Chapter 26
brON
The first thing I understand when I wake is that peace has a different weight when you’ve earned even a little of it.
For most of my adult life, mornings have tended to arrive like debt collectors—loud, unwelcome, and carrying itemized proof of previous bad judgment.
Hangovers. Missed calls. Empty bottles. Regret wearing cologne.
Even the better mornings, the triumphant ones, usually came with some stale aftertaste of performance.
I’d wake up after a show or a win or a night spent being exactly the man people expected me to be, and there would always be this restless animal pacing somewhere under my ribs, already hungry for the next thing, already bored with whatever I’d just survived.
This morning feels different.
Not easy. Not clean. Not magically redeemed into some inspiring poster about growth and communication.
My shoulder still aches where the sweep arm clipped me in yesterday’s challenge, and the back of my neck is tight from sleeping badly on one pillow and half my conscience.
But when I open my eyes in Tilda’s room and see her still asleep on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek, hair loose over the pillow in soft untidy strands, my first thought is not about cameras or rankings or money or how the moment might play to an audience.
My first thought is that I would like to deserve this.
That’s new enough to be almost frightening.
The room smells faintly of warm skin, the clean cotton of the sheets, and the citrus soap from the compound shower system.
Beyond the window panel, the outer edge of dawn is beginning to wash a pale gray-blue over the training grounds.
The compound’s distant machinery hums in slow mechanical rhythms, vents whispering through the walls, lifts moving somewhere down the corridor, a muted clank now and then from an early maintenance crew beginning its rounds.
Tilda stirs when I shift, blinking once before she focuses on me.
“Well,” she says, voice husky with sleep, “you’re staring.”
“Yeah,” I admit.
“That’s unsettling.”
“I’m having a reflective moment.”
“That’s even more unsettling.”
I smile and prop myself up on one elbow. “Morning to you too, sweetheart.”
Her mouth curves a little despite herself, then flattens as she notices the hour ticking across the wall display. “We have rankings in forty minutes.”
“Romance really thrives under this level of institutional pressure.”
“That’s not romance. That’s scheduling.”
“Terrible distinction.”
She rolls onto her back and covers her face briefly with one hand, which does very unhelpful things to my ability to remain a serious person. “You’re smug.”
“No,” I say. “I’m emotionally centered.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Historically, yes. But I’m branching out.”
She drops her hand and studies me for a beat, her expression somewhere between fondness and suspicion.
It occurs to me then with odd force that she is looking at me the way people look at things they want to trust but still expect might explode.
Fair enough. If I were Tilda, I’d keep the fire extinguisher nearby too.
I sit up slowly, stretching until my shoulder protests. She notices instantly.
“You’re sore.”
“Just enough to be dramatic about it.”
“Let me see.”
“It’s fine.”
“Bron.”
There are entire military units less effective than Tilda saying my name in that tone. I turn and let her inspect the shoulder. Her fingers brush the singed edge of healing skin with practical gentleness, and the room goes still around that touch. She frowns.
“You need another med gel patch before training.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She leans back, suspicious of my compliance. “You agreed too quickly.”
“That’s growth.”
“That’s a setup.”
“It can be both.”
She huffs a laugh and swings her legs over the side of the bed.
For a moment we just sit there in the dim morning light, two people very aware that whatever this is between us now has crossed out of memory and back into the present tense.
There are still too many sharp edges in our history for me to call it safe.
But it no longer feels impossible either.
And because I apparently woke up today in a truth-telling mood, I hear myself say, “I’m not doing this halfway. ”
Tilda pauses with one hand in her hair. “Doing what halfway.”
“Any of it.” I look at the floor because it’s easier to say important things to a patch of composite than directly to the woman who can flatten me with one expression.
“You. Jesse. Whatever comes next. I’m not saying I suddenly know how to be perfect at family life, because that would be a ridiculous lie and you’d rightly hit me with an object.
But I’m done acting like fame or money or a crowd’s approval are worth more than the people I love. ”
The silence that follows is not empty. It’s weighted. Listening.
