Tomboy

“Hell, yeah.” The smack of the men doing a high five in the studio sounded. “You take care of your parents. That’s the way it works.”

Blood pressure peaking, Fallon flipped off her radio and killed the engine so the drive-time idiots would stop yammering through her car speakers. The jerks didn’t know a damn thing they were talking about. Of course, how could they, with Zach refusing to fight for himself.

Muttering about the stupidity of men, she grabbed her backpack and got out of the car, slamming the door shut hard enough that it even made her wince, and she was already a twelve on the five-point pissed-off scale.

As she marched across the parking lot, she spied a handful of people standing near the emergency room entrance. Probably smokers. She’d give them a heads-up that if Fred, the security guard on duty tonight, caught them, he would banish them from the ER even if their mother was inside getting stitches. Then, if that didn’t get them to put it out, she’d add in a little tidbit about what smoking did to a person’s lungs before heading inside to start her shift.

However, as she got closer, she realized there wasn’t any cigarette smell coming off the group who all turned as she approached. That was when she noticed the cameras, microphones, and cell phones held out like tape recorders. Fuck. Maybe she should tell all of them to take up smoking so they could hack up a lung while Fred kicked them off the property.

She looked down and angled her face away from them, but it was too late.

“Lady Luck,” one of the women called out.

“Hey, Fallon,” shouted another. “Do you have any comment about Zach Blackburn?”

They hustled over to her, shoving their mics and phones in her face as she marched toward the door.

“Did you know he’d given his parents the shaft?” a man asked.

That wasn’t what happened, and there was nothing in the world she’d rather tell them, but Zach had been clear about how he wanted this handled.

She glared at the reporters. “No comment.”

“Oh, come on, Fallon,” the first woman said, stepping in front of her. “Give us the real story.”

As if that was their due? Yeah. No. “Get out of my way. I said no comment.”

The other woman gave her a sympathetic look as if they were friends from back in the day. “TMQ’s coming out with another story tomorrow,” she said. “Word is his mom’s about to unload about how they’ve begged for help and he’s said no.”

Begged for help? More like continued to try to extort money from him because what he’d given them already hadn’t been enough. It never would be. Fury on his behalf beat against the backs of her eyeballs and pounded against her skull. It wasn’t fair. He was going to get nailed to the wall for this. Still…

She unclenched her jaw enough to get two words out. “No comment.”

“What about the fact that the time he punched out a fan, supposedly for spitting in his face, wasn’t the first time Blackburn has punched someone after a loss,” the male reporter said. “According to his dad, it was a pretty regular happening. One time he broke his old man’s jaw and left him with medical debt the old man is still paying off.”

“That’s not true.” There was no way.

“Bobby Blackburn has X-rays,” the reporter said.

Oh, she didn’t doubt that. There were probably hundreds of people who’d taken a swing at him over the years and a million more—herself included—who wanted to punch him now.

“No comment,” she said, pushing her way through them, determined to get inside so she could call Zach and let him know what was coming. He hadn’t known all of this when he’d made the decision to go the no-comment route.

“Do you really think the Ice Knights will stick by him after the TMQ story with all of this comes out?” one of the female reporters shouted at her. “Will you? Is he hitting you? Blackburn’s mom said it was a question that haunted her.”

Fallon slammed to a stop, the sounds of the reporters’ questions drowned out by the blood rushing in her ears. Is he hitting you? An ugly certainty settled deep in her belly. That was where it would go next, a way for his parents to up the ante in their quest for more money. It made her want to puke.

She couldn’t count the number of domestic violence victims she’d seen come through the emergency room over the years. Some swore they’d slipped down the stairs, broken their arm, and gotten a black eye—or worse. Others didn’t say anything. The third group spoke up despite the threats made against them and their children. Some of them even got out. That Zach’s parents—just to score a payday—would make a mockery of those women and men who really had survived

domestic violence made her sick to her stomach.

If his parents were willing to go public with this level of bullshit, they wouldn’t quit, not until they’d drained him of absolutely everything—money, belief in himself, hope. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let them do that to him. Zach deserved better. He deserved someone who would fight for him, not just use him.

Pivoting around, she faced the scrum of reporters, their eager faces hungry for a scoop. Everybody used everybody, that’s what he’d told her. But it wasn’t true. She’d fight for him.

“Zach’s parents took out loans in his name for millions, skimmed money from his accounts, and sucked him dry like a pair of vampires before leaving him holding the bag for it all,” she said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to remain calm. “That’s why he’s living in a house the team pays for, doesn’t have any furniture, and doesn’t have a car. Because all of the money he earns is going to pay off the millions of dollars of debt his parents ran up in his name.” The pure awfulness of what they’d done still astounded her—almost as much as the fact that somehow, some way, Zach acted as if he’d deserved that kind of treatment. “And he didn’t take his parents to court or turn them into the cops. Why? Because even though they did that to him, he still protected them. It’s what he does on the ice and off of it.”

They were staring at her slack-jawed by the time she finished. Her lungs were heaving, and that adrenaline rush that came with standing up for what was right, for who was right, was whooshing through her like an arctic blast—cold, clean, and clear. Zach might not understand at first—he’d probably be pissed as hell. But she’d explain that she was fighting for him, for what was right, and he’d understand. She was sure about it.