She inched closer and put her hand on his arm. It was warm and soft and represented everything he’d wanted in life.
Everything he tried to make himself worthy of and failed every fucking time.
He stepped away.
“I don’t get it. This is the kind of story that you’d normally be salivating over. A twenty-year-old conviction, a killer who’s never once spoken on camera—who’s made it clear he’ll never speak of his son. Not to mention that son vanished so completely, there's barely a paper trail. You get Matias talking, you find the son. You find Angel, you get Matias in front of thecamera. This story is exactly whatUnfilteredneeds out of the gate. This is a ratings?—”
“When it comes to this, I don’t care about ratings.” He kept his voice flat and professional. The voice he used on camera when someone was trying to rattle him and he needed Seattle to see a man who couldn’t be rattled. “Angel Salazar was fourteen-years-old when his father was convicted of murder. He disappeared at seventeen for a reason. Whatever he built after everything that happened to him, he built it in private. He's not a story. He's a person who isn’t guilty of his father’s crimes, and he doesn’t want his story told. His silence has made that clear. Using a killer to drag him into the spotlight just because we have a camera, a mic, and ambition.”
"Okay." She folded her arms. "I respect that. But that's never stopped you before, and you know it. So, what’s the real reason?" She lifted her chin in that stubborn way she had when she wasn’t going to let up. “I know you, and you’re not telling me something.”
If anyone would understand, she would. No matter how badly the station executives wanted a story, she could always take a step back and see past the headline to the human underneath. To give them the perspective that other investigative reporters and shows didn’t have. He held her gaze wondering if he'd ever trusted anyone as much as he trusted her. Taking a deep breath, he said, “I need you to promise me that you won’t ever speak a word of this to anyone. Not your brothers or sister. Not your cousin. Not your therapist.”
“I don’t have a therapist.” She planted her hands on her hips and tapped her toe. “I think I’ve proven I can keep my mouth shut while we’re working on a story. Not to mention, we’ve been able to keep whatever we are from the station, from my family, from… everyone while we figure out what we are to each other.”
“You didn’t want anyone to know about us, either.” He pulled the envelope from his pocket. “Don’t make it sound like that was all me.”
“I don’t want to fight with you. I just want to understand why you’re passing on a story with this kind of depth, and I want you to be honest. Right now, you’re being vague, and honestly, you’re annoying me. You’re doing that thing you do every time you’re about to walk away from something because you get moody and have no real reason.”
She certainly knew him. “I always have a reason. I just don’t always share.” He stared at the envelope. He still didn't know why he'd kept it. He'd asked himself that question a hundred times—on planes, in green rooms, at four in the morning when the city outside his condo was finally quiet enough to let him think. He should have burned it years ago. Fed it through a shredder. Dropped it into Lake Washington with something heavy attached.
But he'd kept it for twenty years—moved it from apartment to apartment, and he'd never been able to explain to himself why. Except that maybe some part of him needed the proof. Not that Angel Salazar had existed. He knew that. But that Noah Chase had a right to exist, instead.
He held the envelope out to her and didn’t say a word.
She looked at his face first. Then the envelope. She took it carefully, like she wasn't sure she should—as if the edges might draw blood.
He watched her pull out the paperwork. Watched her eyes shift across a name, an image, proof of a teenage boy with dark eyes and a nose that wasn't quite Noah's nose and a last name that wasn't Noah's name. An address in Seattle on a street where the original building had since been torn down and replaced with condominiums. A social security number that hadn't been used since he’d turned seventeen.
Ziggy went very still. It was something she did when she wasn’t sure how to process information. Like the day he told her he didn’t want to be friends anymore. That he wanted more, but he also wasn’t willing to give her up as his producer, so if she couldn’t be his girlfriend and work with him, then he’d rather have the latter because that was more important.
She’d nearly walked out the door. He hadn’t blamed her for being angry. He hadn’t worded it very well, and he’d been doing whatever he could to show her just how much he cared. Only, now he was about to break both their hearts.
“What the hell is this?” She lifted her chin, locking gazes with him. “How do you have this? How long have you been sitting on it, and why?
“Look at the next document.” Damn, he was a coward. He should just come out and tell her, but he couldn’t. He was ashamed.
Ashamed of where he came from. Of whom he once was.
But he was also embarrassed by the fact that he still had an ounce of loyalty to the man he’d once called dad.
Ziggy shuffled the pages, and exactly six seconds later, her hand came to her throat. She gasped taking a small, stumbling step backward.
He reached for her, steadying her on her heels before she fell over.
“This has to be some cruel joke.” She waved the papers. “You can’t be him. You wouldn’t lie to me like that. You wouldn’t keep this from me. Not after everything we’ve been through. Not after we… after we…”
“I had to,” Noah said. “I’ve had to keep it a secret from everyone since the day my aunt, uncle, and I made Angel disappear.”
Her gaze went from the papers shaking in her hands to his face. “You’re Angel fucking Salazar.” It was a statement, but itfelt like an accusation. She dropped the papers on the coffee table, turned, and strolled across the room to where, under the TV, he had a small drink stand. She lifted the Tequila bottle and poured herself more than necessary.
“Go easy on that stuff,” he said.
“You don’t get to manage me, right now.” She tossed back half the glass before facing him again. “I get why you want to bury the story. I do. But I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me a month ago when the executives handed it to us, or when you watched me spend a month chasing every clue I could find to make the story happen.”
“Because I knew I’d be able to direct the search,” he admitted.
“I can’t believe you’d waste my time like that. Waste our resources when you could’ve just told me.”