“And?” I asked.
“And I’m not supposed to talk about it yet.”
I exhaled through my nose, a huff of irritation I didn’t bother hiding. Before I could turn, he shifted. Passed just close enough that his arm brushed the edge of my sleeve, heat skimming fabric, deliberate and unhurried. My breath caught—not enough to be obvious, but enough that I noticed it. He circled around me like the kitchen belonged to him, like I did too, just enough to unsettle the part of me that prided itself on never being surprised.
He reached for the coffee pot, poured himself a cup, then—without asking—topped off mine. Set it beside my hand with the quiet confidence of someone who already knew the answer.
Black. No sugar.
The small intimacy sparked along my nerves, quick and electric, impossible to ignore.
He watched me over the rim of his coffee mug as he took a seat. “What is it?”
No softening. No courtesy question. Just the assumption that whatever had shifted in me mattered—and that I wasn’t going to get away with pretending otherwise.
That was the problem with him. He never pretended not to notice. Most people gave you an out. Brewster removed them. It should have irritated me more than it did. Instead, it felt uncomfortably familiar—like the way I chased a story past its surface layer, past the polished answers, until I hit the part people guarded because it mattered.
I studied him for a moment. The color of his eyes—hard to pin down, darker in this light—gave nothing away. Telling him was a choice. A calculated one. But it was also inevitable.
And I wanted to see what he’d do with it.
I unlocked my phone, pulled up the transcript and the annotation, and held it out to him.
“Read this.”
He didn’t take it immediately.
His gaze went to my face first, intent and searching, as if he were mapping my reaction before deciding whether to accept the evidence. Only then did he take the phone and scroll.
I sipped my coffee and watched him read.
Not skimming. Not scanning for liability the way producers did, or hunting for exposure like lawyers. Brewster read the way he did everything else—thoroughly, deliberately, with a kind of quiet intensity that made you feel like the thing in front of him mattered.
His eyes narrowed slightly. A faint crease appeared between his brows. His finger slowed as he scrolled, then paused. A muscle in his jaw ticked once.
Then he scrolled back up.
Once.
Twice.
That was his tell.
He’d found it. He knew exactly what it was.
He read it a third time before locking the screen and handing my phone back. “How long ago?” he asked.
“An hour. Maybe less.”
That earned me a measured look, brows lifting just enough to register interest. “And you didn’t forward it.”
“No.”
“You didn’t screenshot it.”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell anyone else.”
