People are openly watching now. Contestants, reporters, sponsors, crew—every eye near enough to angle our way does. The screens above continue to pulse with our names. The music has shifted back to something grand and romantic and deeply offensive.
Tilda doesn’t move to meet me. She stands planted, one hand still wrapped around her water glass, gaze fixed on me with a level of warning that would stop a less committed idiot.
I am, alas, a very committed idiot.
When I reach her, I throw one arm around her shoulders with all the triumphant, incredulous energy currently overrunning my better judgment.
“There you are,” I say, looking up at the screen and then back at her with a laugh still in my voice. “We’re a theme.”
The contact lasts less than a second.
Tilda jerks out from under my arm like I’ve slapped her.
Not a startled flinch. Not a shy withdrawal.
A clean, immediate, furious shrug-off that creates distance with surgical precision.
My hand drops to empty air.
The room audibly reacts.
There’s a sharp scatter of laughter from one side, a collective inhale from the contestants nearest us, and somewhere behind me a reporter makes the delighted little sound of someone who just got exactly the footage they wanted.
Of course the cameras catch it.
Of course they do.
A drone dips so low I can see my own expression reflected in its lens for one embarrassing instant—half-grin, half-shock, hit by reality mid-performance.
Tilda turns to me, her voice low enough that only I and the closest scavengers can hear it.
“Don’t touch me.”
Every syllable is ice.
The grin dies properly this time.
Something in my chest gives a small, painful twist. Deserved. Entirely deserved. Still sharp.
I lift both hands in surrender. “Right. Sorry.”
Around us, the atmosphere crackles. The audience doesn’t know the details, but they know tension when they smell it. Producers will be wetting themselves somewhere offstage. Captain Photonic, still grandstanding above the crowd, is probably adding our names to whatever private list he keeps labeledexcellent television.
Dax and Sonya have drifted closer without admitting it, drawn by the same appalled curiosity as everybody else.
Dax mutters, “I cannot believe you did that.”
“I can,” Sonya says. “That’s the upsetting part.”
Tilda doesn’t spare either of them a glance. Her attention is still on me, razor-thin and deadly.
“Was there a specific reason,” she asks, each word exquisitely controlled, “you thought that was a good idea?”
“Not good,” I admit. “Impulsive.”
“That is not better.”
“No.”
