I got why a lot of people felt cheated.
“Junior.” James tossed me a toothy smile. “You’re the real deal. We all know it.”
But did they? There were at least eight more people in the room, and their silence spoke a thousand words. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that no one saw me in the same light anymore. To what degree was the real question.
“Thank you…” I managed, refusing to look back at Célian, who stared at me intently now, trying to read between the lines of my deep frown.
I didn’t give him anything.
“With this out of the way…” Célian ran a hand over his square jaw. “Give me something good.”
“Evidently, Jude already has…” someone coughed from my general direction, but I couldn’t snap my head fast enough to see who it was.
I don’t think Célian heard it. He wasn’t one to miss an opportunity to berate a cheeky employee.
Kate began talking about the anti-drugs campaign failure, and Elijah butted in with a debt ceiling lead. Célian looked bored out of his mind, leaning back in his chair and staring into the air, his legs crossed over the desk.
“Humphry?”
At least he still called me that, like I was a genderless employee, like nothing had changed. Because nothing had. I was still a career woman. I was just a career woman who slept with her boss because we were both the same type of screwed up.
I flipped Kipling’s pages, my tongue sticking out of the corner of my mouth.
“I was talking to this guy last night…” I started.
“Does Célian know? He always seemed like the possessive type to me,” Elijah joked, tossing his head back and gulping down a bottle of water with a chuckle.
“Out of my newsroom, Elijah,” Célian barked, looking back to me. “Continue, Judith.”
I looked between them noiselessly. Elijah furrowed his brows, picked up his things, and shook his head.
“It was a joke,” he whispered.
“Comedy Central is down the block. We make news here.” Célian was still looking at me, but with a jaded expectation, not an ounce of sympathy or affection in his icy blues.
An unbearable tension squeezed the room from the moment Elijah realized he’d messed up to the second the door closed behind him.
“Anyway…” My face heated, and I kept my eyes on Kipling. “He’s a Syrian journalist living in Germany. His name is Saiid. I found his Twitter account late last night.”
“Or Tinder…” Bryce, one of the producers in the room, whispered under her breath.
Sitting at the head of the desk, Célian couldn’t hear it. But I could. And I wanted to die. I deserved it. Even I could see why it would make my peers bitter. While they were chasing leads, I’d been chasing orgasms with the future president of the network. The engaged future president of the network.
I took a deep breath, borrowing Kate’s iPad silently and entering a web address. “He uploaded this video, documenting Syrian refugees trying to smuggle their way back to Syria…”
“Back to Syria?” Jessica raised an eyebrow.
I nodded. “They find it difficult to integrate, and they miss their families. Hundreds of refugees come back into Syria every week, mostly through Greece. They enter their own country illegally, on foot, tracing back over the route they used to run away.”
I clicked on the video and turned it around so everyone could see. Most of all, I was relieved to find people no longer looking at me like I was the root of all evil. Now they saw toddlers crying in their mothers’ hands, their lives at great risk.
“Coverage?” Célian looked up at me after the video ended.
Shaking my head, I pointed at the screen. “This video has only been watched five hundred times or so, but I’m guessing more people will find it as time ticks by. This could be a great lead for the special we’re airing next week.”
“Good job.”
Maybe his words would’ve been more believable if they hadn’t felt like hail hitting my skin. I was growing tired of him being so callous. It’s like his heart was wrapped in a thick layer of dead skin—the kind you have on the sole of your foot. A needle could pierce it, and you wouldn’t feel a thing.
I bowed my head, not daring to look at the reaction his compliment had created.
People began to file out of the room, and so did Célian. He probably knew I was about ready to strangle him and didn’t want a shouting match. I stayed inside, watching Kate pretend to collect her things at a snail’s pace.
She looked down as she spoke to me. “Célian did the only thing he could to make sure both your asses were covered. He did it in his own fuck-you-very-much way, but he meant well. You’re about to get a lot of heat for it, but remember—better to address it here than let The Daily Gossip give people their version of your story.”