When I finally look up, Tilda is very still.
“You mean that,” she says quietly.
I laugh once under my breath. “Yeah. Irritating, isn’t it.”
She shakes her head a little, as if the answer she wants is caught somewhere deeper than speech. “Bron…”
“I know prize money matters. Gods know I know that. And I know winning matters for you and Jesse too, for reasons that aren’t vanity.
But if this whole thing goes to hell tomorrow and I have to choose between some grand final and making sure you two are safe, there is no choice.
” I shrug, wincing slightly at the shoulder. “That part’s easy.”
Something flickers across her face then, quick and bright and dangerous. Hope, maybe. Or grief starting to loosen. Maybe both.
“That’s a very serious thing to say before caffeine,” she mutters.
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain insomnia.”
“Also true.”
She gets up to start the coffee unit, and the smell of bitter roast begins to spread through the room while I sit there feeling weirdly steadier for having said it aloud.
Some promises don’t become real until another person hears them.
Maybe that’s all adulthood is in the end—choosing what to witness yourself becoming.
The central rankings hall feels like a church built by sadists.
The lighting is too bright, the architecture too theatrical, the atmosphere too tightly wound with fear.
By the time we get there, the remaining contestants have already gathered in a rough crescent beneath the giant holo board, each pair pretending to be less invested than they are.
Everyone’s trying on some version of composure, but desperation has a smell to it—sweat hidden under clean fabric, coffee on anxious breath, the dry electric tang of too much adrenaline in a closed space.
The field has thinned enough now that there is no crowd to hide in.
Only serious competitors remain. Strong ones.
Cunning ones. Couples who’ve figured out how to survive each other as well as the course designs.
Captain Photonic materializes on the upper display with the solemn glee of a man preparing to announce casualties in an entertaining format. “Champions,” he booms, “the latest composite rankings are now live.”
The board flashes.
Names reorder.
Numbers climb and fall.
I feel Tilda tense beside me before I even consciously see the results.
Top five.
We made top five.
She exhales once, slow and controlled, but I know her well enough now to hear what that breath cost. Zack and Dartha make it.
Vanna and Pajack too. Two other couples I’ve spent weeks trying not to underestimate round out the survivors.
Below the line, seven names fade into the gray of almost. Around the hall, reactions bloom in staggered waves: one pair hugging so hard they nearly fall over, another dissolving into quiet tears, one of the eliminated contestants swearing with almost admirable creativity while production assistants circle like vultures with better posture.
“Final five,” I say softly.
Tilda keeps her eyes on the board. “Yes.”
“That sounds like terror wearing grammar.”
“That’s because it is.”
I grin despite myself. “We’re doing well.”
“We’re in danger.”
“Both can be true.”
She turns then, green eyes sharp and alive with all the things she never says when a room is full of microphones. “Bron, do not get comfortable. This is where people make stupid mistakes because they start thinking survival means safety.”
“Good thing I’ve got you around.”
“You say that like it’s charming.”
“It is charming.”
“It is deeply annoying.”
Still, she doesn’t deny the point.
Top five. The number hums under my skin all morning.
Not because of the glory of it, though I’d be lying if I said some old bright primitive part of me doesn’t still react to the proximity of a finish line.
Not for the cameras either. The fact of the matter is uglier and simpler: top five means proximity to the money, and proximity to the money means proximity to paying off Mysk before he decides my body parts would appreciate market separation.
Which is why, later that afternoon, when I get a message ping from a contact I haven’t heard from in months, my stomach drops before I’ve even opened it.
The message is from Julo.
He is, depending on which law enforcement database you ask, a bookmaker, a facilitator, an information courier, a cultural parasite, or “that smiling bastard with the silver tooth.” I met him years ago in a backstage card room orbiting a mid-tier fight moon where I was making terrible choices with men who smelled like whiskey and synthetic fur.
We are not friends. But he is useful in the way unstable chemical compounds are useful: dangerous, unpleasant, but occasionally the only thing that gets a job done.