* * *
The walk from the control room to Nelson's dressing room wasn't long.Through the newsroom, past the glass wall and the dark studio where the anchor desk sat under switched-off lights, down the hallway with its beige walls and framed publicity photos of anchors past and present.Forty seconds, maybe.A minute if you walked slowly.
I slowed to a crawl.
The building was emptying out.The post-broadcast energy — the low hum of a machine powering down, the scattered voices of crew heading for the elevators — was fading, leaving behind the hollow quiet that settled over the Beacon building every night after the broadcast.A janitor was pushing a cart past the edit bays.Somewhere a phone was ringing and no one was answering it.
The studio was a cavern of shadows — cameras draped, lights off, the anchor desk barely visible in the dark.I'd been inside his ear for over an hour, delivering directions with the emotional warmth of a dial tone, and now I was walking toward him to explain why.
Except I wasn't sure I could explain it.How did you tell someone I pulled back my voice because I discovered it was doing things to your body, and it was doing things to mine, and I got scared?
You didn't.Not in a workplace, and definitely not with your ex.And this situation was so tangled that you couldn't find the end of any thread without pulling on six others.
I reached the hallway.Nelson's door was closed, and the light underneath it was on.
I stood there for five seconds.Ten.Long enough to count my own heartbeats, which were coming faster than they should have for a man who'd survived shelling in Aleppo and gunfire in Juárez.War zones were simple.There were sides, objectives, cover.Places to hide from the bullets.
There was no cover here.
I knocked, and after a long beat Nelson's voice rang out.
"Come in."
My hand froze on the doorknob."You can do this," I muttered.Then I opened the door and stepped inside.
Nelson was standing in the center of the room.
He hadn't changed out of his broadcast wardrobe — he'd been waiting, not getting ready to leave.The dressing room was immaculate around him — cool grays, clean surfaces, nothing personal, the vanity mirror reflecting us both from across the room.Two men.One door.No witnesses.
I closed the door behind me.
Nelson's arms were crossed over his chest.His jaw was set and his ice-blue eyes were locked on me with an intensity I'd seen directed at politicians, interview subjects, and crew members who had failed him.But never, in all the years I'd known him, at me.Not like this.He looked like a man preparing to go to war.
"Tonight's broadcast was the worst we've produced since you started," he stated.
No preamble.No greeting.Just the verdict, delivered with surgical precision.
"The content was strong," I said.My voice came out steadier than I felt."The Pinnacle package was airtight.The senator interview—"
"I'm not talking about the content."
"Then what are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about."
Of course I did.But saying it would mean acknowledging what had been happening in the earpiece, and it would mean admitting that tonight's broadcast was flat because I'd deliberately stripped something away.Admitting that would mean confronting the question of what that something was, and I wasn't ready for that confrontation.
Nelson uncrossed his arms and took a step toward me.Just one.But the room was small, and the step closed the distance enough that I could smell his cologne — that cool, expensive scent that had reached into my chest in the lobby weeks ago and hadn't let go.
"Something changed tonight," he said.His voice was quieter now.Controlled, but with barely disguised effort."Your voice was different.For three weeks, your voice has been—" Nelson stopped.I watched him choose his next words with the same precision he chose his on-air language."Your voice has been something.And tonight it wasn't.I want to know why."
"I was being professional."
"Don't."The word was sharp."Don't tell me you were being professional.What you were before was also professional.What you were tonight was something else entirely."
He was right.I didn't have a defense, because the truth was that I'd been scared of what my voice was doing to him and scared of what watching him respond was doing to me.
Scared was not a word I used often.