“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Franky asked from around their computer monitor.

Christian looked up. “Hmm?”

“You’ve been humming for the last half an hour.” Franky’s eyes lit up. “Is it a guy? Tell me everything.”

“Oh, um… no, it’s nothing.” His heart beat fast in his ears, and he prayed to anyone listening that his cheeks weren’t giving him away. He’d always been cursed with blushing when he told a lie. “I’m just having a good day, is all. I think I’m going to get that piece on Keiynan Lonsdale done early and I got to meet up with an old friend night before last.”

“And would this ‘old friend’ happen to be the same old friend you refer to in your blog post?”

Christian bit his lip. It was so tempting to give in and say yes. So far, the only people who knew about his relationship with Jonah were Mason, Aspen, and Kyle, and only one of those was in LA. It would just be nice to have someone to talk to about the whole thing. But they literally worked for a celebrity news magazine that wouldn’t hesitate to publish the story, just so they could be the first to break the news.

Franky sat back in their chair. “That tells me everything I need to know.” They caught Christian’s expression and grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you about it. You’ll tell me when you tell me.”

At least they didn’t demand answers like some would. “Thanks,” Christian said with a small smile. “Trust me, I want to tell you, I just… can’t.”

“Hey. I get it. I’ve been with closeted guys before, and let me tell you, it can be rough. I can’t even imagine how much worse it is for someone who’s already in the public eye.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Eden’s voice carried across the bullpen. “Christian, can I see you in my office for a moment?”

Looking up, he found her standing in the doorway, her expression grim. Had he already been fired? Maybe she’d decided that his blog post didn’t qualify him for the job after all.

“Go on, you’ll be fine,” Franky said.

Christian wished he could believe them. Pushing away from his desk, he crossed the room, feeling everyone’s eyes on his back.

As soon as he walked into the office, Eden shut the door behind him. “We need to talk,” she said. She motioned for him to take a seat in the chair across from her desk, so he did.

“What’s going on?” he asked, trying to keep his panic at bay.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come right out with it. We know who your mystery man is.”

The blood in Christian’s veins froze. No. No, no, no this couldn’t be happening. He hadn’t mentioned anything about where he’d grown up or given any indication who he’d been writing about. If they broke the story, Jonah would hate him. Being outed by the magazine where his own boyfriend worked? That was, if Jonah still wanted to be with him, which was highly doubtful.

He swallowed hard, his heart beating erratically. “How do you know?”

“I’ve been looking into it,” she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It really wasn’t that hard to figure out where you lived. You can find it with a quick Google search. I looked through your blog for any clues about where you’d grown up. Once I found that, it was just a matter of finding the actors who’d grown up in the same area. I narrowed it down to two, but then I found out your roommate Mason has a very famous cousin. You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

Of course he did. He was the one who’d written the damn blog post. This was all just for effect, and that had him clenching his fists in rage. Rather than giving Eden the satisfaction of answering, he glared at her and waited for her to say it.

“Jonah McGreggor. You fucked Jonah McGreggor in Kentucky and wrote about it in your blog post.”

“You have no proof,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Really? Well then, what’s this?” She opened a folder that was sitting in front of her and handed over a picture she’d printed out.

Jonah stood with his arm slung around a young fan in the middle of Kroger, grinning into the camera. Goddammit. He’d forgotten all about that little publicity stunt. It had seemed so harmless at the time. Jonah had been in his element, his charm turned up to a hundred as he spoke with each and every fan who approached him.

Christian took a closer look at the picture. For someone who’d met a celebrity, sarabara205 had surprisingly few notes. And few followers, too. It hit him, then—her account was locked. Unless someone was following her, they couldn’t see her posts.

“I have two questions for you. First of all, how did you know where to find this picture? And second, how did you convince a pre-teen girl to let you follow her?” It raised all sorts of ethical alarm bells in his mind.

“You know how these things go. It just took some digging. Her mother made a Facebook post about her daughter getting to meet her favorite actor, and I went from there.” She shrugged. “As for following her, what pre-teen would say no to being followed by one of the top celebrity magazines in the country? It was easy as pie.”

It still didn’t make sense. Why go through all of this trouble to figure out who the celebrity was? No one else had. In fact, they seemed happier buzzing about who it could possibly be than trying to figure it out.

“Why does it matter so much to you?” he asked. “There are so many other stories out there you could have latched onto. Why this one? I mean, did you seriously uproot my entire life just to ruin it in California?” That would be a sick fucking scheme if it were the case.

Eden frowned. “Ruin your life? Absolutely not. I wanted to give you an opportunity to advance your career, and here it is.”

“Yeah, sorry, but I don’t exactly see anything that involves my career here.”

“That’s because you’ve been too busy interrogating me to let me speak.” She sat up a little straighter in her chair and squared her shoulders. “So here’s the deal. Alpha Flight is having their press tour in four days. I’m assigning you that story. I want you there, in the front row.”

