Page 70 of Glitched Play

Power imbalance.

Every rule crashes back into place with painful precision.

I step away, fast and immediate like I was stung by a killer bee and the cool air between us feels wrong.

"I shouldn't have done that,” I stammer. My words taste like failure.

She looks as startled as I feel. More importantly...she looks hurt.

I did that.

She opens her mouth.

Nothing comes out.

I want to explain, but I don't understand it myself.

I've built billion-dollar companies. Designed systems millions of people use every day. Predicted markets years before competitors. Yet I cannot explain why looking into one woman's eyes made every carefully ordered part of my world collapse.

So, I do the only thing I've ever known how to do when a system breaks.

I leave to analyze.

fourteen

. . .

Maci

Letter 163 Rune

Sometimes the hardest level isn't losing. It's not knowing whether you were ever really playing.

For several seconds after Witt walks away, I forget how to move.

I walk just near the edge of the ballroom with the music still playing, champagne still bubbling in glasses around me, and my heart still lodged somewhere between my ribs and my throat. The spot where his mouth touched mine feels impossibly awake, like every nerve there refuses to believe the rest of the world continued spinning after he left.

I shouldn't have done that.

That's what he said.

Not I didn't want to.

Not that was a mistake.

But close enough that my brain has already started filling in the missing pieces, arranging them into the ugliest possible pattern because apparently that's what insecure hearts do best. One minute, Witt O'Ryan was looking at me like I was the only thing in a room full of donors and executives and flashing cameras. The next, he was gone, disappearing into the crowd like he could outrun whatever happened between us.

Maybe he can.

Maybe that's the difference between us.

I know how to chase a problem until I solve it.

Witt knows how to walk away and analyze it until it no longer feels dangerous.

"Maci?"

Chase's voice pulls me back.