11. Cameras in the Hallway
Chapter eleven
Cameras in the Hallway
Atticus POV
The alarm is still screaming when the hallway fills.
Staff. Guests. A family in pajamas dragging a dog that doesn't want to be dragged. I clock all of it in under three seconds. Occupational habit. The same scan I run on a penalty kill.
Then I see the cameras.
Six. Maybe eight. Clustered at the far end of the corridor near the stairwell exit, lenses up, ready. Not guests. Not staff.
Paparazzi who were tipped off. Who were waiting.
Sienna is still beside me in the doorway. Bare legs. My hoodie hanging off one shoulder. Hair down and slightly wrecked from the pillow she'd barely used. She sees them at the same moment I do.
I don't think about it.
My arm goes around her and she comes against my side like she was always meant to fit there. One hand on her hip, the other pressing her into me, angled slightly so my shoulder takes the brunt of whatever's coming.
She doesn't stiffen. Doesn't pull away.
Her hand finds the hem of my shirt instead and holds.
They move fast when they see us. Shouting over each other, flashes strobing white down the corridor.
"Knox — Knox, over here —"
"Is it true the league is reopening the conduct investigation?"
"Atticus — are you still dirty on the ice?"
I keep my face neutral.
It costs me. My hands want to do something about it. I breathe through my nose instead and I keep my expression exactly where I need it, controlled, unreadable, the face I put on in the box when the crowd is calling for my head.
More flash. More voices cutting over each other, sharper now.
"Who's the woman, Knox?"
"Is this the bartender from the footage?"
"Hey — hey, sweetheart — how much is he paying you?"
That last one lands different.
I feel Sienna go still against me.
Not scared. I know scared. I've felt scared on her body before, in a parking lot, when her father's hand was on her arm and her pulse was hammering under my thumb. This isn't that.
This is something colder. More controlled.
She lifts her chin.
I tighten my arm on pure instinct.
"Don't—" I start, low, meant only for her.
She steps forward anyway.
Not away from me, she brings me with her, one hand still wrapped in my shirt, pulling me along like she's decided I'm useful.
She faces the cameras with her spine straight and her expression exactly like she looks when someone at the bar decides to be a problem: patient, unimpressed, already three steps ahead.
"I was there that night," she says clearly, "because someone had to be."
The hallway goes briefly, shockingly quiet.
Not silence. The alarm is still cycling somewhere below us, and the family with the dog has retreated to a safe distance. But the photographers pause. The questions stop. Every lens stays up but no one fires it because she's still talking and they can feel that whatever comes next is the shot.
"The footage you've been running on a loop?" She gestures vaguely toward their cameras like she's pointing at a menu item she didn't order. "What you're calling a scandal? A kid was getting hurt. I helped stop it. That's the whole story."
She says it the way she says everything, direct, a little dry, like she can't believe she has to explain it.
I watch the reporters recalibrate in real time. Two of them lower their cameras half an inch. The rest are scrambling.
It lands like a grenade.
I feel the shockwave even as I stand there next to her, my hand on her hip like it belongs there, like it's always belonged there, and that thought is the most dangerous one I've had all night.
She just handed them a narrative.
Not mine, hers. Clean and simple and completely believable because it's true. She stood in the middle of a hallway at midnight in my hoodie with her hair down and she looked directly into six camera lenses and told the truth without flinching.
I've faced down enforcers with sixty pounds on me and I don't think I've ever done anything that brave.
The questions restart. Louder now. Sharper.
"So you're saying Knox didn't start it —"
"Were you instructed to say that —"
"Sienna, are you his girlfriend or his —"
I step forward. Just enough. My voice comes out quiet.
"We're done."
Two words. The tone I use when I'm not asking.
The shouting doesn't stop but the bodies part. We move through them, her hand still in my shirt, my arm still around her, and I steer her toward the elevator without looking back.
She's quiet until the doors close behind us.
Then she exhales, long and controlled, and tips her head back against the mirrored wall.
I watch her profile.
The line of her throat. The slight flutter at her pulse. The faint flush along her jaw. Adrenaline dropping. Not embarrassment.
My hoodie has slipped further off one shoulder and I don't let my eyes stay there.
I look at the numbers climbing instead.
"That was—" I start.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't tell me I shouldn't have said it." She doesn't look at me. "I know you're about to."
"I wasn't going to say that."
She turns her head slightly. One eyebrow up. Skeptical.
"I was going to say it was the bravest thing I've seen in a long time." I keep my voice even. "And that you're going to need to brace for what comes next."
Her mouth curves. Not the sarcastic version. Smaller than that. More private.
"How bad?"
"Depends on how fast Delia's phone works."
As if on cue, my cell vibrates.
I already know before I look.
Delia's voice hits before I finish lifting the phone to my ear.
"Please tell me you did not just let her talk to the press. Please tell me that was a lookalike. Please, please, Atticus — "
"She spoke for herself. I wasn't going to stop her."
"She told every outlet on that floor that she personally witnessed the hazing incident — do you understand what that means?
Your father's legal team is going to call this insider knowledge.
They're going to say she's a planted witness.
They're going to drag her into the official investigation and she will not have the protection of the team behind her because she just went off-script and I cannot —"
"Delia."
"What?"
"Breathe."
The pause is sharp.
"Do not tell me to breathe, Knox."
Sienna is watching me now. Reading my face, reading the call, reading everything. Her expression is still. Her eyes are quick. She's already running the math.
I hold her gaze when I say the next part.
"Whatever comes next, we handle it together. All three of us. Set the meeting." I let the steadiness in my voice land the way I intend it to. "Tonight."
I end the call.
The elevator stops.
Our floor.
I push off the wall and hold the doors open without thinking, the same way I'd hold a locker room door, automatic, unremarkable, and she passes close enough that I catch the warmth of her, the faint clean smell of her shampoo underneath the hotel air.
She stops just past the threshold. Turns back.
"Atticus."
Her voice is different. The armor's still there — it's always there — but something underneath it is visible for the first time tonight.
"Thank you," she says. "For not pulling me back."
I hold the door until it starts to protest.
"I'm not going to pull you back," I say. "I'm going to stand next to you."
She looks at me for one beat too long.
Then she nods and turns down the hall toward the suite, my hoodie still sliding off her shoulder, and I let the doors close and stand in the elevator alone for exactly three seconds before I follow her.
My phone buzzes again before I'm at the door.
Not Delia this time.
Unknown number. One message.
She made a mistake tonight. And so did you. I have what I need now. —C