Liam pulled away from Rebecca almost before the hug had fully registered.
It wasn't dramatic—just the deliberate withdrawal of someone who had been caught in a position they hadn't chosen and was correcting it as quickly as dignity allowed. He stepped back. His eyes went to the photographers first—two of them, already repositioning, lenses finding the four of them with the efficient instinct of people paid to find exactly these moments—and then to Aurora.
She was looking at him.
Her expression was the controlled one—the Aurora Castillo face, the one she wore in boardrooms and at podiums and in every room where being readable was a liability. But he'd been watching that face for long enough to know the difference between composed and managing, and what he was seeing now was managing.
He looked at her with the helpless quality of someone who needed to say I can explain, this is not what it looks like and didn't have the words or the setting to say it.
