You Ruined Me on Live TV, So I Walked the Red Carpet With Him

The glass-walled conference room at Marcus’s office was completely quiet when I pushed the door open.

I expected a wall of publicists, network attorneys, and talent managers with prepared statements and NDAs. Instead, Jace sat alone at the center of the long table. His shoulders were slouched, the usual athletic arrogance gone from his posture. His eyes were bloodshot, fixed on a sealed white medical folder resting flat against the dark wood.

He didn't wait for Marcus to sit down. The moment I crossed the threshold, Jace slid the folder across the table toward me.

"The baby was mine," he said, his voice cracked and raw. "I had the lab rush the paternity test on the sample the hospital released through our attorneys. There's zero doubt. The baby was mine, Sloane."

I pulled out a chair and sat down. I didn't open the folder. I didn't even look at the red medical seal.

"I know," I said.

Jace flinched as if I had struck him. He leaned forward, resting both forearms on the table, his knuckles white. "My lawyers got the Four Seasons raw files too. I saw the service corridor. I saw the banquet cart tearing your dress. You were never in his bed. You never touched him."

"I know," I said evenly.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Jace stared at me, searching my face for relief, vindication, or tears. He found none of them. The desperate truth he had spent forty-eight hours unearthing wasn't a revelation to me. It had simply been my reality the entire time.

His jaw trembled. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a second set of documents, throwing them onto the table with unsteady hands.

"Tessa paid the paparazzi," Jace said, the words spilling out fast, desperate to clear the air. "My lawyers got the photo syndicate's invoice and payment confirmation. Her private PR agency transferred fifty thousand dollars at midnight before the game. She staged the whole thing. The angle through the window, the cropped footage, the leak to ESPN—she orchestrated all of it to ruin you."

I looked at the bank transfer receipts. "I know she set it up."

"Sloane, listen to me," he pleaded, standing up and closing the distance between us until he was gripping the edge of my chair. "You have to understand what happened that night. I had just won the biggest game of my career. Seventy thousand people were screaming my name. Forty million people were watching that broadcast. Then the reporter jammed that screen in my face. I thought my whole world had just been made a joke. I lost my mind. I reacted before I could think."

"You reacted," I repeated quietly.

"I was blindsided!" he said, his voice rising in panic. "Anyone in my position would have broken down! If I had known Tessa set it up—"

"I was pregnant," I cut him off, my voice dropping into a quiet, lethal register. "I was bleeding on concrete. And I was looking at you."

Jace froze.

"You didn't doubt me because Tessa lied to you," I said, looking right into his bloodshot eyes. "You doubted me because you needed an excuse to feel like the victim. And when I was lying at the bottom of those stairs, calling your name while my body was coming apart, you didn't look down to see if I was alive. You looked up to see if the cameras were rolling."

The color completely vanished from Jace's face. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"That wasn't Tessa's doing," I said. "That was you."

"We can fix this," Jace said, dropping down to one knee beside my chair. He reached out to take my hand, but I pulled it back onto my lap. "Sloane, please. I’ll call a press conference right now. Today. I'll get in front of every microphone in the country and take full accountability. I'll tell them the baby was mine. I'll expose Tessa's payments. I'll tell the world that I failed you, and I’ll take a suspension from the league if that's what it takes. Just come home. Let me bring you home."

Before I could answer, the glass door to the outer lobby opened.

Beckett Thorne stepped inside, holding a courier envelope containing the duplicate hard drive Marcus had requested for the discovery vault. He was dressed in a dark wool coat, his expression calm. He stopped the moment he saw Jace on his knee.

Jace snapped his head around. Seeing Beckett in the room ignited an instant, furious spark in his eyes.

Jace rose to his feet, his fists clenching at his sides. "What the hell are you doing here?" he snarled, taking a step toward Beckett. "Did you plan this? Were you hovering around my marriage the entire year, just waiting for things to crack so you could take her?"

Beckett didn't raise his hands. He didn't tense up or move an inch. He simply stood by the door, holding the envelope, his dark eyes steady.

I stood up and stepped directly between them, putting my back to Beckett and facing my husband.

"He didn't wait for my marriage to fail," I said, my voice cutting through Jace's rage like a blade. "He waited for me to ask for help."

Jace stopped dead in his tracks.

For three years, Jace had demanded that I bend to his schedule, his image, his family, and his public narrative. He had demanded explanations for things I never did, while Beckett had handed over every piece of evidence he owned and stepped five feet back to let me make my own choice.

Jace's shoulders dropped, his chest heaving as the contrast between them settled heavily in the room.

"Marcus," I said, turning slightly toward my attorney. "Bring the papers."

Marcus immediately walked around the table and set the blue-backed legal documents in front of me.

I picked up the pen. Without a moment of hesitation, I signed my legal name on the final line of the dissolution agreement.

I set the pen down, picked up my coat, and walked out of the conference room.

"Sloane!" Jace rushed out into the corridor behind me, his heavy steps echoing against the marble tile.

I reached the elevator bank at the end of the hall and pressed the down button.

Jace caught up, stopping just short of touching my shoulder. "I know the truth now," he begged, his voice trembling with desperate exhaustion. "I know everything that happened. Just come home. We can rebuild this."

I turned to look at him one last time.

"The truth didn't arrive late, Jace," I said softly. "You did."

The elevator chimed, and the brushed steel doors slid open.

Beckett was already standing inside near the control panel, holding the open button with his thumb. He didn't reach out to grab my hand. He didn't try to pull me into the safety of the car. He just held the door open, waiting for me to step across the threshold on my own terms.

I took a step forward and walked inside.

I turned around to face the front. As the heavy metal doors began to slide together, Jace stood alone in the bright fluorescent hallway, watching me stand beside the man he hated most in the world.

For the first time in my life, I didn't look back.