The realization didn't arrive like a thunderclap; it arrived like the first light of a winter morning — clear, cold, and undeniable.I loved him.Not the memory of the idealistic boy from college, but this man.And I wasn't going to let a man in a corner office fire him for "optics."
I reached for the phone.
"Nelson."Jimmy's voice was very small, his hand coming up to touch my wrist."What are you doing?"
"I'm fixing this," I said."All of it.Tonight."
ChapterThirty
Jimmy
Ihadn’t slept.
I'd done the impression of sleep — eyes closed, breath regulated, body still on Nelson's absurdly expensive Belgian sheets — but at three I gave up and lay on my back watching the city throw moving lights across the ceiling.Nelson stayed up late, making phone calls.When I asked what he was doing he told me to get back in bed.When he finally crawled under the sheets beside me he kissed the back of my head and held me from behind.
At six he got up.
I watched him dress from the pillow, because watching Nelson Mackenzie dress for war is the sort of thing you do not interrupt.A white shirt so crisp it looked structural.The black suit cut so precisely that a menswear blog had once run a thousand words on the shoulder seam alone.A tie the color of a bruise.Cufflinks.He did his own knot in four movements without looking down, and when he pulled it tight it sounded like a door locking.
He caught my eye in the mirror.
"Wake up.Always wear something that makes you feel like you're about to win."
"Nelson —"
"Up, Jimmy."
I dressed in the things he handed me — a charcoal blazer, a white shirt I didn't recognize and that fit me too well to be an accident, my own boots.I tried, twice, to ask him what he'd done last night.What the phone calls had been about.Who he'd called.Both times he said eat something, pushed coffee at me, and didn't answer.
In the cab he did not let go of my hand.
He wasn't squeezing it.Nelson was just holding it, palm-down, on the seat between us, the way you hold something you have decided is yours and don't intend to argue about.He watched the streets move past his window and I watched him.The only thing I knew for sure — the only thing I’d been able to confirm during seven hours of insomnia — was that I had never seen him enjoy something this much.
That was what was scaring me.
His mouth was relaxed, and his shoulders had dropped half an inch.The little muscle in his jaw he clenched before broadcasts wasn't clenching.He looked both smug and peaceful, which I didn’t think could be done simultaneously.
"Nelson," I said quietly."Whatever you're about to do —"
"Mm."
"— please don't blow up your contract for me."
He turned his head.Looked at me the way he'd looked at me across the dressing room couch the night before, when I'd told him I was the liability.
"Jimmy," he said, "I love that you think I'm doing this for you."
I opened my mouth.Closed it.The cab took a corner.He faced front again and didn't elaborate.
* * *
The newsroom at seven-forty-five had its morning hum on — interns hauling coffee, a producer doing her sun-salutation stretch by the rundown board, the muted bank of televisions playing four competitors at once.Nelson cut through it the way an icebreaker cuts through pack ice.People glanced up.People looked back down.Two reporters parted around us without a word.Somebody dropped a stack of printouts.
Nelson didn't slow down.
My hand was still in his.We were holding hands across the entire newsroom floor of the Beacon Broadcasting Company at seven-forty-five in the morning and I felt every set of eyes register it on my skin like sunburn.
Nelson wasn't hiding it.