Page 123 of The Goat in the Bedroom
“I... maybe. I don't know. It's all mixed up with friendship and not wanting to ruin things and thinking I was too much for anyone?—“
“Too much?” Penelope interrupted. “Honey, have you seen how that man looks at you? You're not too much. You're exactly enough.”
“Kelsey says the same thing about Declan looking at her,” I admitted.
“Because it's a Kingman thing. They don't do anything halfway. When they love, they love with everything.” She grinned. “So you better be ready for a proposal sooner rather than later.”
“We just got together.”
“And he's probably had a ring picked out since Edinburgh.”
“He does not have a ring picked out.”
Penelope just smiled knowingly and returned to her spreadsheets.
On Wednesday, just before the boys left for practice, Tempest and Flynn burst through the front door.
“We found it,” Tempest announced, and held up her laptop that showed Parker on the screen. “The smoking gun.”
“What kind of gun?” Bridger asked.
“Sloane Mitchell was sued by three of her USC tennis teammates for invasion of privacy. She secretly recorded them in the locker room kissing and tried to sell the footage to a gossip site. They settled and it got buried.”
“Holy shit,” Flynn breathed.
“It gets worse,” Tempest added. “She was an assistant producer on two other reality shows. Both were canceled after participants complained about coercion and blackmail. There's a pattern.”
“But here's the really dangerous part,” Parker said from the video feed. “I've been digging through her old social media posts.She genuinely believes she's helping. She thinks forcing athletes out of the closet is a noble calling. That she's saving them from themselves.”
“Villains who think they're heroes are the most dangerous kind,” Tempest said quietly. “They'll justify anything in service of their 'greater good.'”
By Wednesday night, tension filled the house like a living thing. Gryff couldn't sit still, pacing while fielding texts from increasingly anxious players.
“What if it doesn't work?” he said suddenly.
“It will work,” I said firmly.
“But what if?—“
Vincent, apparently fed up with the pacing, positioned himself directly in Gryff's path. Gryff tripped, barely catching himself on the coffee table.
“Even the goat thinks you need to calm down,” Flynn observed.
“I can't calm down. Seven guys are counting on me?—“
“On us,” I corrected. “They're counting on us. All of us. You're not carrying this alone.”
Holly chose that moment to eat Penelope's color-coded index cards, scattering carefully organized chaos everywhere.
“Your goats are agents of chaos,” Penelope said, trying to save her system.
“Chaos is what we need,” Bridger said from the dining table. “Sloane thinks she can control the narrative because she's used to people being isolated, scared, alone. She's never faced a united front like this.”
“A family,” Tempest added via video call from her place.
“Exactly. And families protect each other.”
We had our plan. Friday morning, we would confront FlixNChill's executives with everything. All seven players wouldstand together, either in person or via video. The evidence against Sloane would be presented. And if they didn't act...
