“She’s in pain and I’m just… sitting here like a Rottweiler with feelings.”
Nate sat in the chair pulled up beside Holly’s bed, his forearms braced on his thighs, fingers loosely threaded together like he was praying to a god he didn’t believe in. The only light came from the dim lamp above the sink and the faint green glow of the monitor tracking her vitals, the steady beep of her heartbeat the closest thing he’d ever heard to peace.
Holly was asleep on her side, hair spread across the pillow in dark, messy waves, her mouth parted like she’d been arguing with pain even in her dreams. Her ankle was wrapped and elevated, swollen beneath layers of gauze and a plastic brace, and the sight of it still made his jaw lock so hard he could feel it in his teeth.
Nate had watched her break on stage. He’d felt her shake in his arms. Heard the small, brutal sound she’d made when her body hit the floor, and it kept looping behind his ribs like an alarm he couldn’t turn off. He’d played through broken knuckles, cracked ribs, a shoulder that should’ve been surgicallyrepaired three seasons ago. But watchinghergo down like that had done something vicious to him. It’d called up something primitive. Something that didn’t care about cameras, or contracts, or consequences.
His phone buzzed on the chair arm. He almost ignored it. The world could wait. The league could wait.The show could rot.But then it buzzed again, and the third time it vibrated he checked the screen with the slow irritation of a man being dragged out of a foxhole.
Nick Marlow
Watch this.
His thumb hovered. A cold, instinctive dread crawled up his spine. Nate clicked anyway.
The video loaded in silence, shaky and grainy, filmed from someone’s phone near the backstage entrance. It was time-stamped ten minutes before their routine. He watched a blur of crew members, costumes, and movement, then there he was.Lars.Smiling. Talking with Jorja like it was any other night of manufactured sparkle. The camera angle shifted slightly, and Nate’s stomach dropped as clarity snapped into place. Lars reached up with two fingers, catching the string of pearls at Jorja’s throat.
Nowhoopsiebackstage wardrobe mishap. It was fucking deliberate. The pearls scattered across the floor, glittering under the stage lights. Nate felt his pulse go murderous as the memory slammed into him. Holly sprinting into the lift, her shoe rolling out, her ankle snappingsidewayswith that sickening crack…
His throat tightened. His hands stopped being hands and became weapons, fingers curling so hard around the phone that it creaked. He replayed it twice, his brain refusing to accept what it already knew. Rage rose like a tide, cold and heavy, the kind that didn’t roar and burn out butsettled, locked in, lethal.
He’d spent a lifetime learning how to take emotion and turn it into impact. He could feel it now, that old familiar switch flipping inside him. The part of him that stopped being a man and started being the wall.
You don’t fucking touch what’s mine.
The thought came uninvited, brutal in its simplicity. It might’ve scared him, once, but now he knew it was just the truth. Shewashis now. And he was going to get to the fucking bottom of this.
He stood slowly because he wasn’t about to wake her. He looked at Holly in the bed, at the slack vulnerability of her sleeping face, at the faint bruising on her wrist from where she’d hit the floor, and his chest twisted so hard it almost stole his breath. She was supposed to be safe with him. She was supposed to beprotected.
His phone buzzed again with another message, this time a call from Holly’s producer, Martin.
Nate turned away from the bed, forced himself to breathe through his nose like he wasn’t two seconds away from finding Lars and driving him through drywall. He padded to the window, stared down at the city lights, and tried to bleed off the violence simmering under his skin. It didn’t go anywhere, it just collected. But he answered the call anyway.
“What?”
“Nate! Naaaaate, you absolutelegend! Are you sitting down? Wait, don’t answer that. You’re probably still at the hospital. Which, first of all, huge sympathies. We’re alldevastatedabout Holly. Just heartbroken, really. So unfair. She’s a warrior, truly. How is she?”
Nate’s jaw worked as he tried to keep his cool after seeing the footage. But Martin’s flippant tone needled him. “What do you want?”
“Okay, okay,” Martin hurried on. “Listen. You guyswonthe week.”
Nate stilled, glancing at Holly and trying to keep his voice down.“What?”
“I know, I know!Bananas, right? But the judges? They saw enough. Chantreuse said, and I quote,It was enough jive to kiss the hall of fame.Ten. Ten. Ten. Stan even cracked a smile. It wasterrifying.And the public vote wasinsane.Like, record-breaking. People were voting like it was the goddamn Superbowl. I don’t know what you did, but keep doing it. Well, maybe notexactlythis, but thevibes, Nate. Thevibesare immaculate.”
Nate’s slowly bubbling anger flared. “It was fuckingsabotage,Martin. I’ve seen the backstage footage.”
“What?” Martin sounded panicked. Not shocked. Desperate. “How?”
“Doesn’t matterhow,”Nate growled, barely holding his shit together. “And not the first time she’s been targeted. Remember her shoes in weekthree?”
A shift in the air on the other end of the line. A pause that said yes, I know exactly what you mean, and no, I can’t pretend I don’t. Martin exhaled, all his fake frippery dribbling out of existence.
“We’re handling it.”
“You’re going to handle itfaster,”Nate said, his voice calming in a way that meant someone should be very, very afraid. “Webothknow what happened, and who did it. Deal with this the way it needs to be dealt, or I’m selling the footage to the press.”
And using the fucking money to help pay medical bills.
