“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry. I was aiming for mildly impressive.”
I laugh despite myself, and the sound seems to settle us both into an easier rhythm. We drift toward one of the quieter seating alcoves near the observation windows, a curved nook with low couches and a view out over the compound’s exterior lights. Beyond the glass, Fratvoy One’s night has settled in a deep indigo sweep over the training grounds, the distant floodlit arenas glowing like mechanical constellations. The glass is cool near my shoulder when I sit, and the seat dips under Bron’s weight a moment later, close enough that I can feel the warmth of him through the cushion but with a careful inch of spacebetween us. It is the kind of restraint that speaks louder than any touch.
For a little while we say nothing. The quiet is not empty. It has shape. Breath. History. I can hear the clink of mugs in the lounge behind us, the faint rattle of the vent system, the distant muted cheer from some late replay highlight on the overhead screens. Bron rests his forearms on his knees and looks out at the lit grounds for so long that I begin to think he might stay silent all evening. Then he says, very softly, “He called a duck suspicious.”
I close my eyes briefly. “Yes.”
“That’s incredible.”
“He has opinions.”
“He absolutely does.”
I turn the mug between my hands. “He likes you.”
Bron does not answer right away. When he does, his voice is rougher than before. “I know.”
“You didn’t expect that.”
“No.” He smiles faintly without humor. “Honestly, I expected a lot more distrust and maybe an object thrown at my head.”
“He saves that for people who earn it.”
“That’s comforting.” He exhales and leans back, tipping his head against the couch. “I don’t know what I was expecting. Something harder, maybe. Something I’d have to force my way through.” His gaze slides to me. “He just… looked at me and decided.”
“He does that.”
“Terrifying little talent.”
“It’s one of his best.”
The silence returns, but gentler this time. I feel the weight of everything unsaid between us and also the odd, careful mercy of not having to force it all into the room at once. We are not who we were. We are not yet whatever we might become. Weare somewhere in the hard middle where truth exists before structure does, and I suspect that is why I finally let myself say the thing I have been circling for days.
“I thought I was protecting him,” I say quietly.
Bron’s expression changes but he does not interrupt.
“I know what you were then,” I continue, the words slow because I am building them while I walk on them. “You were brilliant and magnetic and alive in ways that made everyone around you feel brighter. You were also impulsive, self-destructive, impossible to rely on when the situation required stillness instead of spectacle. When I found out I was pregnant, I could not think about romance or destiny or any of the things people say when they want love to fix logistics. I thought about rent. Sleep. Medical care. Safety. A child needing one adult in the room who did not treat danger like flirtation.”
Bron absorbs that without flinching, which almost hurts more than if he had.
“I know,” he says.
“I didn’t do it to punish you.”
“I know that too.”
I swallow. The tea has gone cooler in my hands. “I also didn’t revisit the decision honestly once I’d made it. I kept telling myself the same story because the alternative was admitting I might have taken something from both of you.”
At that, something flickers across his face—pain, yes, but not accusation. “Tilda.”
“No, let me finish.” My voice is steadier now that I’ve begun. “I am not saying I was entirely wrong. I’m saying I stopped checking whether I was still right.”
He sits very still beside me. Through the glass, arena lights blink in measured sequence across the dark grounds. Somewhere behind us, someone laughs too loudly and is immediately shushed.
“When I saw you with him,” I say, “I realized he trusted you before I gave him any reason to. That matters to me. And watching you these last challenges…” I let out a breath that feels like I have been holding it for months. “I don’t know what to do with the fact that you keep becoming someone I can’t dismiss anymore.”
Bron turns fully toward me then, one arm along the back of the couch, not touching, not trapping, just present. “You don’t have to do anything with it tonight.”
