Doing entirely too much.
I reached for my phone out of pure instinct and saw the screen flicker weakly to life with a bright, unwelcome warning.
Two percent battery.
“Of course,” I muttered.
Perfect.
Now I couldn’t even pretend to be busy.
I set it face down on the table and took another sip of my drink.
The dark-haired biker was still watching me.
Not in a gross way.
Not like the men who had looked at Maya earlier, all obvious hunger and ego and expectation.
He was… studying me.
Noticing.
Like he was waiting to see what I’d do if left long enough in his line of sight.
That should not have made my heart race.
But it did.
One of the bikers said something to Maya that made her laugh again, louder this time, and then suddenly a bartender appeared at my elbow like he’d materialized out of thin air.
“Another cranberry Carbliss?” he asked.
I blinked up at him. “Oh. Uh… sure.”
He set the fresh can on the table in front of me and disappeared before I could even ask how he knew.
Slowly, carefully, I looked back across the table.
The president hadn’t moved.
But that little smirk was there again.
Not mocking.
Not exactly.
Just enough to tell me he’d noticed the empty can.
And done something about it.
My fingers tightened slightly around the new drink.
Maya kept talking, fully engaged now in whatever game she thought she was playing, but the noise around the table had dulled for me again. Not gone. Just blurred. Like my brain had decided one thing mattered more than everything else happening in the room.
His attention.
The strange, quiet weight of it.
