“I’m just saying?—”
“Say it again,” Rhett said, voice low and sharp, dimples gone, brown eyes gone flat. “Call her compromised one more time.”
Roan was already moving. “Enough.”
But I was watching everything. The bar. The other guys. The waitress freezing mid-step, sensing the shift. The way Devon’s nostrils flared as he scented the alpha heat rolling off Rhett and started bracing like he might throw a punch.
I stepped in before he could.
“Let’s not pretend you care about Wren’s professionalism,” I said calmly. “You care about your contract.”
Devon’s gaze snapped to me.
Good.
“Don’t make this about her,” I added. “She didn’t leak the story. She doesn’twanthim here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know her better than you do.” Of this, I had zero doubts.
My certainty made him blink.
Even Roan looked at me—quick, sharp. Like I’d said too much.
Maybe I had.
But I wasn’t about to sit here and let Wren take the hit for a PR ambush weallknew was Marchand’s style. That photo didn’t leak by accident. And it sure as hell didn’t leak from her.
Rhett was still bristling beside me, but at least he wasn’t standing. Roan’s jaw was tight enough to crack.
Devon muttered something under his breath and stalked off toward the back.
Roan finally broke the silence. “Well,” he said. “That blew up faster than expected.”
Rhett raked a hand through his hair, then cursed and leaned back in the booth. “She’s gonna kill me.”
I didn’t disagree. But something else was tugging at me. Something colder. It wasn’t just about Wren’s image. Or Beckett’s smug attempt at a return.
It was the scent shift I’d clocked earlier—subtle, strange, wrong. Not bad. Not even unpleasant.
Just… new.
When the food hit the table later, and none of us touched it right away.
Roan pushed his grilled chicken salad around like it had personally offended him. Rhett picked at fries and muttered to himself. I ate my burger, because someone had to act like a functioning adult.
None of us said what we were really thinking.
Wren.
That photo.
That smirking bastard sitting across from her.
The quiet calculation in Marchand’s timing.
Ten minutes later, we paid and left, the late-afternoon sun hitting too hard as we stepped out onto the sidewalk. The air was crisp, brittle with early-season frost. The kind of cold that teased snow but hadn’t committed yet.
