Which, fair enough.
Every absurd piece of the past slams into the present at once. Her in my kitchen years ago stealing food off my plate. Her under city rain with her hair plastered to her face and her eyes on me like I was either salvation or a mistake. Her in that doorway at the end, looking tired enough to leave me for good.
And now here.
In this room.
On this planet.
At this godforsaken event.
“No,” I hear myself say softly.
Dax, beside me, frowns. “What?”
I don’t answer.
Because Tilda is still staring at me, and I know that look.
It is not fondness.
It is not relief.
It is not remotely safe.
It is shock sharpened into fury so fast it barely has time to wear a proper face.
And with a cold, clean drop through the center of my body, I understand something else.
This isn’t just impossible.
This is catastrophic.
CHAPTER 7
TILDA
There are certain sounds your body remembers before your mind does.
A child’s cry. A door slam in the middle of the night. The particular silence that means something has gone wrong.
And Bron’s laugh.
It hits me from across the reception hall like somebody drives a blade of hot glass straight between my ribs.
I go perfectly still.
One second I’m standing near a tall arrangement of silver branches pretending to listen to a sponsor rep explain “cross-platform resilience branding.” The next, the room shears sideways around that laugh—low, rich, warm with wicked amusement, too loud to be polite and too alive to mistake for anyone else.
No.
My first thought is that exhaustion has finally tipped me into hallucination.
My second is worse:of course it’s him.
Because if the universe has one reliable habit, it is this—whenever my life becomes barely survivable, Bron appears likean especially handsome natural disaster to test the structural integrity.
The sponsor rep is still talking.
