I stare at the screen. So that’s the motive. He thinks a threat makes him a man.
I take a photo of myself—chin tilted, dress perfect, pupils steady as bullets—and send it back.
Me:Next time you see me, bring a better story.
Dot-dot-dot. Then nothing.
I flush the empty toilet, wash my hands, reapply lipstick the color of a bruise blooming.
When I push back into the hall, the hall hums higher—money pledged, desserts eaten, survivors hugged. Harper and Blake stand near the dais with flutes in hand, trying to look like people who don’t practice eye contact in the mirror.
“Ready?” Harper asks, pitched bright.
“Always,” I say. I lift my glass. “To stories that heal.”
“To second chances,” Blake adds, the camera eye swallowing us whole.
Harper hesitates, then: “To seeing people as they really are.”
“Cheers,” I say, my smile slicing a perfect white line through the air.
We clink. The camera drinks it. The followers inhale it.
I stand in the center of my chosen universe, dressed like a myth, loved like a weapon. Beneath silk and sugar, I keep the panic where it belongs: buried under my smile.
You want the real Shae Halston?
Fine.
Watch closely.
You never know who’s watching back.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Shae
I’m halfway through brushing on a second coat of lipstick—shade: Forgive Me, Father—when Blake’s voice cuts through the bathroom door.
“You seen Harper?”
“She’s probably outside crying into a potted fern,” I call back. “It’s her default setting when she’s not apologizing for things no one remembers.”
“The Watcher vanished,” Blake says the second I step out of the powder room. “Not figuratively, not in that melodramaticoffline for my mental healthinfluencer way. Gone. Poof. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube—scrubbed. Even the podcast hosting site. Archives deleted. No redirect, no goodbye post, not even abe kind to yourselfgraphic.”
“What?” Shock flickers over my face before I catch it. “One minute they’re the voice in everyone’s ear telling them to watch me burn. The next minute… static?”
“And they left a parting gift.” His mouth tightens. “Only Harper got it. Her phone pinged right when you were shaking hands with that big Hearth & Hands donor. I saw her read it from over your shoulder. Saw the color drain out of herlike someone pulled the plug. Her eyes found mine. Then she pocketed the phone like it was a live grenade.”
“Shit.” I lean into the wall, cool plaster against heat. “I was wrong about her,” I say, and hate how quickly it comes. “I can’t make the same mistake twice.”
My mind runs its old routes—Bishop, the pivot, the betrayal. Then the new one: Blake. The hours. The access. The way he’s always there with a lens and a reason. My stomach tries to turn it into panic. I don’t let it.
I push past him down the hallway. He watches me like I’m both his masterpiece and his mess. Blake doesn’t care about redemption. He cares about footage. He films me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he blinks, and I appreciate the simplicity of that. He doesn’t ask me to be good. He asks me to be interesting.
“You look?—”
“Don’t say radiant.” I head for the side door. “Radiant is code for you’re about to lose your shit in public.”
