Page 12 of Trade It All

His smile shifts. Not gone. Just… different. He looks directly into the camera.

“Game tape,” he says, voice even. “And a nap.”

Simple. Easy. Like that’s all there is to it. Like there’s nothing else behind it.

“Riveting,” I mutter.

His mouth twitches. Then he steps past me, close enough that I can feel the shift in the air when he moves by.

And just like that—He’s gone.

I lower the camera slowly, staring at the space he just walked through for a second longer than I should.

Game tape…and a nap.

I glance down at the clip, replaying it quickly. Then I turn my camera off. Because I don’t need to see it again to remember it. Or the way he looked at me when he said it. I turn toward the tunnel, forcing myself to move. Because there’s work to do.

And I don’t need to be standing here wondering—If he took that nap alone.

Chapter 4

Dean

IknowIshouldhave kept walking.

That should be the easy part. The simple part. Maddie asked her question, I answered it, and now I should move on like it didn’t matter any more than the others did. Like the extra second she kept the camera on me didn’t settle somewhere under my skin. Like the way she looked at me before she finally forced out the question wasn’t enough to make me want to drag her into my office, shut the door, and ask her what the hell she was thinking looking at me like that.

Instead, I keep moving through the tunnel with my shoulders tight and my jaw set, trying to shake off the way my attention still feels caught on her. It’s ridiculous. It should be. She was standing there doing her job, filming content the same way she films all of us, and I answered the same question everyone else did. Nothing about it should feel loaded. Nothing about it should be stickingto me this hard. And yet the image follows me anyway—her tucked into that spot in the tunnel, phone in hand, trying so hard to look unaffected when I know damn well she filmed me longer than the others.

The problem with Maddie has never been that I don’t know better. That would almost be easier. If I were younger, less aware, less disciplined, maybe I could chalk it up to bad judgment or bad timing and move on. But I do know better. I know exactly how this looks. I know exactly where the lines are. She works for the organization. She’s younger than me. She’s close to the guys, woven into this team in a way that makes her part of what I’m responsible for protecting. She has a boyfriend. Every one of those reasons should be enough to shut this down before it ever has the chance to become something real.

The truth is, they would be enough if this were only about logistics. If this were only about the job, the age gap, the optics, the fact that she stands on the other side of several boundaries Ibuilt for myself long before she ever walked into this building. But the minute it becomes about her—about the way her smile slips before she forces it back into place, about the way exhaustion lives in her eyes even when she’s trying to charm the room out of noticing, about the way my body reacts to the sound of her voice saying my name—none of those reasons land the way they should.

That’s the part that pisses me off.

Because I know the line is there. I can point right at it. I just don’t feel it the way I’m supposed to anymore.

I push the door open expecting a few minutes of quiet before the rest of my routine starts. A little space to get my head back where it needs to be before puck drop. Instead, Camille is already inside, leaning against the edge of my desk like she belongs there, one ankle crossed over the other, her phone in one hand and a look on her face that says she’s been waiting just long enough to be annoyed about it.

Of course she has.

Camille never enters a room without looking like she planned it three days ago. Everything about her is polished—her hair, her clothes, the careful ease she wears like it came naturally when I know damn well it doesn’t. She cultivates herself the way people cultivate an image, and usually I can appreciate that sort of discipline in someone. Today, all it does is make the room feel crowded.

She pushes off the desk when I walk in and crosses to me with that small, practiced smile she uses when she wants something but hasn’t decided yet how obvious she’s willing to be about it.

“Finally,” she says, her tone light enough to pass for teasing if I didn’t know her better. “What took you so long?”

Her hand slides up my chest, smoothing over the lapel of my jacket like she’s correcting something. The gesture should be familiar by now. Maybe even comforting, if this were the kindof relationship either of us had ever actually built. Instead, I just stand there and wait for some part of me to respond to her touch. For something to spark. Some shift in my body. Some awareness.

Nothing happens.

Only minutes ago, standing in that tunnel with Maddie, I was aware of too much. The sound of her voice. The way her eyes dipped and lifted again. The way my pulse kicked the second she trained the camera on me. I felt every inch of space between us like it mattered. I felt the pull of walking too close to a line I already know I shouldn’t cross. I felt it all.

But with Camille’s hand on me now, I feel absolutely nothing. The contrast lands hard enough to strip away whatever patience I had left for pretending this arrangement still makes sense.

“Filming,” I say, stepping around her and setting my keys on the desk. “Something for Maddie.”

I don’t miss the way her face changes when I say Maddie’s name. It isn’t dramatic. Camille doesn’t do dramatic. It’s just a shift around the mouth, a coolness settling into her expression before she lets out a small scoff and folds her arms.