Page 42 of Making It Live!

"Careful."

He stopped, and his jaw set.For a moment I saw something I'd rarely seen from Harry — real irritation, banked behind his eyes, held in check by professionalism but visible at the edges.He was a man who cared about this show, who'd spent three years supporting me through every broadcast and every crisis, and I had just dismissed his honest assessment because it wasn't what I wanted to hear.

The irritation held for two seconds.Three.And then it dissolved, replaced by something else entirely.

A smile.Slow, quiet, spreading across his face like dawn breaking.It was a smile that said he understood something I hadn't told him — that he'd understood it for a while now, and had simply been waiting to see how long I'd keep pretending.Harry didn't say a word.He just sat there, wearing that knowing smile, and I felt more exposed than I had in thirteen years of live television.

"That will be all, Harry," I said.

He stood, straightening his new tie.Then he walked to the door, paused, and turned back.

"For what it's worth," he said, "I think the show has never been better.And I think that's because of both of you."

He left, closing the door softly behind him.

I stood in the center of my dressing room, fists unclenched now but hands trembling, and stared at the space where Harry had been sitting.Both of you.Which meant he'd noticed the same thing the audience had noticed, the same thing the ratings reflected, the same thing I'd been refusing to name for weeks: something was happening between me and Jimmy, and it was making the broadcast extraordinary, and I was the only person in the building still pretending I didn't know what it was.

I turned back to the vanity, sat down, and opened the Pinnacle file.I scanned the pages futilely, unable to read a single word.

* * *

The earpiece went in at 6:55.I braced myself.

The countdown began.The theme music rolled.The red light ignited on Camera Two, and I looked into it and became the man that millions of people trusted.

"Good evening.I'm Nelson Mackenzie, and this is Beacon News Tonight.We begin with an exclusive follow-up to our ongoing investigation into Pinnacle Pharmaceuticals.Tonight, new documents obtained by this network reveal that senior executives at Pinnacle were aware of inflated drug pricing as early as 2019 and actively concealed the data from federal regulators."

I hit the pivot, pulling from the prep notes Jimmy had delivered at three."The documents, which include internal emails and quarterly financial projections marked 'confidential,' paint a picture of a company that systematically prioritized profit over compliance, even as patients across the country struggled to afford life-saving medications."

I paused.The beat that let the audience absorb the ramifications of the story.

"Toss to the package, Camera Two."

Jimmy's voice.In my ear.I delivered the toss cleanly.The package rolled.

Something nagged at the edge of my awareness — a faint wrongness, like a picture hanging a degree off-level.I couldn't identify it.I watched the Pinnacle package on the monitor — four minutes of excellent investigative journalism — and pushed the feeling aside.I had a panel to prepare for.

The package ended.I turned to Camera Two.

"Joining us now to discuss these revelations: former FDA commissioner Dr.Patricia Luke, healthcare policy analyst David Kramer, and Pinnacle Pharmaceuticals spokesperson Lindsay Stein.Dr.Luke, let me start with you.These documents suggest a pattern of deliberate concealment.How significant is this?"

"The panel's running.Ninety seconds per guest.Standard rotation."Jimmy's voice was oddly flat in my ear.

I took the direction and moderated the panel — Luke on regulatory failures, Kramer on the policy angle, Stein getting her thirty seconds of corporate deflection before I cut her off with a question about the internal emails she clearly hadn't expected.The work was flawless.But the nagging wouldn't stop.Something about Jimmy's voice was different, and I couldn't pin it down, and not being able to pin it down was making me reach for the water glass more often than I needed to.

The panel ended and Jimmy's flat voice muttered, "Clean break.Two minutes.B-block on the other side."

I took a sip of water and stared at the monitor during the commercial, and that's when it clicked.Not what was in Jimmy's voice.What wasn't.

The warmth was gone.

The low register that settled at the base of my skull.The slight rasp when he was focused.The cadence that made every direction feel like it was meant only for me.Gone.All of it.Replaced by something efficient, professional, and completely empty.Jimmy's voice had been stripped to its mechanical parts — the information was there, the timing was right, but the texture had been removed as cleanly as if he'd peeled it off and left it at the door.

The commercial break felt like an hour.My body, which had been waiting for the next direction with its usual conditioned hunger, was getting nothing.The voice in my ear was delivering data.Just data.No warmth, no texture, no easy, Nelson.No stay with me.The room that had been warm for three weeks had gone cold, and I was only now realizing how much of Jimmy's heat I'd been depending on.

The break ended and the red light came back on.

The B-block was a live interview with a senator who'd called for a congressional investigation into Pinnacle.I conducted it with precision.The senator was combative, but I was sharper.Jimmy fed me a fact-check in real time — "He's wrong on the timeline.The documents predate his committee's review by eighteen months" — and the correction was accurate, useful, and delivered in a voice so flat it could have been generated by a machine.