Chapter twenty-five
Lindsay
My phone starts buzzing before I'm fully awake.
Buzzing means alerts. Mentions. Screenshots sent by people who don't know what to say but feel like I should see it anyway.
I sit up in bed, sunlight filtering through the curtains—soft, deceptive.
For half a second, my body remembers.
Arthur's mouth on mine.
The way the kiss didn't feel planned or polite or careful.
How real it felt.
Then I open my phone.
The first thing I see isn't an article. It's a clip. A podcast thumbnail. Friendly branding. Casual fonts. The kind of show that pretends it's harmless.
My mother is in the frame.
The phone rings almost immediately after.
"Tessa from ERS," the voice says gently, like she's stepping into a room where something fragile is already cracked. "Do you have a moment?"
I do.
She doesn't panic. She doesn't minimize. She tells me exactly what's happening—that the clip is gaining traction faster than a written piece would.
"She doesn't accuse Arthur directly," Tessa says. "But she implies imbalance. Control. Influence."
She loops in George without ceremony. His voice is calm, clinical.
"Up until this morning," he says, "your visibility metrics were unusually stable. This clip represents a tonal shift. Not explosive—but sticky."
Sticky makes my stomach drop.
"The marriage is still performing as expected," he adds. "But this introduces a new narrative vector."
I grip the edge of the bed harder. George keeps talking. Trend lines. Engagement velocity. Sentiment clusters. The numbers say this isn't a crisis.
"This level of attention was always projected," he says. "The delay is notable."
I let out a sharp laugh. "So this is... good?"
"It's manageable," he replies, unbothered.
Tessa cuts back in, softer now. "We wanted you to hear it from us before you heard it from anyone else. And to be clear—you're not obligated to respond. Silence is still a viable strategy."
I think about how often silence has been framed as protection. As maturity. As grace. I think about how often it feels like disappearing.
After the call ends, I finally play the clip.
My mom sounds... concerned. Earnest. Hurt. She talks about how everything changed after I won. How I don't call as much. How suddenly there are schedules and assistants and "layers."
The hosts murmur sympathetically. She never says Arthur is manipulating me. She doesn't have to.
