13. Marcus #2
“No, I understand. Professional concern. Strategic limitations. Lines that need to stay clear.” She gives a small, controlled nod. “We’ve covered this.”
The words are smooth enough to cut.
I step closer before I decide whether I should. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“It never is.”
The room goes still. Outside the door, someone walks past laughing, the sound muffled and distant. Inside, all I can hear is the quiet buzz of the mirror lights and the sudden awareness of how close we are standing.
Sloane catches it at the same time I do. Neither of us reacts, but the silence between us feels different.
It becomes the press conference after the second kiss. The conference room after midnight. The reception hallway where she leaned in first. Every moment we have stepped back from, layered together until the air between us feels crowded with all the things we refused to do.
Her gaze drops briefly to my mouth. This time, she doesn’t pretend it didn’t, and my control tightens so quickly it almost feels physical.
“Sloane.”
Her name comes out lower than I intend.
She looks back up at me. “Don’t.”
I stop immediately, not because I know exactly what she means, but because I know too many things she could mean.
Don’t say my name like that. Don’t step back again. Don’t make this about control when both of us know the problem between us stopped being that simple a while ago.
Her breathing remains controlled, but not quite as steady as it was a minute ago. Mine is worse than it should be.
She stands close enough that reaching for her would take almost no effort. Neither of us does. Somehow, that restraint has become its own form of intimacy.
“We need the statement,” she says quietly.
“Yes.”
Neither of us moves toward the tablet. Her eyes search mine, and whatever she sees there makes her expression shift, not softer exactly, but less defended for half a second.
“You backed me without hesitation,” she says.
“You gave me a move.”
“I gave you a mess.”
“You gave me a move,” I repeat.
Her throat works once. “You didn’t even know where I was going with it.”
“No.”
“But you followed.”
“Yes.”
The admission sits between us, carrying far more weight than the conversation should allow. Sloane looks away, but not before I catch the effect it has on her. Which is dangerous for reasons that have nothing to do with the interview.
She turns back to the table and picks up the tablet. “Then help me write us out of this before legal starts drafting murder charges.”
The attempt at humor should reset the room.
It doesn’t. Not fully.
I move beside her to look at the draft forming beneath her fingers. Close enough that my arm nearly brushes hers, but not quite. She starts typing, then stops when I reach across the screen and change a single phrase.
The movement brings me closer than it should. close enough that the awareness arrives instantly. Her fingers hover above the keyboard as the silence stretches between us.
The mirror in front of us reflects the room back in fragments: Sloane standing rigidly beside me, the space between us so narrow it looks intentional even though neither of us planned it.
The image impacts me harder than it should because it looks real, stripped of strategy and performance in a way neither of us intended.
Sloane's gaze meets mine in the mirror, and the recognition there is immediate. What's changing isn't the public narrative. It's us.
“We should move,” she says.
“Yes.”
Neither of us does.
My hand rests on the table beside her tablet, close to hers without touching. Her shoulder is inches from my chest. I can see the pulse at the base of her throat, quick and uneven despite the stillness of the rest of her.
This is how the line disappears, I realize. Not all at once, and not through a single dramatic choice, but through a hundred smaller moments that are easier to justify. One careful decision. One charged silence. One moment that lingers a little too long.
Sloane exhales slowly, and I step back first. Again. This time, though, she doesn't look hurt. She looks like she expected it.
That may be worse.
Her expression smooths as she turns toward me. “The statement.”
“Right.”
We work through it in under four minutes.
It is clean, controlled, and exactly what the situation needs: acknowledgment of the wedding timeline without overfeeding the personal story, redirection to the coordinated leak, and a firm refusal to discuss private planning details.
Dana opens the door as Sloane hits send. Her gaze flicks between us once before she wisely decides not to comment.
“Legal approved the first paragraph,” she says. “Graham wants both of you on a call in ten. Also, the wedding timeline is already trending.”
“Of course it is,” Sloane says.
Dana looks at me. “Congratulations, apparently.”
Sloane closes her eyes.
I almost smile.
Dana backs out quickly. “I’ll tell Graham you’re alive.”
The door closes again, and for a moment, the room is quiet.
Sloane gathers her tablet, slipping fully back into motion now that there is work between us again. “We need to decide how much of the wedding narrative we’re willing to sustain.”
“Enough to keep the leak from defining us.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.”
She looks at me then, and the exhaustion beneath her control finally shows for a fraction of a second. “This is getting away from us.”
I should disagree, but I don’t because she’s right.
The story is moving faster than strategy now.
Every correction creates a new expectation.
Every attempt to contain the narrative tightens the trap around us.
And somewhere in the middle of trying to make the lie believable, the things happening in empty rooms have become harder to separate from the performance itself.
“Yes,” I say. “It is.”
Sloane’s expression shifts slightly at the admission. There’s no defense or argument, just the truth sitting between us for a moment before her phone buzzes in her hand.
She glances down at the screen and goes completely still.
“What?” I ask.
She turns the screen toward me.
A post from one of the largest gossip accounts covering the story.
INSIDERS CLAIM VALE-PARKER WEDDING PLANS ALREADY UNDERWAY.
Below it is a grainy photo from inside the studio hallway showing Sloane and me entering the greenroom together, my hand at her back and her head angled slightly toward mine.
We look far too convincing in the photo—less like two people managing a narrative and more like two people who actually belong in the same frame.
Sloane lowers the phone slowly.
“That was fast,” she says quietly.
“Too fast.”
Her eyes lift to mine. “They’re already building the next version of the story.”
I look toward the closed greenroom door, then back at her. The wedding timeline was supposed to buy us control. Instead, it handed the narrative something bigger to feed. And judging by the look on Sloane’s face, she knows exactly what I know.
The story isn’t following us anymore.
It’s leading.