I see it in your stories. In how hard you hit.”
He stepped closer.
“I also know,” he said more quietly, “that if we pretend there’s nothing between us but sources and sentences, we’re both lying. To ourselves. To everyone.”
Her throat burned.
“That doesn’t mean I wanted my dating history dissected by tech bros on a livestream,” she said.
“I get that,” he said. “I’ll deal with the tech bros. You can eviscerate them later.”
Despite herself, a laugh snorted out.
“I already do,” she said.
He smiled, tentative.
“Truce?” he asked.
“For now,” she said. “But if my mother starts planning our wedding because of this, I’m suing you for emotional distress.”
He glanced toward the door.
“Too late,” he said. “They’re probably exchanging recipes out there as we speak.”
Her eye twitched.
“Kill me,” she muttered.
“Not before you write Part Three,” he said.
She sighed, tension bleeding out.
“Fine,” she said. “But next time you decide to ‘radically disclose’ something about my personal life, maybe give me a heads-up.”
“Deal,” he said.
He hesitated, then reached out.
His hand brushed her elbow, warm through the thin fabric of her blouse.
“You were… good up there,” he said. “You made them think.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said. “Except maybe one less metaphor about Skynet in my next piece.”
“I’ll take it,” he said.
She stepped back, away from his touch.
“I have to go,” she said. “Deadline.”
“Of course,” he said. “Duty calls.”
He watched her go with a look that made something deep in her chest ache.
She didn’t look back.
Not until she was out in the crisp night, alone with the noise of the city.
Then, just once, she glanced up at the lit windows of the media center.
A silhouette moved past.
She didn’t know if it was him.
She told herself it didn’t matter.
And went home to write about the man she used to love like he was just another variable in a very complicated system.