Chapter 1

The Leak

By seven fourteen on a Thursday morning, Jace Holloway’s face was already trending for the wrong reason.

He knew it before he even opened his eyes.

The vibration on his nightstand had started sometime around six, buzzing in uneven bursts against the cheap wood like it was trying to drill through it. He ignored the first few calls the way he ignored everything before sunrise, with a kind of stubborn contempt that had worked for him since high school. Sleep a little more. Check later. Nothing good ever came from people needing you before breakfast.

Then his phone lit up again.

And again.

Then a text from Micah came through.

Bro. Wake up right now.

A second text followed before Jace could even unlock the screen.

Do NOT open socials first. Coach wants you in the facility. Now.

That was what did it.

He pushed upright in bed, one hand dragging across his face, the room still dim with the watery gray of early morning. His off-campus apartment was quiet except for the hum of the air conditioner and the muffled rush of traffic a few floors below. On any other day he would have had another fifteen minutes before lifting, another ten before he had to become himself for other people. Today the silence felt staged, like the whole room knew something he did not.

He clicked into his messages anyway.

Twenty-three missed calls.

His quarterback coach.

His agent-adjacent marketing guy.

Micah.

An unknown local number.

Coach Wynn.

Three teammates.

His mother.

That last one made his chest tighten.

He clicked the top text thread from Micah, thumb moving faster now.

Jace stared at the preview thumbnail before he hit play.

The video was grainy, vertical, and no longer than twelve seconds. Shot from across a crowded room. Music thudding somewhere behind laughter and glass and the kind of loose-rich energy that clung to houses built for entertaining. There were bodies everywhere, shoulders and drinks and women in white and green and the blur of a party that had looked harmless two nights ago.

Then the camera tilted, found him, and steadied.

Jace, jaw tight, one hand shoving a man in a pressed linen shirt backward hard enough to send him into a side table. Someone yelled. Another voice snapped his name. The clip cut off right before the man regained his balance and right before Jace said the part that would have made the whole thing make sense.

The caption under it was worse.

MAGNOLIA STATE QB JACE HOLLOWAY CAUGHT AT BOOSTER PARTY DURING NIL ROLLOUT WEEK

The one below that was worse still.

Gifted truck in driveway too? NCAA should investigate this whole program.

Jace sat motionless for a second, then ran the clip again.

The temporary tags.

Of course they had caught the truck in the background.

Not clearly, not enough to read anything specific, but enough. Enough for people who wanted a story to build one. Enough for rivals, message boards, local reporters with a ring light and a deadline. Enough for every smiling donor at Magnolia State who treated privacy like an inconvenience to remember that athletes only stayed golden as long as they stayed useful.

His phone rang again.

Coach Wynn.

Jace answered on the third buzz. “Yeah.”

“Get dressed,” Coach Wynn said, no greeting, no softness. “Do not speak to anyone. Do not post anything. Do not text anybody back besides Micah if you need a ride. You understand me?”

Jace swung his legs off the bed. “I understand.”

“You at the apartment?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need you here in twenty.”

The line went dead.

Jace stared at his phone a moment longer, then opened the thread from his mother.

You okay?

That was it. Not what happened. Not what did you do. Not I told you so.

You okay?

He typed, I’m fine. Going to the facility now. I’ll call you later.

He hit send before he could decide whether the lie annoyed him.

He moved fast after that. Gray hoodie. Team-issued sweats. Shoes without socks. Keys. Wallet. Phone charger. He splashed water on his face in the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror only long enough to confirm what he already felt.

He looked tired.

Not guilty. Not panicked. Tired.

That almost made him angrier.

Two nights ago had been a dumb idea from the start. The lake house belonged to Camden Leland’s family, and Camden was exactly the kind of rich Southern almost-man Jace had spent the last four years pretending to tolerate for the sake of boosters, photographs, and donor golf events. The only reason Jace had gone at all was because half the team was already there and because one of Magnolia State’s media people had mentioned, too casually, that “a few important families” would be around before the collective launch next week.

Important families.

That was how people said power when they wanted it to sound harmless.

