5. Marcus #2
When I pull back, the flashes explode. It should be enough. It is enough until someone laughs.
“That’s not a real kiss.”
The words cut through the lobby. For half a second, no one else speaks. Even the cameras seem louder in the space that follows, shutters snapping too fast, too bright, too eager.
Sloane doesn’t look toward the voice. She looks at me instead, and the moment her attention locks onto mine, I know exactly where the mistake is. Not with her. With me.
Because there is something in her face that I was not prepared to see.
Not embarrassment. Not anger. Something quieter.
Tighter. A flash of refusal buried beneath all that control.
The kind of look that says she can endure being watched, analyzed, and used as a strategy, but she will not be made small.
Not because of them. Not for this.
Something cold and decisive moves through me, stripping the moment down to choice.
My hand returns to her face, but this time I don’t keep the gesture polished enough to look sterile. I step closer, closing the remaining distance before the crowd has time to decide whether I’ve taken the bait. Sloane inhales once, sharp enough that I feel it before my mouth is on hers again.
This kiss is different. I know it immediately.
It is supposed to be slower because slow reads better on camera. It is supposed to be firmer because hesitation would turn into another headline. It is supposed to be intentional because every part of this appearance has to look chosen.
But intention is a dangerous thing. It moves if you hold it too long.
Her lips part slightly beneath mine. Not surrender, not performance, but something more instinctive than either. My thumb moves along the edge of her jaw, and the contact pulls a reaction through me I don’t have time to stop.
Before I know it, the kiss deepens, and for one second, I forget the cameras exist at all.
I forget the press line, the woman in the original photos, the market drop, the board, the carefully built narrative Sloane constructed out of risk and pressure and sheer will.
There is only her.
Sloane, still under my hand. Sloane, warm and controlled until she isn’t quite. Sloane, whose restraint doesn’t soften so much as flicker, just enough to show me there is something beneath it she has no intention of giving anyone.
Especially me.
The cameras flash around us, relentless and bright, but neither of us moves. That’s the part that changes everything. Not the kiss itself, but the stillness that follows.
My mouth's a breath from hers. Her fingers caught lightly against the front of my jacket, not gripping, but not pushing away. Just there. As if for one unguarded second, she forgot what her hands were supposed to do.
Her eyes open slowly, and for one suspended second, the silence between us feels different. Not like agreement or even understanding, but something quieter.
Recognition.
The kind that doesn't need language, because putting it into words would make it too easy to explain away.
I release her first.
My hand drops from her face, and the absence of contact registers with an abruptness I don’t allow to show. I turn back toward the cameras before anyone sees the second it takes me to rebuild the version of myself this room is allowed to have.
"That should satisfy them," I say.
I force the moment back into something cold and controlled. Except it doesn't feel normal anymore.
The crowd erupts again, questions firing faster now. Near the lobby entrance, Evan is already speaking quietly into his headset, coordinating the exit route before the press can close the gap around us again. He catches my eye briefly and nods once.
"Was that for the cameras?"
"How long has this been going on?"
"Is Crossridge changing its workplace policy?"
"Mr. Vale, does the board approve?"
"We're done here," I say.
Security moves immediately, creating the exit path before the press can surge closer. I place my hand at Sloane’s back again because the cameras are still on us, because consistency matters. After all, every movement has to support the story we just handed them.
That is the reason. The only reason.
She walks beside me without a word.
Her posture is perfect. Her expression is unreadable. Anyone watching will see exactly what they are supposed to see: two people aligned, composed, unbothered by the noise.
They won’t see the way her breathing changes before we pass through the first set of doors, or the brief curl of my fingers after I drop my hand from her back. And the second the cameras disappear, I put distance between us again like instinct.
Sloane notices.
The lobby noise dulls behind the glass, but it doesn’t disappear. It follows us in pulses, muffled by security, the walls, and the low buzz of phones already turning our performance into content.
She stops near the corridor entrance, not fully facing me.
“That was more than necessary.” Her voice is calm. Too calm.
I look at her because refusing to would say more than looking does.
“No,” I say. “It was exactly what was necessary.”
Her gaze holds mine long enough that I think she might argue, but not about the optics. We both know those worked. That isn’t what unsettled her.
And because I know that, I have to step away from it before the silence starts saying things neither of us can afford.
“Monitor the coverage,” I say. “I’ll handle the investor response.”
Something flickers across her expression. It’s gone before I can interpret it, and her professional mask is back in place before I can name it.
“Five minutes,” she says.
Then she turns and walks toward the elevator, spine straight, stride controlled, every inch of her restored to the woman who can turn pressure into structure before anyone else remembers how to breathe.
I should feel relieved that the narrative held. The press got what they needed. The woman in the original photos has already become secondary; the questions were redirected, and the implications diluted by something cleaner and easier for the public to understand.
Sloane's strategy worked.
That is the only thing that should matter.
But I watch her step into the elevator, and there's a brief pause before she presses the button. A hesitation so small no one else would notice.
I do.
By the time I follow her inside, my expression is set, my voice controlled, every useful part of me back where it belongs. Whatever happened out there ends the second those doors close.
It has to.
The photos are a problem. The market is a problem. The leak is a problem.
But Sloane Parker looking at me like she felt the difference between the first kiss and the second?
That is something else entirely.