8. No Comment #3
It wasn't quite a compliment. More like…recognition. Like she saw the strategy behind it.
"Learned from watching you," I said before I could stop myself.
Her eyebrow arched. "That right?"
"Yeah. You never give them what they want. Just what you want them to have." I paused. "Drives me crazy, actually."
"Good," she said, but there was a smile hiding at the corner of her mouth.
I stopped because trusting myself to say anything else that might sound grateful was starting to sound like a risky bet. Put my drink down.
After a while, she said, "You know this won't last, right? They'll try to turn us into a pay-per-view event."
"It'll be entertaining to see how many of them choke when we refuse to punch on cue."
She seemed to weigh my words, then nodded. "Might be worth it, just to see the looks on their faces."
Silence settled between us again, but different this time. Less hostile. More…tired.
"You ever get exhausted?" I asked. Didn't mean to, but the words came out anyway.
She glanced at me. "Of what?"
"All of it. The game. The performance. Having to be on all the time." I gestured vaguely at the party below. "This."
The pause went on for so long I thought I'd overstepped. Then: "Every day."
The honesty in it caught me off-guard. No ice, no armor. Just real.
"But you do it anyway," I said.
"So do you. You left your group. Went solo. That's not easy."
"Neither is staying on top for as long as you have."
"No," she said. "It's not." She paused, then added with just enough bite to sting, "Especially when every up-and-comer thinks taking shots at you is their ticket up."
I winced. Fair. "Yeah, okay. I deserved that."
"You did." But there was no malice in it. Just fact.
"For what it's worth," I said, "I didn't come at you because I thought it was easy. I came at you because—" I stopped, not sure how to finish that sentence without sounding like an asshole.
"Because I dismissed you first," she finished.
"Yeah."
She nodded slowly, filed it away. "Noted."
Romi looked at me.
I was reaching for my drink when it happened—my knuckles grazed hers on the railing. Total accident. Had to be. But the way she flinched, then tried to cover it by curling her fingers around her glass made me think maybe it wasn't nothing.
I should've pulled back. Made some joke, broke the tension. Instead, I just…stayed there. Close enough to feel the heat coming off her skin.
She whipped her head away, staring hard at the party below as if it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen.
My brain did this weird stutter-step thing, trying to file what just happened under a label that made sense.
Rivalry? Nah, this wasn't that. We'd been going at each other's throats for weeks—I knew what that tension felt like.
Sharp. Combative. This was…something else.
Something that made my pulse kick up in a way that had nothing to do with wanting to win.
I pulled my hand back, finally, and wrapped it around my glass just to give it something to do.
What the hell was that?
We both stared out at the party below, the silence stretching between us like a wire pulled too tight. From up here, all the chaos looked almost pretty. Just lights and bodies and everyone trying so hard to matter.
I kept waiting for her to say something cutting. To turn this moment into another battle. But she didn't. She just stood there, gripping her glass, her jaw tight in a way that looked almost…nervous?
Romi Dulce. Nervous.
That didn't make sense either.
"This is weird," I said before I could stop myself. The words just tumbled out, too honest, too raw. "Like…not the usual kind of weird. Different weird."
She didn't look at me. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yeah, you do." I shifted my weight, trying to shake off whatever this feeling was. "We just had an actual conversation without trying to destroy each other, and now it's—" I stopped, because I genuinely didn't know how to finish that sentence.
Her lips pressed together. Still wouldn't look at me.
"I'm not trying to start anything," I added quickly. "I just—" I exhaled, frustrated with myself for not being able to name it. "I don't know what this is."
Neither of us said anything for a moment. Didn't need to, I guess. Or maybe we just didn't know how.
"It's not that deep." She smoothed the front of her dress.
My eyes followed her hand before I could stop them. I cleared my throat. Rolled my shoulders to shake it off.
No," I agreed. "Not that deep."
Easier to say than to mean.
And hey, maybe it was nothing. Maybe I was reading into a moment that didn't exist outside my own head.
We were probably both exhausted, running on fumes and expensive liquor.
Tomorrow, in daylight, this would probably be some weird thing my brain cooked up.
A weird blip caused by too much adrenaline and not enough sleep.
Yeah. That made sense.
For that moment, it felt as if we were just two people standing on a balcony, watching the world spin without us. No cameras, no timeline, no beef.
Just us.
Almost peaceful.
Almost. Huh.