The house had been huge and loud and full of that expensive fake-casual energy people performed when they wanted athletes to feel included while still making sure everyone understood who really owned the room. Jace had smiled, shook hands, let one older man tell him his arm looked “worth every penny,” and spent most of the night trying not to lose his temper.

He had almost succeeded.

Until Camden made the comment to Nate.

Nate, a third-string receiver from Mobile whose father worked offshore and whose mother cleaned houses on weekends. Nate, who had gotten to Magnolia State on grit and speed and the kind of faith that still looked a little stunned when he pulled on team gear with his own name stitched above the chest.

Camden had laughed, drink in hand, and asked Nate whether he was planning to keep “acting humble now that the help gets paid too.”

The room had gone thin and sharp around the edges after that.

Jace remembered every second that followed. Nate going still. Camden grinning like cruelty was wit if your family donated enough buildings. Someone trying to redirect. Jace stepping in. Camden saying, “Relax, man, I’m basically funding the future here.”

Then Jace put a hand to Camden’s chest and shoved him back.

Not because he wanted to make a scene.

Because for one clean second he wanted Camden to feel exactly how little his money mattered when a six-foot-four quarterback with three hundred pounds of anger behind his shoulder decided he was done being polite.

Now the internet had twelve seconds and a truck in the background.

That was all anyone would need.

By the time he pulled into the football facility lot, the sun had climbed just high enough to make the whole building shine in clean white lines and tinted glass. Magnolia State’s athletic complex always looked like money from the outside. Sleek. Controlled. Untouchable. The kind of place donors loved and recruits photographed and administrators used as proof that college sports had become something bigger than college.

Jace parked beside Micah’s black SUV and killed the engine.

Micah was waiting outside the side entrance in slides and compression shorts, duffel bag hanging from one shoulder. He looked like he had been at the facility for hours already, which probably meant he had.

“That bad?” Jace asked as he got out.

Micah gave him a look that said don’t make me answer that. “You haven’t seen ESPN yet?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Jace shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket and followed him inside.

The facility was too bright this early. Too cold. TVs mounted above the nutrition bar were muted, but the closed captions were enough.

HOLLOWAY VIDEO CREATES QUESTIONS DAYS BEFORE MAGNOLIA STATE REVENUE MODEL ANNOUNCEMENT

BOOSTER TIES UNDER SCRUTINY

FUTURE OF STAR QB’S BRAND DEALS UNCLEAR

“Brand deals,” Jace muttered.

Micah handed him a bottled water from the cooler without breaking stride. “Drink something before they start asking you questions you’re supposed to answer like a human being.”

Jace cracked the bottle open. “Wasn’t planning on acting inhuman.”

“Give it time.”

They stopped outside the conference room nearest Coach Wynn’s office. Through the glass wall, Jace could already see the shape of the morning waiting for him. Coach Wynn at the head of the table. The athletic communications director. A compliance woman he did not know. One of the deputy ADs. His position coach. A man from the school’s external PR firm. Too many laptops. Too many coffee cups. Too many people who looked like they had been speaking about him for at least half an hour before he got there.

Coach Wynn opened the door before Jace could touch the handle.

“Inside,” he said.

Jace stepped in. Felt every eye catch and assess.

No one offered him a seat until Coach Wynn pointed to one.

“This is simple,” Wynn said once the door shut. “You are not in legal trouble as of this moment. You are not speaking publicly. You are not responding to texts, calls, or social media. You are not taking meetings outside this room unless they are approved. Understood?”

Jace nodded once.

“Good. We are gathering facts.”

“We already have facts,” Jace said. “I shoved him because he was talking reckless to Nate.”

The PR man leaned forward. “The issue is not what happened in your memory. The issue is what can be established publicly.”

Jace looked at him. “That the line y’all are going with?”

“No one is going with a line,” the deputy AD cut in quickly. “We are evaluating the situation.”

“The situation,” Jace repeated.

Coach Wynn’s voice sharpened. “Jace.”

He looked back at the coach and sat deeper in the chair. Fine. Let them call it what they wanted. A leak. A situation. A perception issue. College football had whole departments devoted to changing the names of ugly things.

The woman from compliance slid a printout across the table. “We need clarity on the vehicle shown in the background of the video. Temporary tags. Black truck.”

“It’s not mine,” Jace said.

The room stayed still.

