Chapter 73 Still the Main Character
STILL THE MAIN CHARACTER
Holly
“Plot twist: I kept the guy.”
The coffee at The Backlot Diner was still shit, but Holly was grinning like it’d personally funded her emotional breakthrough.
Her knee bounced under the tiny café table, fingers drumming against the cardboard cup like she’d swallowed a drumline.
Glitter still clung to her hairline from earlier, catching the light every time she moved, and she was humming without meaning to, vibrating with a kind of giddy, electric energy that made the entire world feel slightly overexposed.
If anyone had asked, she would have denied everything.
But internally? She was one good pop chorus away from launching into a victory montage.
Someone cue the slow-motion hair flip.
She hadn’t meant to end up here. She’d walked out of the studio after the post-show interviews wrapped, needing air that didn’t taste like stage smoke and other people’s expectations.
Five minutes to recalibrate. That was the plan.
What she hadn’t anticipated was how loud happiness could be inside her body.
It buzzed under her skin, warm and relentless.
She felt untethered in the best way, as though the universe had tried to test her and she’d responded by slow-dancing with it in six-inch heels.
Main character energy: restored and fully charged.
A shadow fell across the table, deliberate rather than accidental.
Holly didn’t look up immediately. She already knew the shape of that shadow, with its long lines, trailing the faint scent of something understated and European. When she finally lifted her gaze, Nick was watching her with the calm assessment of a man evaluating a performance mid-number.
He lowered himself into the chair opposite her with the unhurried precision of someone who understood that time adjusted to him, not the other way around. Designer coat. Artfully grown stubble. Expression composed enough to pass for indifference, if you hadn’t seen the way his eyes missed nothing.
“You’re glowing,” he said mildly. Not a compliment. A diagnosis.
“Careful,” she warned him, eyes full of mischief. “I hear it’s contagious. Wouldn’t want you to feel something.”
Nick’s gaze didn’t waver or warm up. It simply held, attentive in the way a conductor listens for a wrong note before it’s been played.
“I feel things,” he said evenly. “I just don’t let them interfere.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. Of course he didn’t. Nick employed emotional minimalism as an art form. Holly leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs out beneath the table like she had all the time in the world.
She was absurdly aware of how different she felt sitting across from him now compared to how she would have been a month ago.
Braced for critique, for the subtle narrowing of his eyes that meant she’d missed something, or cut down by the cool, immaculate phrasing that somehow made her want to work harder and punch a wall simultaneously.
“And what’s your professional assessment?” she asked lightly. “Has it made me sloppy?”
Nick considered her as though she had genuinely posed a technical question. His attention moved over her posture, her shoulders, the restless energy vibrating in her hands, the way she occupied the whole chair instead of perching at its edge.
“Not sloppy,” he said. “Settled. You’re not scanning.”
She blinked. “Scanning?”
“For exits,” he clarified. “For the moment it all begins to unravel so you can leave before you get tangled up in the mess.”
The words should have stung, but they didn’t. They landed cleanly, like a correction delivered without cruelty.
Holly huffed a soft laugh. “That’s a wildly specific read.”
“You prepare for disappointment before it arrives,” he shrugged, like he’d just read her the weather report. “It’s efficient. Also exhausting.”
Well, fuck.
She opened her mouth to deflect and found, for once, that she didn’t want to.
“I decided to try something new,” she said instead. “It’s called not catastrophizing pre-emptively.”
Nick’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes sharpened with interest. Interest more than approval.
“Well it’s working. You danced differently tonight,” he continued. “Less calculation. More commitment.”
“It was a Cha Cha,” she said. “Commitment is kind of the brand.”
“No,” he said calmly. “This was structural, not performative.”
That word lodged somewhere beneath her ribs.
Structural.
Not surface-level. Not adrenaline. Not glitter and good lighting. Something foundational.
He leaned back slightly, one ankle crossing over the other knee with elegant precision, as he regarded her like choreography he’d once doubted but was now seeing new merit in.
“Joy is easy to perform,” Nick said. “Security isn’t.”
The café noise faded at the edges. Holly felt the truth of that in her bones. She had performed joy before. Performed indifference. Performed detachment. Nick was right, tonight hadn’t been performance.
“I’m not afraid of it anymore,” she admitted, surprising herself with the simplicity of the statement.
“Of him?” Nick asked, watching her across the table.
