Eliot Nash's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Eliot Nash needed one interview to save his career, and he had lied to get it. The reclusive star only opened his locker room to committed couples. So Eliot told his editor that he and his rival columnist were dating. Now he sat at his newsroom desk, tie loose, hair a mess, waiting for the lie to crack. It cracked in the shape of a coworker two desks over. She leaned in, phone recording, grinning like a shark. "So how long have you two been hiding this?" she asked. "Readers would love it. Two rival writers, secretly in love. I could run it tomorrow." Eliot's stomach dropped. One printed story and the star's people would smell the setup. The interview would vanish. He needed proof of a real romance, fast, before she filed anything. He grabbed his coat. "Come with me," he said. "You want the real story? See it yourself." He walked her to a flower shop he passed every morning. Inside, the florist looked up, a pen tucked behind her wild red hair, ink on her freckled fingers. Buckets of prairie blooms crowded the counter. "I need something that looks like I mean it," Eliot said quietly. The florist studied his face. She pulled slender stems into a loose, bright cluster of daisies and coneflowers. "For someone you're pretending about," she said, not asking, "or someone you're scared about?" Eliot didn't answer. She tucked a small card into the wildflowers and slid it across. "On the house. My notes always come out honest, even when I don't mean them to." The coworker watched, camera still up. Eliot paid, took the bouquet, and turned so she could see the card. On it, the florist had written a line about two stubborn people who kept circling each other. It read like something private. "You bought her flowers before an interview?" the coworker said. Her grin faltered. The gesture looked too small and too dumb to fake. "Every time she covers a game she hates," Eliot said. The lie came easy because part of it wanted to be true. Back outside, his rival was waiting near the newsroom door. He handed her the bouquet in full view of the coworker. His rival blinked, surprised, then caught on and smiled for the camera. She read the card. Her cheeks went red, and that reaction was real. The coworker lowered her phone. "Fine," she said. "Not much of a scoop anyway. Two boring lovebirds." She deleted the clip and walked off. The threat was dead. But Eliot's rival still held the card, reading it a second time. "Who wrote this?" she asked. Her voice had lost its usual edge. Eliot didn't have an answer. The florist's honest line had done its job too well. He had saved the interview and killed the gossip. Now he stood on the sidewalk with a woman he'd been fighting for years, both of them holding proof of a feeling neither had planned to have.