He clarified, because that was how this worked now. “Not mine mine. It’s tied to a short-term content arrangement. They wanted me driving it for a social campaign next month. Paperwork’s in process.”

“With whom?” she asked.

“Leland Performance Auto.”

A silence fell that was somehow louder than the argument.

The deputy AD swore under his breath.

Coach Wynn pinched the bridge of his nose.

The PR man sat back like he had just been handed a gift.

Jace felt the heat rise under his skin. “It was supposed to be structured through the collective.”

“Supposed to be,” the compliance woman said carefully, “is not the same as completed.”

“They dropped it at my apartment Tuesday.”

“Who is they?”

“Some rep. I don’t know.”

Now everyone in the room looked like they wanted someone else to be speaking.

Coach Wynn finally did. “This is why we are bringing in additional review on all athlete-facing compensation exposure before next week’s rollout. We are not improvising this.”

Jace almost laughed at that. They had been improvising for months. Everybody in the building knew it. NIL had turned half the grown men in college football into frontier preachers and used-car salesmen overnight. Collectives. Brand partnerships. Appearance fees. Content campaigns. Everybody acting like they were building the future when really they were just finding new ways to funnel money through old loyalties.

A new voice came from the end of the table. One Jace had barely registered until now.

“We need the full timeline before this gets any wider.”

The woman speaking was younger than the rest, maybe late twenties, with dark hair pulled neatly back and a navy blouse crisp enough to look untouched by the panic in the room. A legal pad sat open in front of her, every line straight, handwriting precise. She had not spoken before, and the fact that she waited that long made Jace notice her more, not less.

“Who’s that?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

Coach Wynn glanced her way. “Interim review support from the athletic office.”

That was a dodge if Jace had ever heard one.

The woman met his gaze without flinching. “Your issue is no longer just the video. It is sequence. Who invited you. When the vehicle arrangement began. Whether anyone with donor status had involvement before paperwork cleared. If we do not know that by noon, the story gets written for us.”

Her tone was even, almost cold, but there was something under it. Not fear. Not condescension. Urgency without theater.

Jace leaned back in his seat. “And you’re who?”

Before she could answer, someone from outside opened the door and waved Coach Wynn into the hallway. The coach stood with visible irritation and stepped out, taking the deputy AD with him.

The woman closed her legal pad.

“We can do introductions later,” she said.

Jace held her gaze a second longer than necessary, then looked away first, which irritated him on principle.

Micah texted him from somewhere down the hall.

Who’s the ice queen?

Jace resisted the urge to smile.

No idea.

Across campus, in the west wing of the athletic administration building, Tessa Vale had already gone through two coffees and a fresh legal pad by the time her boss closed the office door behind him.

“You’ve had a busy first month,” Ben Mercer said.

Tessa looked up from the spreadsheet on her laptop. “Is that your version of an apology?”

Ben gave her the tired half-smile of a man who had built a career on sounding calm in rooms that were not. Associate athletic director for strategic initiatives. Forty-six. Expensive watch. Constantly performing reassurance even when he was the one bringing the fire.

“It is my version of warning,” he said.

She sat back slowly. “That sounds worse.”

“It is.”

Ben dropped a thick folder on her desk, then a printed stack of screenshots, media clips, reposted threads, and what looked like three versions of the same local sports site headline with slightly more panic each time.

Tessa took one look at the top screenshot and knew exactly which part of her morning had just ended.

Jace Holloway, turning in the grainy light of a leaked party video, shoulders squared, hand extended in a shove.

The tags on the truck were visible in the next image.

Not enough to identify clearly.

Enough to create disaster.

“When did this hit?” she asked.

“About an hour ago. It’s everywhere now.”

“And the truck?”

Ben exhaled. “Badly timed. Badly handled. Possibly defensible. We do not know yet.”

She flipped through the packet faster. Captions. Speculation. A clip from a morning show already discussing “pay-for-play culture.” A rival fan account implying Magnolia State was laundering donor money through marketing arrangements. A sports business reporter asking whether the university’s upcoming athlete compensation announcement was about to become “a case study in what not to do.”

Tessa set the packet down carefully.

“Who structured the deal?”

“Unclear.”

“That is not an answer.”