CHAPTER 21 #2
His eyes open a fraction.
Not focused.
Then they find me.
A corner of his mouth tries to move and fails.
“Avery?” he asks.
Typical.
Infuriating.
Alive.
“Out of the tram,” I say. “Cold, scared, insulting Diana’s pacing.”
His eyes close.
Not unconscious. Maybe gratitude. Maybe pain. Maybe both.
“Good,” he says.
The word is almost nothing.
I look at his head wound.
My hand hovers near his face.
Not touching.
I remember his hands hovering over me in Crescent Vault. The care held back because I asked for a life where men did not take first and apologize later.
Now I am the one suspended.
Choice is cruel when it hands you tenderness and asks what kind of person you want to be.
“Can I check your head?” I ask.
His eyes open again.
A small line appears between his brows. Confusion first. Then understanding. Then something worse than softness.
“Yes.”
I touch his temple with two fingers, careful around the blood.
His skin is warm.
Too warm after Avery’s cold.
“I heard you,” I say.
His mouth moves. No sound.
“I heard all of it.”
His eyes shift away.
No. He doesn’t get to disappear inside shame while bleeding on a control room floor.
I keep my fingers near his temple, grounding him or myself. Hard to know. “Not now.”
He looks back.
“I’m not forgiving you in a booth that smells like electrical fire.”
A rough sound leaves him.
Almost a laugh.
It turns into pain.
“Good,” he says.
“Stop agreeing with me when concussed.”
“Noted.”
“You’re not allowed to use my words while bleeding.”
His eyes close again.
I tap his cheek lightly. “Stay awake.”
“Bossy.”
“Yes.”
“Missed it.”
The words are too quiet.
Too honest.
They land under my ribs and make a problem there.
Alvarez crouches by the console. “Gavin’s gone through the rear service door. Blood trail maybe his, maybe Reed’s. I need units on the underlevel.”
“Go,” I say.
He looks at me. “I’m not leaving you alone with him.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll forgive him unsupervised?”
“Afraid he has a skull fracture and you’ll try sarcasm as first aid.”
“I have layers.”
“None medical.”
He radios for medics to the booth, then steps to the rear service door and looks out. “Door leads back to underlevel elevator corridor.”
“Can he reach the lot?”
“Probably.”
“Find him.”
Alvarez looks between Malcolm and me.
This is the kind of choice that makes good people tired.
Then he says, “Two minutes,” and moves to the door. “Do not move him.”
“I know.”
“Do not pursue anyone.”
“Your faith wounds me.”
“Earn better.”
He goes.
The booth becomes smaller without him.
Below, through the control glass, Diana holds Avery wrapped in someone’s jacket.
A uniform kneels with a trauma blanket. The tram sits still, stopped mid-track.
Water continues to drip from the rig, but less now.
Maybe the pump is dying. Maybe someone shut it off.
Maybe the set is finally losing interest in drowning women on schedule.
Malcolm watches my face.
Or tries to.
His focus slips, returns.
“You chose her,” he says.
“Avery?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not a confession. That’s triage.”
“You chose her.”
His voice makes it sound like something holy.
It isn’t.
It is the bare minimum.
It is also the thing no one gave Laurel.
I swallow, and my throat feels scraped open from smoke, water, and every word I have not said.
“You stopped the tram,” I say.
“Not enough.”
“She’s alive.”
“For now.”
“Do not ruin this with accuracy.”
His mouth twitches.
I look at the wires under the console. The torn bypass. The burn on his palm. The scattered folder.
“You pulled the control.”
“Yes.”
“By hand.”
“Seemed… efficient.”
“You have terrible respect for skin.”
“Yours or mine?”
The question hangs.
Not seductive. Not clean. Too tired. Too bloody. Too intimate because danger has stripped the conversation down to where jokes can’t hide properly.
I look at his burned palm.
“Both, apparently.”
He watches me.
The red light flashes over his face. Blood.
