The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

He looked stunned as his cell continued to light up, not that it was all supportive. Amongst the messages of distress there were the victory cries.

Good decision by the Courier to exit scaremonger Jackson Haley.

The Courier steps up. No more of Haley’s lies.

Doomsday reporter Haley out. City sighs with relief.

Jackson Haley on the scrapheap. Toss out the junk.

Haley is a prick. Great decision to shut him down.

To this last one Spin replied, May you never feel the prick of injustice. You’re on your own now.

Jack shook his head, turned the phone off and slipped it in his pocket. “I never wanted to be the story.” He reached for her and she went willingly into his arms. She didn’t know if he simply wanted to go home or to join the others at Donovan’s. She didn’t know how best to support him except to stand by him. In the pocket of her jacket, her own cell had been vibrating like crazy, receiving some of the same feeds.

“What do you want to do now?”

“Get very drunk.” He tipped her chin up. “Is that okay with you?”

It was better than him going to church and chasing a black eye or worse.

“I was going to take you to dinner tonight to celebrate.” He dropped his arms from around her and heaved a breath. “Fuck.” And that answered the question. He didn’t know about this until today.

“We’ve got plenty of time for that.” She opened her mouth to say more, but he was staring off into the distance, lost. She tugged his arm. “It’s going to be okay, Jack. You’ll get another job.” Of course he would—he probably had offers already in his messages. This was awful, but nothing was going to keep Jack down. “Come on, let’s get you drunk.”

He gave a grunt of assent, and together they went out to the sidewalk and headed toward the bar. They got one block and a man in dark suit dodged in front of them. “Jackson Haley, I just heard. I’m appalled. I’d like to help.” He handed Jack a card, said, “Call me,” and walked on.

Jack stared at the card, an expression of disbelief. “Who was that?” she asked.

He handed her the card. “Ambulance chaser.”

So not someone he knew, not a job offer. Kingston, Biddle, Alfredo and Low, Labor and Employment Law. “A lawyer came up to you on the street and handed you his card because he thinks he can help you.”

“He can’t.” Jack took the card out of her hand, crushed it and pitched it toward a trashcan. It missed and the wave of passing footsteps blew it out onto the road, where a bus with his face on it ran over it.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

The bus sat there in traffic and Derelie willed it to move, to evaporate, to be taken by aliens, anything but sit there rumbling, mocking them. It was unfathomably hurtful that Jack would go from savior to needing to be saved in the space of a day. That this morning the Courier wanted his face everywhere and tonight they had no role for him to play.

She pressed her face into his arm. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you

.”

He looked at the bus long and hard while it spewed diesel fumes and half the city pushed around them. “I can be fucking grateful there’ll be no more of that.”

They didn’t walk on till the bus passed, till Jack smoked a cigarette, and by the time they got to Donovan’s Bar it was jammed with Courier employees who let up a rowdy cheer when they came in. The whole editorial team was here. So was Phil, sitting awkwardly alone at the bar. Someone put a drink in Jack’s hand. Annie had packed Jack’s desk and brought the contents in a box and the irony of that, in the same week as Bix and his sad box had been all over the Courier’s pages, made Derelie want to take the contents of Jack’s desk and shove them one by one up Phil’s ass. She hoped there was a really enormous stapler in that damn box.

Monday morning she’d sit in an editorial meeting with Phil and there’d be no Jack sitting opposite, studiously ignoring her. There’d be no Jack to flirt with as the meeting ended or pass in corridors, hands grazing, eyes greedy and glancing. There’d be no Jack to play wait five and follow with as she arrived at work, and no one to check in with about what time she was leaving for the night. There’d be no Jack, full stop, in her work life and there was no way not to be deeply saddened by that, or by what that meant for the profession she’d chosen as her own, for the paper she’d moved across the state to work for.

She stood with Jack while Spin jumped on a chair and led a rousing toast.

“This week two titans of the city lost their jobs. One was a crook, a thief and a weasel. His name was Bob Bix, and our own Jack Haley brought him down. The other was a good guy, the best, a journalist and a hero.” There was a huge cheer, and Derelie tucked herself under Jack’s arm. Let everyone see what he meant to her on the night where the celebration was so bittersweet.

“Bix will go to prison. Jack will go on to defend the city for someone who appreciates what he does.” Another cheer. “This is a sad day for the Courier, for journalism. I might only be a sports writer—” that got a chuckle “—and robots are already taking over parts of my job, but I can’t help thinking this is a sad day for the whole city. Tomorrow, people are less protected from fraud, corruption, and here’s a ten dollar word for you, malfeasance—it means doing wrong, you knuckleheads—than they were today.” Spin raised his glass and the room followed. “To Jackson Haley, the Heartbeat of the City.”

Jack dropped his chin, closed his eyes as the response rang out. His body was taut. Derelie could feel muscles flexing and shifting though he was standing still, not something the one drink he’d had helped.

“I have to say something,” he said, and pulled away, going to the chair Spin stood on and replacing him.