6. The Attack

~Kiara~

“Not out here.” Mateo grabbed my elbow before I could even process what he’d just said about Foster Global, steering me away from the row of curious eyes still lingering near the lounge doorway.

“If you’re about to have a meltdown over a dress, you’re doing it somewhere without cameras.”

He pulled me down the hall toward the wardrobe room.

It was a converted suite the production crew used for costume changes and styling, currently empty except for a wall of garment racks and a single freestanding mirror.

Mateo shut the door behind us and threw the lock.

“Okay.” He set the garment bag down on the fitting bench like it might combust.

“Talk. How does a literal billionaire know you well enough to silence an entire room and hand-deliver couture?”

“I told you. His sister was my patient.” I sank onto the bench beside the bag, suddenly exhausted. “I didn’t know he was…this. Any of this.”

“Kiara.” Mateo’s voice had gone strangely serious for a man who owned four different glitter blazers. “Foster Global sponsors half the network’s original programming. That man does not personally deliver gift bags. He has people for that. Dozens of people.”

He unzipped the bag slowly, and drew out the gown inside.

It was a deep emerald silk, the kind of dress that looked like it had opinions about who was allowed to wear it.

“This isn’t a thank-you gift...” Mateo exclaimed. “It is definitely more than that.”

I stared at the dress and said nothing, because I didn’t have an answer that made any of this make sense.

That was when the door slammed open.

Mateo yelped and nearly dropped the dress. I shot up off the bench so fast the room tilted.

Zane stood at the doorway, his sleeves shoved up his forearms like he’d fought his way through half the crew to find us.

His grey eyes went straight to the gown in Mateo’s hands, and something in his expression went dangerously flat.

“Out,” he said, not even looking at Mateo.

“Excuse me?” Mateo squeaked.

“Now.”

Mateo looked at me, stunned and confused at the same time.

I gave him the smallest nod…partly because arguing with Zane when he looked like that seemed unwise, and partly because I wanted to know exactly what gave him the right to storm in here like he owned the building.

He set the dress down like it might detonate and slipped past Zane, throwing me an are you okay glance I didn’t have an answer for.

The second the door clicked shut, Zane crossed the room in three strides and picked up the gown himself, turning it over in his hands like he was inspecting evidence.

“Zane, what are you—”

“You’re not wearing this.”

“It’s not your decision what I wear.”

“It is when it came from him.” He finally looked at me, and whatever calm he’d been holding onto in the doorway was gone. “Stay away from Jun-Kai Foster.”

“He’s a family friend, Zane. His sister was my patient. You don’t get to walk in here and start giving me orders.”

“I’m not giving you an order. I’m giving you a warning.”

He set the dress down, deliberately, like he was making himself let go of it. “You don’t know who these people actually are when the cameras aren’t on them.”

“So enlighten me.”

“Jun-Kai Foster goes through women the way most people go through coffee.” His jaw tightened.

“Charming, generous, disappears the second it stops being interesting. Ask anyone who’s actually spent time in his circle. He’s not the grateful stranger you’re picturing.”

“And you’d know, because you run in the same circles,” I voiced back.

“I know because I’ve watched it happen. Twice. To people I know.”

Something raw slipped through the ice in his voice for just a second. “I’m not saying this because I’m jealous.”

“Aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer that. Which was, in its own way, an answer.

“I don’t need you to protect me from anyone, Zane. Least of all a man who’s actually been kind to me.”

I crossed my arms. “You lost that right five years ago.”

Something moved behind his eyes…pain, maybe, quickly buried the way he buried everything.

He picked the dress back up, folding it over his arm like he intended to walk out with it, and for a second I thought he actually might.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Wear it if you want. Go to dinner tomorrow looking like something out of his fantasy.”

He stepped past me toward the door, close enough that I caught the same low, familiar scent I remembered from five years ago, the one that still did something traitorous to my pulse.

“Just don’t come running to me when you find out I was right.”

He set the dress back down on the bench… not taking it after all.

That was when my chest seized.

It happened without warning.

I felt a tightness closing around my ribs like a fist, my next breath catching somewhere it shouldn’t.

Between the fight backstage, the seduction challenge, the dust kicked up from Mateo yanking dresses off the rack, and God knew how many hours since I’d last eaten, my lungs had finally had enough.

I heard myself wheeze before I even registered what was happening.

“Kiara.” Zane was in front of me before I’d fully doubled over, his hands steady on my shoulders. “Look at me. Where’s your inhaler?”

I couldn’t answer. I could barely get air in to try.

He didn’t wait for one.

He was already crouched by my bag, unzipping the front pocket like he’d done it a hundred times before, and found the inhaler on the first try.

“Sit forward. Don’t lean back.”

His voice had dropped into something low.

It was the exact register I remembered from a decade of locker rooms and late-night panics, the voice he used when everyone else in the room was panicking and he wasn’t allowed to.

He pressed the inhaler into my hand, then covered my fingers with his to steady the shake in them. “Two puffs. Ten seconds apart. You remember.”

I did.

My body remembered before my mind caught up the rhythm of it, the counting, the way he used to count out loud with me under his breath so I wouldn’t have to focus on anything except his voice.

He counted now, his hand never leaving mine.

“One… two… three…”

By the time I reached ten, the fist around my ribs had started to loosen.

My breath came ragged but air actually reached all the way down, and the room slowly stopped tilting.

“There you go.”

I was shaking. Not from the attack anymore.

It was from how easily his hands had found the exact pocket, and how easily he was able to calm me, like five years had done nothing to erase any of it.

Before he could say another word, I looked him in the eyes.

“Thank you, Mr. Sterling.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “My manager will send a message. He’ll arrange an appreciation gift.”

I stood up and left.