Robert's smirk is the kind that looks like it was designed in a lab — symmetrical, practiced, calibrated to make you feel like the punchline of a joke you haven't heard yet. He looks between us, one hand still on Jared's shoulder, the other holding a glass of something dark.
"Nice performance," he says. "The media's eating up your engagement. Convenient timing, huh? Right before the Super Bowl. Almost like someone planned it."
My face does innocent before my brain gives it permission. "What do you mean?"
Robert's gaze slides to me — slow, appraising, the way you'd look at a painting you suspect is a forgery. "Just saying." He shrugs, takes a sip. His eyes don't leave mine over the rim of the glass and something about his attention feels like fingers on the back of my neck — light, uninvited, impossible to ignore.
Jared's voice drops to something barely controlled, the words squeezed through a jaw that's almost wired shut. "You need something, Robert? Or are you just here to waste my time?"
"Just to congratulate you, captain." Robert grins — wide, theatrical, all teeth and no warmth. He raises his glass in a toast no one asked for. "To the happy couple. May the performance last as long as the season." He holds Jared's gaze for a beat too long — a full second, then two, the kind of sustained eye contact that isn't a look but a threat wearing a look's clothing. Then he turns and walks away into the crowd, his suit absorbing the darkness like he was made for rooms like this. The elaborate watch catches the strobe light once, twice, and then he's gone.
I turn to Jared. His hand is still on my waist, his knuckles pressed so hard against my hip I can feel each one individually through the fabric. The ease from thirty seconds ago has been replaced by something rigid and electric, his whole body humming at a frequency I can feel against my side. "Who was that?"
"Robert Kane. We went to the same sports academy." His eyes are still tracking the space where Robert disappeared, scanning the crowd like a man watching a predator retreat into tall grass. "Used to be friends."
"And now?" I watch his profile — the jaw, the vein in his temple, the particular way his nostrils flare when he's holding back something that wants out. "Didn't look like friends. Looked like someone you want to throw through a window."
His face closes — not gradually, not in stages. A door slamming in a single motion, deadbolt and chain and the lights going off behind it. "It's none of your business. Just play your role."
The warmth from Anna's aftermath, from the car confession, from his thumb tracing circles on my back — all of it evaporates so fast it leaves condensation. I'm standing in a nightclub in a dress I didn't buy next to a man who just defended me to the world and then shut me out of his in the same breath, and the whiplash is so severe I should probably add it to my concussion symptoms.
"I need a minute." My voice is flat. I pull away from his hand and walk toward the restroom, weaving through bodies and bass and the sharp-sweet smell of cocktails. Behind me I can feel him watching — his gaze on my back like a physical weight, his jaw clenched so tight I can almost hear the enamel protesting from across the room.
The restroom is cool and quiet and blessedly empty. I lean against the sink and stare at my reflection under the harsh bathroom lighting that makes everyone look like they're having a medical event. My eyes are wet. The bruise on my temple throbs beneath the curtain of hair, a dull pulse that keeps time with my heartbeat.
The woman in the mirror is wearing borrowed clothes and a borrowed ring and an expression that's two drinks away from falling apart. She's been kissed by two different men in twenty-four hours and defended in public by the one she's not sure she trusts and shut out in private by the one she's not sure she can stop wanting and none of it — not one piece of this fractured, ridiculous life — was her idea.
"Don't you dare fall for him," I tell her. She doesn't look convinced. She looks like a woman who's already falling and is narrating the descent to stay sane.
The door opens behind me. I expect a drunk girl or one of Anna's cheerleaders looking for somewhere to reapply lipstick and talk about me in the third person. The reflection in the mirror shows me neither. Robert Kane closes the door behind him and leans against it, blocking the exit with his body the way men do when they want you to notice that they can.
"This is the ladies' room." My voice comes out steady. My body has already taken a step back, the counter pressing into my spine.
He doesn't care. He walks closer — too close, crossing the invisible line that separates conversation from intimidation, his cologne arriving before he does like an advance warning system. He puts a hand on my shoulder. Casual, deliberate, the kind of touch that pretends to be friendly and isn't.
His watch catches the bathroom light — expensive, black strap, silver clasp, heavy on his wrist in a way that suggests it's worth more than a car. Something about it snags in my memory like fabric catching on a nail, a half-recognition I can't place, the shadow of something I've seen before but can't pull into focus.
"Relax." His voice is soft in the way dangerous things are soft — the hush before the strike, the whisper before the scream. "I just wanted to congratulate you. Privately."
He studies my face from half a meter away with the attention of a man reading fine print on a contract he's about to exploit. Then he speaks again, each word placed carefully, precisely, like a surgeon laying out instruments.
"You're not in his league."
My spine locks against the counter. "What?"
"Drop the drama, sweetheart. I know Jared. Too well." He tilts his head, the gesture almost gentle. "And I know every woman who's been in his bed. Models, actresses, heiresses. You don't fit the pattern." His eyes travel over me — the dress, the hair, the ring — in a way that makes my skin try to crawl off my skeleton and find its own way home. "You're cute though. In a scrappy sort of way." He leans closer. "How much is he paying you? Maybe I can outbid him."
The words land like ice water dumped down my spine. My reflection stares at me from the mirror behind him — wide-eyed, cornered, the cleaning girl who got dressed up and walked into a world that's now showing her exactly where she ranks.
"Back off." I straighten my shoulders and move to step around him.
His hand catches my elbow. His grip is firm, his fingers pressing directly into the bruise from Ron that's barely faded — the exact same spot, the exact same pressure, and my body doesn't know which man it's reacting to anymore, just that the blueprint is identical. His face is inches from mine, his breath warm on my cheek, and his eyes are doing something patient and cruel, the eyes of someone who has all the time in the world to take what he wants.
The door flies open. The sound cracks through the bathroom like a starter pistol and Robert's head snaps toward it and Luke is standing in the frame, chest heaving, eyes locked on Robert's hand wrapped around my arm.