She turned to me, and in the dark her eyes found mine with an accuracy that had no business existing. “I want someone to see me. Really see me. Not the Queen, not the brand, not the feminist icon who started a dating show because she was mad about crypto bros. Just… me.”
I see you, I didn’t say. I’ve been seeing you since the first night, and it scares me more than anything my father ever taught me to be afraid of.
The distance between us had shrunk, though I couldn’t recall either of us moving. Close enough for vanilla and a sharper attention underneath — citrus, ginger, whatever compound had been colonizing my subconscious since night one. The slight tremble in her hands was visible, the vulnerability she was showing me like a trust fall she hadn’t fully committed to.
I could have reached out and touched her.
I wanted to. Wanted to so badly it felt — a fissure through load-bearing concrete, and my hand was already moving before my brain could intervene, reaching toward her face in the dark—
“OH MY GOD OH NO I’M SO SORRY—”
Mason burst through the garden gate like a Labrador who’d spotted a squirrel, phone flashlight blazing, face a portrait of mortified realization as he registered exactly what he’d interrupted.
“I was looking for— I thought I heard— I’m going to go now. I’m going to go very far away and never speak of this again—”
He was already backing through the gate, still apologizing, somehow managing to knock over a potted plant in his retreat. He spent three frantic seconds trying to right it before abandoning the effort and disappearing into the mansion like he’d just committed a social crime he’d be processing in therapy for years.
The moment was broken. Sloane had pulled back the second the light hit, her defenses slamming into place with a quiet click. She was standing, brushing invisible dirt from her borrowed sweater, not meeting my eyes. The architecture of the Queen reassembling in real time — walls going up, windows closing, the whole façade reinstalled in under three seconds. Impressive, if you didn’t know what was behind it.
I knew what was behind it.
“I should go. Early call time tomorrow.”
“Right.” My voice came out rougher than intended. “The filming.”
“The filming.” She was already walking toward the gate, already becoming the Queen again with every step. At the threshold, she paused without turning. “Thank you. For the water.”
She knew. Of course she knew.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Now she turned — just enough for me to see the smile. Small, knowing, and nothing like Camera 2. “Goodnight, Rhys.”
“Goodnight, Sloane.”
I stayed in the garden for another hour after she left. The jasmine smelled different now. Warmer. Complicit. Like the garden itself had picked a side and it wasn’t mine.
My phone buzzed. Mason: sorry again bro. truly. if it helps you two looked really cinematic? like a movie poster? I’ll delete the photo I accidentally took
I stared at the screen for ten seconds, then typed: What photo.
Three dots. Then: deleting now deleting now please don’t kill me
A second buzz: also FYI she left her hair tie on the bench
I looked down. A plain black elastic, curled on the stone where her hand had been, still holding the faint shape of her wrist.
I picked it up. Put it in my pocket.
A man who pockets a hair tie at midnight in a garden that smells like jasmine is not a man who is studying the enemy. He’s a man who is keeping evidence of her, which is a completely different thing, and the difference was going to be a problem I didn’t know how to solve with math.
CHAPTER 5
The Line
“When he cooks your grandmother’s recipe — without asking what it was”
SLOANE
