I look at her and it hits anyway—irritating, involuntary. The way she holds her ground like it’s owned. The way her mouth stays hard even when her eyes sharpen.
My pulse doesn’t speed up like a crush. It locks in like a target.
“I think your reputation holds,” I say, “and mine bleeds.”
Her gaze flicks over my shoulder toward the glass wall again. Phones no longer pretending. The audience has decided we’re worth the pause.
“People will talk,” she says.
“They already are.”
“And you standing here won’t help.”
“It will if it’s consistent.”
She stills. “Consistent how?”
“Public proximity,” I say. “Straightforward. Unforced. Just enough alignment to complicate what they think they know.”
Her mouth tightens. “You’re asking me to stand next to a fire.”
“I’m asking you to decide whether you want to control where it spreads.”
Silence.
It costs me this time. I feel it in my shoulders, in the stretch as her response takes long enough to matter.
In the fact that she doesn’t shut me down immediately.
She walks past me, boots clicking sharp against the floor, and looks out the glass like she’s measuring fallout in real time. No flinch at the phones. Instead, she registers them the way she registers everything—cataloged, filed, accounted for.
“They’ll assume things,” she says.
“Yes.”
“They’ll resent me for advantages I don’t have.”
“Yes.”
She turns back to me slowly, the movement deliberate, like she’s deciding whether to cut or cauterize. “And you’re fine with that.”
“No,” I say. “I’m realistic about it.”
Her eyes search mine like she’s checking for the lie, for the hesitation that isn’t there. “You don’t deny much.”
“I don’t waste energy on it.”
She exhales once. Controlled. “You want my reputation,” she says.
The words land clean. No accusation. Just fact.
I own it. Keep it raw. Stay put. “Yes.”
“And what do I get in return,” she asks, voice calm enough to be lethal, “besides being the girl who got close to the mess and got burned for it?”
There it is. The real negotiation. The part she refuses to let me skip.
My face stays blank. My chest stays tight anyway. Pressure. Jurisdiction math.
