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Cilla shook her head with indignation, but her hair didn’t move. “For which I will sue.”

“Try. Try and sue me, hairspray.”

“Ms. Tattersall, please. This isn’t helping.” Carver was starting to lose his patience.

Josh held up his arms and stood between them.

“Didn’t see that coming, did she?” Elise huffed. “I sprayed her like a roach and then sat on her fake tits till the cavalry arrived.” She extended a grateful arm to Hurley and Vasquez by the door.

Josh couldn’t help but crack a small smile. Trust Elise to go toe-to-toe with an unhinged reporter. Under different and less grueling circumstances, the image of Elise sitting on top of Cilla, Josh’s jockstrap and a can of pepper spray in hand, would have been hilarious.

“Soon as we showed up, Ms. Tattersall demanded a lawyer and a rabies test,” Officer Vasquez added dryly. “She had completely incapacitated the suspect.”

“Rabies test?” Josh asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Indeed.” Carver’s lips twitched ever so slightly.

Elise gestured impatiently at Cilla. “Look at her. I can only imagine where that mouth has been.”

“Gotcha,” Josh muttered, trying to maintain a serious demeanor. But he couldn’t shake off the nagging sense that all this would reach Tyler somehow, that pressing actual charges wouldn’t help anyone but the sleazy media. “Thanks for having my back, Elise.”

“Always, hot stuff,” she replied.

Absurd. But then everything seemed absurd. This is what happens when you date out of your league. Literally. In Tyler’s world, the Swells could just bribe someone or hire a crisis management team to make things disappear. But Josh was just a high school coach who still lived eleven miles from the house where he was born.

This entire farce—Cilla’s relentless pursuit of a scandal, the catfight with Elise, the cops looming on the sidelines—weighed heavily on Josh. It was up to him to decide how things would proceed from here. What would be best for Tyler? For himself? And, ultimately, for their relationship?

“Josh, are you okay?” Carver asked, concern etched on his face.

Josh realized he’d been lost in thought, staring into the empty hallway. “No. Yeah. This could get really ugly.”

Carver nodded at Elise, Cilla, the cops getting impatient by the door. “You see my dilemma.”

“Y-yeah,” he breathed out, forcing a smile. “Thank you for calling me before anything official happened.”

Tall and composed, Carver ran a head over his bald head before looking up from the floor. His deep voice resonated in the otherwise silent office. “Josh, as the principal, I need to report Ms. Miller’s break-in, theft, and assault of a staff member… officially. The county should know. The school board should know. This is a serious criminal matter.”

Cilla, her red hair gleaming under the harsh lights, screwed up her face. “Sure, sure. You want this whole misunderstanding all over the media. I don’t think Mr. Ayres is equipped for that. Relationships are fair game.” She stared at him, the threat direct. “Look, Tyler Fantana is a public figure, and so you are a public figure. Clickbait.”

Josh clenched his fists and took a deep breath to calm himself. The scent of floor cleaner and stale air filled his nostrils.

Cilla huffed and scowled at them all in turn. “None of this is real. ‘America’s Tightest End’ is a character. A product. Quid pro quo. Grow up. Captain Fantastic? It’s a trade.” She exhaled in a puff of indignation. “I am doing my job here.”

She just wanted the headlines. He had to do something. Myra Waxman had taught him a powerful lesson about letting assholes slide. He glanced at Elise, who stood by his side, her eyes narrowed and lips pressed into a thin line.

Carver shook his head. “It has to be your call. The officers understand.”

Officer Vasquez nodded. “What you did for my kid? I can never repay you, Coach. So we can book her or we can call it in as a false alarm. Miss Tattersall and Principal Carver just have to press charges.”

“Or not.” Carver watched him. “And that’s why we called you here. We will have to report a break-in, but identifying a culprit is a whole other deal.”

“Josh,” Elise said, “you know what I want. But this is your life. Your boyfriend. Your privacy. Your jockstrap.” She glared at Cilla. “You decide. Whatever you want, I want. Press charges, file a complaint, let her off with a warning, strip her naked and dump her out in the desert to crawl home over hot sand?”

Swallowing hard, Josh turned his gaze to Cilla. Even with the puffy, smeary eyes, her faux victimhood only fueled his frustration. Myra had pulled the same crap: boo-hoo, poor me. “I need an explanation, Cilla. A believable one…. I’m waiting.”

Cilla’s runny eyes flicked to the bitemark, the jockstrap, the cops, the desk, her cuffed wrists. “I don’t think I should say anything else, actually.”

“Wow.” Josh frowned. “Nothing…. You can’t even manage a lie. So you ‘accidentally’ entered a locked school, ‘mistakenly’ searched a locker room full of kids’ gear, and ‘inadvertently’ picked that lock before my used jockstrap and private files ‘happened’ to fall upwards into your brassiere? Seriously? That’s your play.”