One thing is clear now.
This competition just got more dangerous.
And not because of the obstacles.
CHAPTER 8
BRON
The thing about catastrophe is that there’s always a beat right before the floor gives way.
A pause.
A breath.
A tiny, treacherous sliver of time where the world still looks intact, and if you’re stupid enough—or hopeful enough—you can almost believe the worst has already happened.
I’m standing in that beat when Captain Photonic decides to make it everybody’s problem.
Tilda has just walked away from me.
That’s the immediate condition of the room. The emotional weather system. She cut me to ribbons in a voice low enough not to trip the microphones, then left me standing there with half the reception pretending not to stare and the other half staring professionally.
Dax whistles softly beside me. “Well.”
I pick up the drink I don’t remember setting down and throw back the rest in one swallow. It tastes like citrus and chilled regret.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a whole paragraph out of one syllable.”
He lifts both hands. “Fair.”
Across the hall, Tilda is near the windows now, rigid as poured steel, a glass of water in her hand like she’s choosing civility one swallow at a time. She doesn’t look back.
Which, honestly, is probably for the best.
Because now that the first shock has worn off, my body is doing all sorts of treacherous things. Waking up old instincts. Old heat. Old pain. She’s here. Actually here. Not in a memory, not in a photograph worn soft at the edges, not in the private half-lit corner of my head where I keep all the conversations I ruined.
Here.
And furious.
Sonya strolls up on my other side with the air of a woman approaching an active crime scene for educational purposes. “So,” she says, “that went well.”
I cut her a look. “I hate both of you.”
“No you don’t,” Dax says. “You hate yourself and you’re projecting.”
Sonya snorts. “Damn. Straight to the organs.”
“I’m surrounded by therapists with poor boundaries,” I mutter.
Sonya glances toward Tilda, then back at me. “Ex?”
The word lands with too much weight for one syllable.
