22. The Candid Camera
The Candid Camera
COOPER
The morning light at Lakeside Lodge didn’t filter in so much as it interrogated.
It was a cold, clinical grey that sliced through the gaps in the heavy curtains, illuminating the dust motes dancing over the tangled sheets—the salt-and-pine evidence of a night that had felt like a beginning but was looking more like an ending.
Sloane was still asleep, her breathing a soft, rhythmic anchor in a room that suddenly felt too small for the sheer volume of things I was now admitting to myself.
I watched the way her dark hair spilled across the pillow, obscuring the sharp line of her jaw.
In sleep, the razor-tongued investigator had vanished, replaced by someone who looked remarkably soft, remarkably breakable.
My chest felt tight, a pressurized heat that had nothing to do with the fact that the cabin’s heater was still a hunk of dead metal.
I was in love with her. The realization wasn’t a lightning strike; it was a slow-motion car crash I’d been watching for weeks, and now the glass was finally shattering.
I reached out, my fingers hovering just inches from her shoulder before I pulled back.
I didn't have the right to touch her like this yet—not with the Donovan—Contingency folder still sitting like a landmine on my laptop, and not with the network's dirty fingerprints all over this 'accidental' room assignment.
I was supposed to be her partner, her protector, but I was currently a secret-keeper standing in a room built of corporate lies.
Sloane stirred, her eyelids fluttering open.
For a heartbeat, there was no armor. Just a hazy, warm recognition that made my throat close up.
Then, the memories of the night before seemed to hit her all at once, and I watched the professional shutters slam back into place.
She sat up, pulling the duvet to her chest with a frantic sort of precision.
"Cooper," she said, her voice sounding like gravel and silk.
"I'm here," I said, which was the truest and most useless thing I could offer. "The power’s still out, but the storm’s moved on."
She looked around the room, her gaze snagging on our discarded clothes—a trail of evidence leading straight to the bed.
She didn't look regretful, exactly, but she looked like a woman who was already calculating the cost of a catastrophic error.
I knew that look. It was the one she used when a guest on the show started digging their own grave.
"We should go," she said, swinging her legs out of bed and grabbing her shirt. "Before the 'bonding' activities start. I can't do a trust fall right now, Cooper. I really can't."
"Sloane, wait." I stood up, ignoring the bite of the cold air on my skin. "Last night wasn't an activity. It wasn't part of a strategy."
She stopped, her back to me, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of her blouse. "I know that. That's the problem. We’re supposed to be smarter than this. We’re supposed to be the ones who see the strings, not the ones getting tangled in them."
"Maybe the strings aren't the only thing worth looking at," I said, stepping closer.
I could smell the faint scent of her shampoo—something like bergamot and rain—and the lingering heat of our shared skin.
I wanted to tell her. I wanted to say the words and let them be a shield against whatever Rhea and Graham were planning.
But the air between us was brittle, and I was terrified that the truth would be the thing that finally broke us.
She turned, her expression guarded but her eyes searching mine. "We have to get back to the city. We have a show to record, and Milo is waiting, and... we have to be professionals."
"Right," I said, the word tasting like ash. "Professionals."
We dressed in a silence that felt heavy and crowded.
Every movement was a negotiation of space—the narrow walkway between the bed and the dresser, the small bathroom where we took turns splashing cold water on our faces.
I watched her pull her hair back into a tight, severe bun, erasing the softness of the morning inch by agonizing inch.
She was building her fortress back up, stone by stone, and I was standing on the outside watching the gate close.
By the time we stepped out onto the porch, the sun was beginning to break through the clouds, reflecting off the damp pine needles with a blinding intensity. The air was crisp, smelling of wet earth and woodsmoke. It should have been beautiful. It should have been the start of something.
We walked toward the main lodge, our boots crunching on the gravel path.
Sloane walked a few inches ahead of me, her stride purposeful, her shoulders set.
I followed, my mind racing through the variables, trying to figure out how to navigate the fallout of a night that had changed everything for me and terrified everything in her.
