Veyra leaned against the glass booth, the hum of the radio station a white blur behind her headphones. She watched Ivo, his jaw set, face half-lit by the glow of a soundboard. He was talking with Mairen, but his gaze flickered toward Veyra through the reflection—hungry, evaluating, like he was tuning some private frequency only she could feel. Even now, with secrets crowding the control room, Ivo was always reading people, always poised to bend them—except with Veyra, whose silences he couldn’t quite solve.

A storm pressed against Marrow Point. The air throbbed with static as the last shift ended and rain battered the studio windows. Mairen’s mascara was smudged—she’d barely slept since her affair leaked, every shift a dare for someone to mention it aloud. She lingered at the coffee machine, arms folded, avoiding Ivo’s eyes. When Solan breezed in, rain-drenched and earnest, she managed the faintest smile—a silent acknowledgment of the late-night confessions they now shared.

Solan cleared his throat, voice trying for casual. “You okay?” The look she shot him was naked, all brittle pride and panic, her legendary bravado peeled away.

“I don’t need saving, Solan,” she said, but it sounded soft, a plea for connection disguised as pushback.

In the booth, Veyra slid off her headphones and found Ivo watching her. He didn’t move, just waited, letting the tension draw taut between them. “You’re avoiding me,” he said, voice low, roughened by something unspoken. He stepped closer, so close she could see the strain at the corner of his eyes, the ache of wanting control.

“You’re good at pretending you don’t care,” Ivo whispered. His hands hovered uncertainly at her waist, permission asked without words. Veyra’s skin sang beneath his touch. She pressed herself to him, the air charged with longing and fear. Her fingers dug into his shirt, drawing his mouth to hers—slow at first, then desperate as months of restraint detonated. His hands slid under the hem of her skirt, palms hot and reverent, until her back arched and she gasped into the silent, humming dark. They tumbled together onto the padded bench, his lips marking a trail along her collarbone, her breath ragged with something wild and terrifyingly new.

But when it was over and the booth stilled, Veyra pulled away, trembling—not from regret, but from how much she wanted to stay. She stood, smoothing her skirt, voice shaking as she whispered, “You make me want things that scare me.”

The confession hovered between them, raw and dangerous. Ivo touched her face, gentle for the first time—lost, stripped of armor. Across the studio, Telin’s recorded intercom voice crackled over the old speakers, dry and knowing: “Secrets don’t stay buried here, friends. Not in the dark, not in the light.”

Mairen, alone in the production room, stared at herself in the reflective glass. Her phone buzzed—Solan’s name lit up, but she silenced it, unable yet to face the part of herself that Solan saw, unadorned and breakable. Instead, she scribbled something on the back of a show schedule, words sharp and furious: “Is this all I am now? Just a scandal in someone else’s story?”

She shoved the paper into her jacket. Telin stepped in then, hands in their battered coat pockets, eyebrow arched. “If you’re running, Mairen, at least be honest about what you’re running from.”

For once, Mairen couldn’t muster a comeback. Instead, she let herself fall apart—crying, not for the man she lost, but for the love she might have destroyed before it even took root.

Down the hall, Solan hovered at the edge of the studio, voice wobbling, fists clenched around a flash drive. If he uploaded the recording—a damning reel of Ivo’s confession and Mairen’s affair—everything would change. Nobody trusted the owner, Lyev, anymore; his fingerprints smudged every secret, every fear. Maybe Solan had the courage to be the one who finally broke the silence, or maybe he just wanted to see if anyone would come clean before he twisted the knife.

He slid on his headphones, hesitated, and pushed the button.

Suddenly, the station’s power flickered. The speakers hissed. And a voice filled the air: “Let’s talk about the things we keep hidden at Marrow Point Radio...”

Veyra froze in the booth, Ivo’s arms still wrapped around her waist. Mairen’s head snapped up. Solan squeezed his eyes shut as his own confession—the one thing he’d vowed never to share—began to play live.

Across Astren Cove, as the storm howled, every lonely soul tuned in and listened.

To be continued...