“Of staying,” she clarified.
That earned her the faintest shift in his posture. It was subtle, but she’d worked with him long enough to recognize when something had landed.
“Good,” he said quietly with a small nod. “Instability is a waste of fucking time.”
She laughed under her breath. “That might be the least romantic endorsement of love I’ve ever received.”
“I’m not interested in romance,” Nick replied. “I’m interested in longevity.”
There it was again. That quiet, relentless focus on what lasts. On what holds under pressure.
“You think this will?” she asked, genuinely curious.
His gaze held hers for a measured second, assessing, weighing, calculating in that infuriatingly precise way of his.
“Nate won’t break under scrutiny,” Nick said. “You need that.”
The certainty in his tone did something strange to her pulse. It wasn’t warmth or softness. It was respect for her, Nate, even for the architecture of what they were building.
“You’ve chosen someone solid,” he added. “He needs the same from you.”
It wasn’t a warning. It was a standard.
Holly felt the glow inside her settling into something calmer, deeper. Not the wild electric buzz of earlier. Something she could stand on.
“You know,” she said, studying him now with equal intent, “most people would have just said ‘I’m happy for you.’”
Nick’s mouth curved, barely.
“Most people are content with pleasant outcomes,” he said. “I prefer excellent ones.”
She smiled at that. Of course he did.
There was something magnetic about the way Nick occupied space.
He was utterly self-contained, as though the world adjusted its tempo to match his and not the other way around.
He didn’t rush to fill silence, or soften his edges for the comfort of others.
Nick existed at a level of exacting expectation and allowed others to rise or fall accordingly.
It occurred to her, not for the first time, that loving him would be a full-contact sport. Thankfully, that wasn’t her road to walk down.
“You’re such a dick,” she told him fondly, with a small smile as she wrapped her hands around her cup.
“At least I’m consistent,” he smirked.
She shook her head, laughing softly into her coffee.
For a fleeting second, she wondered who would ever be bold enough to meet that level of precision head-on. Someone who didn’t flinch. Someone who didn’t crumble under the weight of his standards. Someone who might look at him and refuse to be managed.
The thought lingered until Nick rose from his chair with the same controlled ease he’d sat down with, smoothing the sleeve of his coat as though concluding a rehearsal.
“Enjoy it,” he said, not unkindly. “You’ve earned this, Martinez.”
She arched a brow. “That almost sounded like praise.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up into a lopsided smile. Just for one second. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. But she caught it.
“What did?” he said pointedly, one brow lifting in faint, devastating amusement before he swept out of the diner.
Holly watched him go. Tall, immaculate and entirely certain of his own tempo. And then she felt the faint, electric sense that someday someone was going to knock that calm composure sideways.
@wardrobeMia (IG story text over blurry coffee pic):
I swear watching Holly Martinez and Nick Marlowe talk is like watching two rival CEOs accidentally become gym buddies. Opposite vibes, identical standards. 10/10 green flag friendship.
Text – Crew Group Chat ‘Ballroom Goblins ’:
Jess (hair): just saw holly and nick having coffee like civilized humans
Marco (lighting): they’re so weirdly wholesome??
Tina (props): right?? like not flirty not awkward just professional respect with spice
Marco (lighting): it’s giving ‘i will beat you but i will also proofread your resume’
ESPN NHL Insider:
Eriksson suspension extended; Voskoboynikov Comments
The NHL has extended New Haven Hammerheads defenseman Nate Eriksson’s suspension for his on-ice collision with New York Warriors rookie Alexei Voskoboynikov earlier this season by an additional month.
League officials described the extension as ‘a reinforcement of existing standards regarding player safety’, emphasizing that while Eriksson has complied with all mandated conduct reviews, further observation was required.
As part of Voskoboynikov’s medical clearance process, the 20-year-old winger was asked to address the incident during a closed-door session with the review board.
“He came to see me,” Voskoboynikov commented as he left the review session. “Alone. No cameras. No lawyers. He owned it.”
When asked whether Eriksson’s style of play made him reckless beyond correction, Voskoboynikov paused before answering.
“He plays on the edge,” he said. “But he knows where the line is now. That’s more than I can say for some guys.”
For Voskoboynikov, who is expected to return to full-contact play later this season, the matter appears settled on a personal level, even if Eriksson remains under active evaluation. League and Hammerheads representatives declined to comment.