Water. Pain. The man who lied to save me and stole my first true sentence.
The man who gave me a lighter once because he saw I needed a way out before I knew I would.
The man who let me forget that because my remembering would have made him less able to survive his own silence.
I hate him.
I do not hate him.
That is the problem.
A radio crackles near the door. Alvarez’s voice comes through broken: “Rear corridor clear. Gavin not located. Possible service exit open to north lot.”
Malcolm tries to sit up.
I put one hand on his chest.
Not hard.
Enough.
“No.”
His eyes sharpen, or try to. “Gavin—”
“Is not getting chased by the man he hit in the head.”
“He’ll run.”
“He’s already running.”
“Clara—”
“No.” My hand stays on his chest, and the feel of his heartbeat under my palm makes the word less clean than I want. “You don’t get to make me watch you die because you finally learned how to tell the truth.”
He stops.
The booth hums.
Below us, Avery coughs.
Somewhere in the underlevel, a door slams. Not near. Not far enough.
Malcolm’s gaze drops to my hand on his chest.
I remove it.
Too late.
He felt it.
So did I.
“Sorry,” I say.
He looks at me like the word hurt.
“For touching without—”
“No.” His voice scrapes. “Don’t apologize for catching me.”
That sentence does something worse than tenderness.
It gives a name to the thing I am trying not to do.
Medics arrive before I can answer.
Two paramedics crowd the booth with bags, gloves, practical voices. They check Malcolm’s pupils, his head wound, his shoulder, his burned palm. One asks me to move back. I do, because Avery is alive and Malcolm is conscious and I have no remaining argument that improves medicine.
Diana appears at the bottom of the booth stairs, wrapped in a silver trauma blanket like an angry baked potato. “Avery is with medics. Conscious. Asking for her dog and a lawyer.”
“Good priorities,” I say.
“She also says Victor visited the set where she was held.”
The booth changes.
Even the paramedic touching Malcolm’s forehead pauses for half a second.
“What?” I ask.
Diana looks at Malcolm, then me. “She says Victor came in once. Not masked. Told Gavin the original was insurance and the copy was bait.”
Malcolm’s eyes find mine.
There it is.
Victor in the room. Not metaphor. Not implication. Not V.H. on paper.
A witness.
Alive.
Avery.
My pulse moves once, hard, in my wrist.
Then Diana’s phone buzzes in her hand.
I stare at it.
“I thought you powered that off.”
“I did.”
The screen lights anyway.
Not a call.
Not a text in the dead group chat.
A news alert.
Diana reads, and the color drains from her face.
“What?” I ask.
She turns the screen toward me.
ENTERTAINMENT WIRE EXCLUSIVE: POLICE INVESTIGATE CLARA VANE’S OBSESSION ROOM AFTER AVERY LORNE RESCUE.
Below the headline is a photo of my office wall.
My whiteboard.
Laurel.
Avery.
Red string I never put there.
Photos I never printed.
And in the center, written in black marker:
THE LAST TAKE BELONGS TO CLARA.
My hands go cold.
Not metaphor.
Cold enough that the cracked credential in my palm feels warm.
Diana whispers, “Molly says police just arrived at your office.”
Malcolm tries to speak.
I don’t look at him.
I look through the booth glass at Avery, shivering alive under silver blankets.
Then down at the headline making a monster of me while the water still drips from the tram.
Alive first.
Grief later.
Now, apparently, trial by narrative.
I straighten.
The room tilts. I let it. Standing is not the same as being steady. It only has to look close enough.
“Tell Molly,” I say, voice calm enough to scare myself, “not to touch anything.”
Diana nods.
“Tell Gideon to meet her there.”
Another nod.
“And tell Entertainment Wire,” I say, looking at the fake headline, the fake room, the fake version of me already being built in public, “they spelled obsession wrong.”
Diana blinks. “They didn’t.”
“I know.”
My hand closes around the credential until the cracked edge bites skin.
“But they’re going to wish that was the worst mistake.”