Joint Liability at 2:17 A.M.

The flashbulbs were a blinding, stuttering assault, turning the rain-streaked glass of the After Dark ballroom windows into a jagged kaleidoscope. I kept my smile pinned in place, leaning into the heavy, solid warmth of Niall’s side as another reporter shoved a microphone toward us. My heart hammered a frantic, irregular rhythm against my ribs, the adrenaline of the last twenty minutes threatening to vibrate right out of my skin. “So the leaked footage of the rehearsal injury—that was just a misunderstanding?” the reporter asked, her eyes darting between us, hungry for the scandal Michael had queued up to destroy me. Niall’s arm tightened around my waist. His fingers pressed firmly against the damp fabric of my bartending dress, a silent anchor in the chaos. He did not flinch, did not look toward his uncle Michael, who was standing just out of frame by the glass elevators, his icy, courteous smile frozen in a rictus of thwarted calculation. “A complete misunderstanding,” Niall said smoothly, his voice projecting the polished, corporate warmth of a man born to close deals, though I could feel the microscopic tremor of tension in his chest. “Working and I have been keeping our relationship quiet to respect the integrity of the campaign. The footage you saw was just us blowing off steam after hours. A clumsy, playful moment between two people who are—frankly—terrible at hiding how they feel about each other.” He looked down at me, and the raw, unvarnished heat in his eyes made my breath hitch. It was supposed to be a performance. A high-wire fake-engagement interview to neutralize the leak, to reframe Michael’s narrative of my ‘reckless behavior’ into a charming, behind-the-scenes romance. But when Niall looked at me like that, the line between strategy and truth dissolved into something terrifying and real. “We wanted to keep it private,” I added, forcing my voice to stay steady, lacing my fingers through his. “But when the footage leaked, we realized we couldn’t let a private joke be spun into a liability. We’re partners. In this campaign, and in everything else.” Niall smiled, a genuine, devastating break in his armor. He looked back at the cameras. “Exactly. We’re a team. I wouldn’t sign my name to this initiative with anyone else. The mutual consent and partnership we share is the foundation of this entire charity cause.” It was a masterstroke. In three sentences, he had thrown the corporate machine under the bus, emphasized our mutual agency, and effectively killed the scandal dead. I saw Elisa Tran hovering near the coat check, her color-coded lanyard swinging as she subtly flashed me a thumbs-up. The blog alerts on the reporters’ phones were already pinging, pivoting…