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I look at him. He looks back. Between us, the whole gym is happening — Priya’s laugh, Kara calling something about the second stunt, Ethan’s clipboard energy. None of it touches the two feet of air between us.

“How long have you been there?” I ask quietly.

“Long enough.”

“For the good ones or the bad ones?”

The corner of his mouth moves. “All of them.”

Something happens in my chest that has no procedure. He saw the bad ones — the pyramid collapsing, the bail, the reset, me with my hands on my knees. He saw Delaney’s eyes going bright in the wrong way. He saw me turn my back on the squad to talk her down. He saw the run that worked. He saw Ethan say that’s a routine. He saw the whole thing. Not the performance. The work.

“You were right,” he says. Quieter. “Up there. The half-second.” His jaw does the thing. The unplanned thing. “You’re different up there. I wanted to see it.”

I don’t say anything. I can’t. My whole team is twenty feet away. This man just told me he wanted to see the version of me that only exists eleven feet in the air. My chest is doing something enormous. I have absolutely no protocol for it.

“Margo.” Priya, from across the gym. Cheerful. Oblivious. “Water’s getting warm.”

“Coming,” I call back. Bright. Automatic. Then, to him, low: “You need to go before Ethan sees you and makes it a thing.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t move right away. “You were good.”

“I know,” I say. Because I was. Because the bright answer would be wrong here.

He nods. Pushes off the wall. Heads for the double doors. I watch him go for one second I’m not entitled to. Then I turn back to the squad. Bright. Handled. Completely in control of absolutely nothing.

Priya hands me a water bottle and gives me a look. She saw at least part of that. I give her the smile that says later. She gives me the smile that says definitely later. We leave it there. The qualifier is in two weeks. Ethan is already back on the mat.

But I go up for the next run thinking about I wanted to see it. I don’t cut it off this time. It’s the best rep I’ve run all season.

The library at eleven. Our usual room. The glass box at the end of the third floor. The one where the terms were agreed to, where the relapse happened, where the coward-or-caretaker dilemma was named. The walls are still glass. Beau and Sloane are not downstairs. The project is three weeks from done. Tonight Theo has the narrative open on two mirrored screens. We’re working, actually working, for the first hour.

The story has evolved since I saw it on his monitors at Raven House. Not changed — evolved. The same two characters, the same secret. But the branches have multiplied. The dialogue’s gotten sharper. The girl who fixes things with her hands has started to get harder to write around. Some branching choices he’s clearly struggled with — started one direction, redirected, left comments in the margin: does she know yet and this reads like she knows and too obvious?

I don’t tell him I can see the comments. I just read the section he’s pulled up — the coward-or-caretaker dilemma in its latest form.

The character keeps a secret. Not a bad one — a wanting. Something she feels but hasn’t said. Not because she’s afraid it isn’t true. Because saying it makes it real, and real things can be lost. She’s decided a half-true thing is safer than the whole true thing. The reader can choose: does she say it, or does she protect herself by not saying it?

I read it twice.

“Your caretaker argument,” I say, keeping my voice light, “has gotten more specific.”

He doesn’t look up from the build. “The assignment got more specific.”

“The character who won’t say the wanting thing. That’s new.”

“It’s a type of secret.” Still not looking up. “Fits the dilemma.”

“Mm.” I look back at the screen. “The coward option — the not-saying — I can defend it.” I say it carefully, because the careful is doing work. We are two people who are very good at not saying things. We both know which drafting session this got written in. “A person who protects a want because the want is the only whole thing they have — that’s not cowardice. That’s self-preservation.”

He goes still. Just for a second.

“That’s the caretaker argument,” he says.

“It’s both.” I look at him then. He looks at me. The room does the thing it does — the air going particular and specific. “The coward and the caretaker are making the same choice. Different reasons. The reader can’t tell which is which from the outside. Which means the choice is in the telling. What the character says about why they’re not saying it.”

He holds my eyes. “And what does the character say?”

“Nothing,” I say. “That’s the whole problem.”