Well that was… an abrupt turn of events. She’d gone from threatening to out his boyfriend to offering him a huge story. He didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“Why?” he asked

“Insurance. You have four days to get an exclusive interview with Jonah that’ll go on our website. If you don’t, right before the tour, I’ll release the photo and write the story myself.”

Christian laughed without humor and crossed his arms. “You know, I’ve never been blackmailed before. Turns out, I’m not really a fan. Is this what you do to all your new employees? You hold things above their head so they’ll work for you?”

Eden shook her head. “I haven’t needed to until now.”

“So why now? Why me? Why have you taken such a sick interest in mine and Jonah’s personal life.”

For the first time, her cool, composed mask slipped, and Christian caught sight of something close to fear.

“The magazine isn’t doing as well as it has been,” she admitted. “We’ve lost a fair bit of our revenue and if things don’t change, we’re in very real danger of having to make some cuts. I have to think about my business. This story could be what turns us around.”

If not for the fact that she was blackmailing him, Christian would have almost felt sorry for her. He’d seen how difficult it was to run a magazine. Deke had been forced to lay off some reporters a few years back, and it wasn’t a good feeling. Under different circumstances, he would have jumped to help her. But now, he just wanted to figure a way out of this.

“Y’know, this doesn’t exactly inspire loyalty, and after this is all over, I can’t see how I can keep working for you.”

“I figured as much. I’ll even write you a glowing recommendation letter.” She smiled, her icy demeanor thawing somewhat. “I hope you understand this was nothing personal. There are too many people counting on me for their jobs.”

“I don’t care.” If he was going to be leaving the company anyway, he wasn’t overly-concerned with staying on her good side. “I care that you took advantage of me and Jonah and that you’re holding this above our heads like some kind of sick sword of Damocles.”

“There’s nothing I can do, Christian. You have four days to get the interview. I expect it to be done.”

Her tone signaled the end of the conversation, so Christian stood and walked out of the office, leaving the door open behind him. If she wanted it closed, she could damn well do it herself. He took a slow breath, doing his best to keep a neutral face as he made his way back to his desk. Knowing his luck, someone would see his expression and start a rumor about him in the office.

Franky turned as Christian approached the desk and stood. “Let’s go to lunch, hmm?” they said.

Instead of waiting for Christian to respond, they looped their arm through Christian and led him toward the elevator. It was only once the doors had closed that they turned and faced him.

“Okay, spill,” Franky said. “You look like you’re about to murder someone.”

“That obvious, is it?” He didn’t even try to keep the venom from his voice. “I’m going to say this where no one can hear us, since it’s going to come out anyway, but you’re not to mention his name after these doors open. The guy in the article was Jonah McGreggor.”

Franky’s eyes went wide, and their mouth dropped comically open. “Are you shitting me?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“He’s never even given off any signals, and trust me, I know all of them,” they said with a grin.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Christian shot Franky a look, and they made a show of zipping their lips.

“He didn’t know,” Christian said. “He sort of… found out while we were at the cabin.”

“Oh, so it was like that, was it?” They turned left out of the building and headed down the sidewalk toward a parking lot where several food trucks gathered.

It was hard to describe just what it was like. He’d known plenty of guys to sleep with other guys who thought they were straight, but this was different. Jonah was different. Even if he was still insisting they keep things quiet for the time being.

“Can I ask something?” Franky asked, getting in the Korean food truck line. “Why did you tell me this now? I’ve been asking you for weeks.”

The anger inside Christian, which had died down to embers during their walk, flared back to life now. “Because your boss is blackmailing me.”

Franky gaped, looking around to make sure no one had heard. “She what?”

“She told me if I don’t get an interview with him by the time of his movie’s press tour, she’s going to leak the story.” Christian gritted his teeth together, then forced himself to unclench them. “The magazine isn’t doing well, so she needs a few big stories to raise public interest.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. I knew things were bad, but I didn’t know just how bad they were. She’s got to be desperate. The Eden I know would never have done something like this.”

Christian didn’t particularly care whether this was typical of Eden or not. What mattered was that she was doing this now. To him.

“There’s more,” he said, taking a step forward as the line moved up. “I told her this, but I figure I might as well give you the same courtesy. After the press tour, I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t work with a boss who blackmailed me. I just can’t.”

Franky pressed their lips together and sighed. “Yeah,” they said with a nod. “I can’t say I blame you for that one. Eden’s a great boss, but if she did that to me, I would walk out and not look back.”

At least they understood the position Eden had put Christian in. He’d gotten off to a rocky start with Franky, what with their brusque, to-the-point attitude, but really, they weren’t so bad after all.

“If you want to stay in LA, I have plenty of contacts in the city,” Franky continued. “I could try to find you something that’s a little more your speed. Less gossip-y.”

Christian smiled. “Thanks. I would really appreciate that. I’ve always wanted to tell human-interest stories with an LGBT slant, so anyone you might know there…”

“You know? I think I know just the girl.”