Page 88 of Dirty As Puck
“I love you,” I whisper, and for the first time, I mean it aloud.
She smiles through her tears, and there’s a fierce, determined glint in her eyes. “I love you too.”
I grip her hand, feeling every ounce of us united, not just in desire, but in purpose. The world can try to tear us apart, but right now, we are unstoppable.
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The cursor blinks at me like it knows I’m stalling. My finger hangs over the publish button, but I can’t seem to press it.
The past month has been building toward this moment. Every sleepless night, every risk, all the heartbreak, and now all that stands between the world and the truth is one click.
My stomach knots. If this goes wrong, my career is finished for good. No newsroom will ever hire me. No editor will even consider my portfolio. But if it works… maybe the world will finally see Derek for what he is.
I think of Kai. The way his voice cracked when he told me he loved me, the raw pain in his eyes when he thought it was all over. That memory steadies and sharpens me.
This isn’t about fear anymore. It’s about justice. It’s about love. It’s about finally telling the one story that matters.
I press the button.
The screen refreshes, and there it is. My headline in bold at the top of a clean page: Derek Delaunay: A Two-Year Campaign of Stalking, Blackmail, and Orchestrated Scandals.
It’s my words, backed up with evidence. This article is my gamble.
At first, there’s silence. I stare at the screen, waiting for something, anything to happen.
Then ten minutes later, the notifications begin. A ping, then another. Someone shares the article on Twitter.
A blogger reposts it. My inbox lights up with alerts, my phone buzzing against the table.
The traffic counter jumps in real time. From fifty views, to a hundred, and then two hundred. It’s like watching a match burning dry grass. My words are spreading like wildfire.
Relief and terror crash over me at the same time. This is everything I wanted, and everything that I was afraid of. I curl my fists in my lap, forcing myself to breathe. The story is out now. There’s no undoing it.
And yet, despite the fear clawing at me, I can’t stop the rush of pride swelling in my chest. My voice is finally being heard.
The notifications keep pouring in, the sound filling the silence of my apartment. It’s finally happening.
The updates come in pieces, first through a brief phone call from Detective Alvarez, then in a blur of breaking news notifications that keep lighting up my screen.
“Derek’s investigator flipped,” Alvarez tells me. His voice is clipped, businesslike, but I hear the undercurrent of satisfaction.“He cut a deal to avoid prosecution. Now he’s handed over everything.”
I grip the edge of my desk, heart pounding. Everything.
Minutes later, the reports start rolling in. Raids at Derek’s apartment reveal multiple storage units, even his office.
Photos splash across the news feeds, boxes of surveillance equipment stacked like towers, rows of hard drives, thick binders filled with names and illegal transactions.
The camera flashes catch it all, revealing every ugly detail, stripped bare for the world to see.
I scroll through article after article, my chest tightening. It’s worse than I imagined. Years of stalking, payoffs, intimidation, every information I’d chased is now laid out, with hard evidence to back them up.
Part of me wants to cheer, to scream with the joy of justice being served.
This is what I fought for. This is proof that I wasn’t paranoid, wasn’t reckless, and certainly wasn’t wrong. But another part of me feels sick.
Derek didn’t just manipulate stories, he owned people. He toyed with their lives like they were nothing more than pawns on his board.
A breaking headline flashes across my screen, pulling me back.
