Blake rescues us. “I can carve a sixty-second,” he offers. “Drop it after the soup line.”
“Do it,” I say, and Lila exhales like she’s been holding her breath her whole adult life. I clock it: she’s not just invested. She’s enlisted.
“Anything else?” I ask.
She hesitates, then unzips a small pouch and sets a USB on my desk—matte black, anonymous, theatrical.
“What’s on it?”
“Donor dinner,” she says. “You weren’t in the room.” Her tone makes it sound like an indictment. “Room mics caught… an atmosphere.”
“Atmosphere,” I repeat.
“Laughter,” she says, but her mouth has gone flat.
After she leaves, Blake lifts a brow. “Want me to run it for traps?”
“Plug it in,” I say, and he does. The screen fills with fairy lights and soft bloom; our handheld stayed in the corner. The mic Lila flagged picks up cutlery, wine, and a quartet of women trying to outbid each other on a signed cookbook.
Then—there—a pocket of laughter off-axis. Shae and Blake, not in frame, but close to whatever mic got drunkenly taped to a pillar.
Shae: “If you give me one more angle where my pores look like national parks, I’m taking away your lens privileges.”
Blake (low): “You’re the only subject I have to stop making prettier.”
Shae: “Flattery is the tax you pay to stand near me.”
Blake: “Then audit me.”
Their voices spill into each other like whiskey into water. Heat in it. Thick with flirtation.
I don’t move. Blake doesn’t either. The moment isn’t a scandal; it’s worse. Chemistry you can’t line-item out of a narrative. Bad optics with good ratings.
He clears his throat. “Context,” he says too fast. “We were five feet apart, six donors between us, two cameras rolling.”
“And a mic that wanted a raise,” I say. I bookmark it anyway. I have a drawer labeledLeverage. It isn’t for Shae.
“The shot list from later?” he offers, eager to move. “Night contributions in the pantry, the prayer with Lila, the closet confession.”
“Play the closet confession.” My voice comes out even. Great. I’m a professional.
The small room is beige by design—meant to be forgettable. Our GoPro lives in a tissue box. Shae and Lila sit shoulder-to-shoulder on a storage ottoman, hall light slicing the floor in a hard angle.
Lila: “I… didn’t come tonight to be on camera.”
Shae: “You’re not.” She glances straight at our lens and smiles, slow and dismissive. “That’s a smoke detector.”
Lila: “I can’t stop thinking about… about him. He texts from new numbers. He says he’ll come to the house. I hate him on my best days and miss him on my worst.”
Shae: “He’s tempting you to answer. That’s all hunger is. Answering is feeding.”
Lila: “You make it sound easy.”
Shae: “Easy isn’t safe. It’s just obvious.” She tucks a strand of Lila’s hair behind her ear with obscene tenderness. “Block the number. Block the feeling. If you need, I’ll do it for you.”
Lila’s shoulders unclench like a problem solved.
Blake exhales. “That plays,” he says. “Even if it’s predatory, it plays.”
