Who I was seeing at the time.
Who I believed was a source and a person worth trusting in the same breath.
Same mistake.
Twice.
I heard what he said and took it as direction.
After a year of cleaning up the wreckage of my own judgment—the kind that starts with leaving and gets worse before it gets better—I looked into the job.
Researched. Applied. Put the portfolio together. Sat across from Riley Stevens while she looked through my work for four minutes and then asked when I could start.
And that was that.
I did that myself.
Nobody handed me anything. Nobody pulled strings. Griffin Novak’s narcissistic need to be right about everyone accidentally pointed me toward a door, and I was smart enough to walk through it.
I am very good at finding doors.
What I am less good at, apparently, is forgetting that I already have history here.
With the team.
With the story.
With the piece I wrote two seasons ago—because I needed it, and trusted that asshole for too long.
My name is on it. And now I’m here. Credential around my neck. Notebook open. Acting like I belong in this building without that following me in.
That shame sits differently than panic.
Lower. Hotter. Harder to explain.
My press credential sits next to my recorder.
Nova Shaw.
V. North stayed in Tampa. That’s the whole point. Reclaim myself. Put that version of me to sleep—the one that mistook motion for safety and distance for control—my clean start.
Nova Shaw is here to do better.
Back to work.
Brody first. He gives me three times what I asked for and several bits I absolutely did not ask for. I already know I’m going to have to fact-check half of it, but at least one quote is usable and somehow I also now know his grandmother’s views on pasta water.
Sebastian and Caleb together because they move like a shared bad decision and I’m not untangling that before noon. I get enough on record from both of them that they’re definitely going to regret by dinner.
Liam Steele gives me four words in response to one question, and those four words are worth more than everything Brody said combined.
I’m good at this.
I know how to walk into a room and make people let me in.
What I cannot seem to do is keep my camera off grocery store guy for longer than about forty-five seconds.
He’s running drills now—reading shooters, tracking the puck, the particular full-body attention of a man whose job is to know where disaster is headed before it gets there.