Page 74 of Making It Live!

Was I falling in love with him again?

The question nearly took my breath away.It wasn't just the nostalgia, or the chemistry.It was the way my heart hurt at the thought of him having to make this choice.It was the way I wanted to protect him from the very people who claimed to be protecting him.

I wasn't just falling for the Anchor.I was falling for the man I'd broken once before, and the thought of him being broken again because of me was more than I could stand.

ChapterTwenty-Nine

Nelson

The script pages had stopped meaning anything an hour ago.I'd read the open four times and couldn't have told you what was in it.The words were just shapes on the page, blurring under the punishing white of the vanity lights, and my fingers kept finding the same dog-eared corner like a worry stone.

I checked my phone.The screen stayed black, the way it had been staying black all afternoon.Three texts.Two missed calls.Nothing.

That was what I couldn't get past.Not the silence itself — Jimmy could be a fortress when he wanted to be — but what the silence meant.Jimmy didn't miss check-ins.He didn't let things drift.He was the man who knew the satellite feed was going to drop before the feed knew it, the metronome under everything I did, and somewhere in the past five hours he'd stopped keeping time.

Something was wrong.I didn't know what, but I knew something was wrong.

The door opened and my heart pulled hard against my ribs before my brain caught up.Just Harry.Garment bag over one arm, glancing at his watch.

"Harry."I straightened."Where's Jimmy?He isn't on his office line and he's not picking up his cell."

He hung the bag without quite looking at me.Odd.Harry always looked at me.He was the only person in this building who looked at me like he wasn't waiting for a verdict.

"Haven't seen him since lunch."A beat too long before the next part."I assume he's in the booth.There's something wonky with the London satellite."

"Since lunchis five hours, Harry."

"I'm sure he's fine."

He turned, and the door was halfway closed before I could push him further.I wanted to, but Brad came in like a roiling weather system — the high frequency of a man perpetually three minutes behind schedule — and the moment was gone.

"Don't tell me you're still out of the jacket, Nelson."He thudded the bag onto the vanity."Twenty minutes to teaser and you currently look like a beautiful man who just napped through a coup.We need The Nelson Mackenzie."

"Brad.Not today."

"Oh, is it the day where I pretend I don't notice?"He snapped the cape around my shoulders and tipped his head, peering at me in the mirror the way he peered at lighting — diagnostically, without apology."Pupils like map pins.Skin gone gray.If I didn't know you better I'd say you were having an actual feeling."

"Brad."

"Stop.Emotions are terrible for the foundation."

He started in, hands moving faster than his mouth, which was a feat.I sat there because in seventeen minutes I was going on live television, and I let him paint me into the creature the camera knew.Underneath the cape my phone screen timed out, twice, and I watched it black itself in the mirror.Each time I felt something inside me drop one more inch.

* * *

The studio at four minutes to air had the temperature of a meat locker and the quiet of a held breath.The cameras stood like the mechanical long-legged animals they were, red eyes still asleep.A floor director crossed in front of me without a sound; everyone moved the way they moved before air, light on the balls of their feet, all the noise saved up for later.

I sat at the desk.Smoothed the line of my jacket.Reached for the earpiece.

My hand was shaking.Not much, but enough that I noticed and forced it to stop.

I looked up at the glass.

The control room cut a band of white light across the dark and there Jimmy was in the EP chair, the silhouette I knew by the shape of the shoulders alone.He wasn't moving.He was staring at the wall of monitors the way you look at something you don't quite see.

But he was there.And I could breathe again.

"Sixty seconds, Nelson, Marla."A voice said in my earpiece.