Page 47 of Heat Unscripted

“No.”

“It’s a—” He stopped, brow drawing in, the scar through it catching the light. Reaching for the word.

“Production,” I said.

His eyes went a fraction wider. Then the grin came, slow, spreading. “Yeah.” He nodded, and the nod kept building. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. You’re running the board. I’m?—”

“The one who moves first. Who puts his body between her and anything that wants to hurt her. The thing that makes the space safe enough for the rest of us to work in.”

The grin softened into something quieter.

“And Bram?”

“Strategy. The long game. He’s already on it. That’s why he left. Not because he doesn’t feel it. Because he needs to build something solid enough to hold what he feels before he’ll trust it.”

Behind the door her breathing hitched, a single sharp inhale, the front edge of the next wave. Right on schedule.

I shifted the tone up a half-tone to meet the new tension in her breath, where she was now, not where she’d been. Still under hearing. Still more felt than heard.

Tuck watched my hands on the tablet. Quick, sure, the same way they move on a live mix.

“You’re running her through this,” he said. “Like a session.”

“It’s what I know how to do.”

“It’s what you’ve always done.” Very quiet now. “Just from further off.”

I didn’t answer. There was nothing to add. It was just true, sitting there on the cold floor between us, plain.

He picked up his coffee, drank, set it down again. Then he shifted his weight until his shoulder pressed into mine, a solid warm point of contact that said the thing his voice didn’t have to.

We sat together outside her door. The tone played. Her breathing climbed, crested, settled. The afternoon light moved across the hallway window.

Tuck’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and read the screen.

“Bram’s coming back.”

I nodded. “Good.”

“He says he doesn’t have a framework.”

“He doesn’t need one.”

Tuck looked at the phone, then the door, then me.

“What does he need?”

I gave the question the same attention I’d give a fault on the board. Read the variables. Found the answer.

“Us,” I said. “Holding the structure while he learns he doesn’t have to hold it alone.”

His shoulder pressed harder into mine. A nod I felt more than saw.

We waited. Behind the door her breathing steadied again. Twelve a minute, then eleven. The tone settled with her. Outside, the November sky was going down toward evening, and three blocks off, Bram St.James was walking home.

Then the front door opened. The sound carried through the house, the lock disengaging, footsteps on the hall floor. Even. Unhurried. The walk of a man who’d made a decision and was carrying it through without the framework he’d spent his whole life needing first.

His scent reached us before he did. Peppercorn, sharp at the edges, still carrying the claiming note he couldn’t switch off, but threaded now with something I hadn’t smelled off Bram before. Something under the control and the polish.