“I do. The answer is no.”
His brows pull together. “Not even for five minutes?”
“Especially not for five minutes.”
“Tilda.”
“Bron.”
He lets out a breath, glances at the people orbiting us, then back at me. “You’re really going to do this here.”
I almost laugh at that. The nerve. The sheer polished nerve of a man who once vanished whenever consequences started asking for forwarding information now sounding inconvenienced that I won’t grant him privacy.
“I’m not doing anything,” I say. “You walked over here.”
“That’s fair.”
“Yes.”
He shifts his weight, and I catch the smallest break in his composure. A hitch. A real one. It does something ugly to my chest.
His voice goes soft again. “I didn’t expect?—”
“No,” I cut in. “You rarely did.”
There. That one lands deep.
His jaw tightens.
Good.
A reporter’s laugh peals from the far side of the hall. Somewhere near the sponsor displays, somebody claps. The room feels overbright, every reflective surface catching light and throwing it back at us.
Bron looks at me for another long second. “All right,” he says. “Then I’ll keep it simple.”
“Oh, that would be new.”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
I blink at him.
Not because the sentence is extraordinary. Because he says it without performance. No wink. No shield. No little throwaway grin to dull the edge of sincerity. Just the truth, standing there between us in polished shoes.
My reaction is immediate and vicious.
I put my hand on the table beside me to keep from doing something theatrical. “Do not,” I say very quietly, “stand there in a sponsor suit at a televised reception and tell me you’re glad I’m here like that means something.”
His gaze doesn’t move from mine. “It does mean something.”
“To you, maybe.”
“Yes,” he says.
I hate the steadiness of that answer.
I hate that some tiny ruined part of me still recognizes the difference between his easy lies and the moments when he stops decorating himself and just says what’s true.
So I go colder.
