Twenty Six
Harper was already at her desk when Savannah walked in.
Savannah stopped beside her chair.
“I owe you an apology,” she said.
Harper blinked up at her. “You do?”
“Yes.” Savannah kept her voice even. “Yesterday was not about you. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”
Harper studied her for a second. “You want to tell me what it was about?”
Savannah exhaled. “No.”
A beat.
“But I am sorry.”
Savannah heard her name before she even registered Henry walking over.
The newsroom was its usual mess of sound: ringing phones, pages turning, chairs rolling, someone laughing too loudly near the assignment desk.
She’d been staring at the same line in her script for ages, trying to convince herself she cared about a zoning dispute. Her head hurt. Her chest felt tight.
Then Henry said it.
“Wells. Franklin.”
Her stomach dropped.
Tilly was already at the corner of the desk, camera strap in their hand, expression neutral in that way they’d perfected over the years in news. Savannah moved beside them, trying not to let her pulse spike.
Henry didn’t bother looking up.
“Millbrook’s having a situation. Chemical smell complaints, sick kids, fire department’s involved. Too far for a day-turn. I booked two rooms. You’ll drive out now, get interviews, live for five and six, package for ten if it isn’t a disaster. SUV’s downstairs. Roads are icy, so don’t be stupid.”
Savannah nodded. “Got it.”
Tilly didn’t say anything, already turning.
Henry moved on before either of them breathed.
“Gear room,” Tilly said.
Savannah followed, her throat tight.
The gear room always felt colder than the newsroom. Today it felt like a walk-in freezer.
Savannah grabbed batteries off the charger while Tilly reached for tripods. She kept her hands busy so she wouldn’t stare at them the way she kept accidentally doing since the kiss. Just thinking the word made her chest spark uncomfortably hot.
“Telephoto?” Tilly asked, pulling the long zoom lens from the case, the kind they used when they couldn’t get close.
“Yeah. They might keep us far back.”
“Right.”
They moved around each other with careful, stiff precision. No accidental brushes. No comments. No familiar work banter. It was all formal phrases and clipped instructions, like they were strangers assigned to a group project.
She hated it.
She dropped a battery pack. It clattered to the floor.
Tilly glanced over. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
They didn’t push, and somehow that made it worse.
Everything they’d been since the two-day snowstorm had calcified into something brittle and breakable. Every avoided glance made her stomach twist. Every silence made her want to crawl out of her skin.
“Ready?” Tilly asked when everything was packed.
“Yeah,” she said, even though she didn’t feel ready for anything.
The SUV smelled like winter jackets and stale coffee. Savannah clicked her seatbelt and stared forward while Tilly started the car.
“I’ll take first shift,” they said.
“That’s fine.”
The first stretch of the drive was painfully quiet. The radio crackled between stations until it settled on some soft rock song she didn’t recognize. Snowbanks slid past the windows, gray and uneven.
Savannah could normally handle silence. She liked the calm of long drives. But she’d never done one with Tilly before. Not like this. Not when the air between them felt like it was vibrating with something she couldn’t name.
Her knee bounced. She pressed her hand on it to make it stop.
Tilly cleared their throat. “Seat warmer works.” They clicked hers on. “In case you’re cold.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
They didn’t say anything else.
Five minutes later, the quiet settled over her like a weight.
“You know we don’t have to act like this,” she said finally. “We can talk.”
“We are talking.”
“No, we’re exchanging noises.”
Tilly’s jaw tightened. “I’m trying to keep things normal.”
“This doesn’t feel normal.”
“What do you want me to do about that?”
“Anything,” she said. “Look at me. Or don’t look at me. Pick one and stick with it.”
Tilly let out a low breath, the kind that sounded halfway to frustration. “I’m not avoiding you.”
“You haven’t looked at me all morning.”
“I’m driving.”
“You weren’t driving in the gear room.”
“Savannah,” they said, her name sounding like a warning or a plea or both. “I’m trying here.”
“Oh,” she said. “So am I.”
That ended the conversation.
Or whatever it was.
Traffic thickened near Worcester. Brake lights glowed red across the slush. Savannah gripped her knee again, fingers tapping.
She wanted to ask what Tilly was thinking. She wanted to ask why their voice kept going quiet around her. She wanted to ask why the kiss scared them so much. She wanted to ask why it scared her even more.
She didn’t ask anything.
Tilly didn’t either.
The silence stretched and stretched until her ribs hurt.
Millbrook hit them with a chemical tang the second they rolled down the window.
They worked.
Savannah talked to angry parents. She talked to exhausted firefighters. She talked to the environmental rep, who obviously didn’t want to be on camera. She talked until her voice felt thin.
Tilly stayed efficient and distant behind the camera, adjusting angles and leveling mics. Savannah kept catching herself searching their face for something, anything, only to find that careful neutrality.
They weren’t cold. They weren’t rude. They were just… contained.
It made her feel like she was standing outside an invisible line she hadn’t known existed until the kiss crossed it.
When they finished the second live hit, her cheeks were numb from the cold, and her feet hurt. The fire chief warned them about the roads again.
Savannah nodded, but she barely heard him.
The hotel was clean in the way highway hotels usually are. Neutral carpet. A weird plant in the corner. A small front desk with a tired-looking clerk.
“We should have two rooms under WDTV,” Savannah said, trying to keep her voice even.
“Yep. Rooms 210 and 211. Right next to each other.”
Of course they were.
Savannah smiled a little too tightly. “Thanks.”
Tilly reached for their keycard at the same time she did. Their fingers almost brushed. She pulled back too fast.
Tilly hesitated. “I can stay somewhere else.”
She blinked at them. “What?”
“In case you want space or whatever.”
“You’re not sleeping in the truck,” she snapped.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
Tilly looked at the floor. “I’m trying to make this easier.”
“Well, it doesn’t,” she said. “It just makes me feel like you don’t want to be near me.”
Their head snapped up. Something flickered in their eyes. Not anger. Not exactly.
But not nothing.
But they didn’t say anything.
They took their key and headed toward the elevators.
Savannah’s room was beige and quiet and unbearably small.
She sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her palms to her face. She’d been holding everything in since the storm. Since the truck. Since the hallway at work. Since waking up each morning feeling like she had an iron band around her ribs.
She hated the distance between them. She hated the way Tilly acted like she was fragile. She hated the silence.
She hated that she didn’t know how to fix it.
She stood, paced, sat again, then stood once more. Her hands felt useless.
Her room felt wrong.
Her chest felt wrong.
She walked to the door before she realized she was doing it.
Her heart pounded so hard it made her vision throb.
This was a terrible idea.
This was the only idea she had.
She opened her door and stepped into the hallway.
The carpet muffled her footsteps as she stopped in front of Tilly’s door. Her knuckles hovered.
No.
Yes.
God, she didn’t know.
She knocked before she could talk herself out of it.
Soft at first.
Then again, louder.
Footsteps inside. A pause. The quiet click of the lock.
Tilly opened the door.
They stood there in sweatpants and a hoodie, hair damp from a shower, eyes wide the moment they saw her.
Stunned.
Cautious.
Wanting.
Terrified.
Savannah swallowed hard.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Tilly’s fingers tightened on the edge of the door. “Hey.”
Everything that had been simmering between them all day rushed up like heat.
And the line she’d been holding in since the car sat unspoken on her tongue, burning.