As we rounded the corner of the staff quarters, a flash of movement caught my eye.
A young woman in a NovaWave fleece—one of Rhea’s junior PR assistants, a girl named Chloe—was standing near a cluster of birch trees.
She was holding her phone at a very specific angle, her thumb hovering over the screen.
The shutter sound was muffled, a tiny, digital click that sliced through the stillness of the mountain air like a gunshot. My stomach did a slow, nauseating flip.
Sloane froze. I felt the air leave my lungs. Chloe looked up, her face a mask of practiced, wide-eyed innocence. She didn't run; she just tucked the phone into her pocket and offered a small, oily smile that I recognized from every Rhea Saye press briefing I'd ever attended.
"Morning, guys," Chloe said, her tone light and devastatingly casual. "Hope the storm didn't keep you up too late. The one-bed situation must have been... challenging."
I stepped in front of Sloane, my pulse beginning to thrum with a slow, cold fury. "Chloe. Give me the phone."
She took a half-step back, her eyes flicking toward the lodge where the rest of the network staff was starting to emerge. "I don't know what you're talking about, Cooper. I was just taking a picture of the sunrise. The lighting is incredible this morning, don't you think?"
"I'm not going to ask again," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made her smile falter. "The phone. Now."
"Cooper, don't," Sloane said behind me. Her voice was flat, devoid of the anger I expected. It was the sound of someone who had already seen the ending of the movie and realized there was no point in yelling at the screen.
I turned to look at her. She wasn't looking at Chloe. She was looking at the ground, her hands shoved deep into her coat pockets. She looked small. She looked like she’d been caught in the very thing she’d spent her whole life trying to avoid—someone else’s lens.
"She already sent it," Sloane said quietly. "Look at her hands. She isn't hiding the phone because she's scared. She's hiding it because her job is done."
I looked back at Chloe. She was already walking away, her steps quick and light, headed toward the dining hall.
She didn't look back. She didn't have to. The image was already in the cloud, already on Rhea’s desk, already being formatted into a 'leaked' social media post or a 'candid' marketing blast.
The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow.
The booking error. The storm. The heater.
The single bed. None of it had been an accident.
This entire retreat wasn't about bonding; it was a curated environment designed to manufacture exactly what happened last night.
They hadn't just pushed us together; they’d waited with a camera to catch the moment the pressure finally broke us.
"It was a trap," I whispered, the words feeling like glass in my mouth.
Sloane finally looked up at me. Her eyes were bright with a cold, hard clarity that hurt to look at. "Of course it was, Cooper. That's what NovaWave does. They don't report the story; they build the cage and wait for you to walk into it."
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn't want to look at it. I wanted to throw it into the lake and take Sloane and Milo and drive until the signal bars disappeared forever. But I was a fixer, and fixers always look at the damage.
I pulled the phone out. A text from Rhea Saye. There was no image attached—she was too smart for that—just four words that felt like a death sentence.
Love the new chemistry.
I looked at Sloane, wanting to say something—anything—that would make this better.
I wanted to tell her that I would fight them, that I would burn the network down before I let them turn our night into a metric.
But she was already walking toward the parking lot, her head down, her pace quickening. She wasn't waiting for me anymore.
"Sloane!" I called out, but she didn't stop. She didn't even flinch.
I stood there on the gravel path, the morning sun finally hitting the lodge with a warmth that felt like a mockery.
I had fallen in love with a woman who had been betrayed by every person who had ever held a microphone, and I had just handed her enemies the ultimate recording.
I wasn't her protector. I was the one who had finally led her into the light, right where the cameras were waiting.
I followed her toward the cars, my chest aching with a heavy, jagged weight.
The storm was over, but as I watched Sloane reach her car and pull the door open without looking back, I knew the real damage was only just beginning.
We weren't co-hosts anymore, and we weren't just lovers.
We were a brand. And Rhea Saye was about to sell us to the highest bidder.