Her hand comes up, palm flat against my chest this time—not blocking, stopping. Her eyes are hard in a way I’ve never seen directed at me.
“I heard them,” she says. “Every word.”
I freeze.
“You don’t get to follow her,” Jamie continues, voice tight with something close to fury. “Not tonight. Not like this.”
“Jamie—”
“How dareyou,” she says.
The words are quiet. Precise. Devastating.
“How dare you do that to her.”
My jaw tightens. “You don’t understand?—”
“Oh, I understand perfectly,” she cuts in. “Audra. Of all people.”
She curls her lip then, just slightly, and looks at me like I’m something unpleasant she’s stepped in without noticing.
“Do you have any idea how careful she is,” Jamie says. “How deliberate. How much it takes for her to trust anyone with even an inch of herself.”
My chest constricts.
“You let her believe she mattered,” she goes on. “Then you let some drunk asshole say her replacement out loud.”
“That’s not?—”
“You don’t get to explain,” Jamie says flatly. “You don’t get to soften it. You don’t get to chase her down now and pretend timing was the problem.”
Her hand drops from my chest, but the distance doesn’t open.
“You don’t deserve her forgiveness,” she says. “And right now, you don’t even deserve her anger.”
She steps back then, disgust still written plainly across her face.
“Fix your mess,” she adds. “If you can.”
She turns and walks away.
I stand there, the room roaring back into focus all at once.
Chaos.
Chuck is pale now—white around the mouth, sweat beading at his hairline. He’s pacing in tight circles, phone pressed to his ear, voice pitched high and frantic.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he’s saying. “Pierce—Pierce knows I was joking. Right? Right?”
Alex is in front of him, jaw clenched, hands braced on Chuck’s shoulders to keep him from bolting.
“You’re done,” Alex says. “You’re so done. You don’t talk to him. You talk to your lawyer.”
Mark is already pulling people aside, damage control writteninto his posture. Quiet voices. Sharp looks. A room trying to pretend it didn’t just witness something ugly.
Too late.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
