The house has gone quieter in the last hour — the ranked lobbies closed, the takeout gone cold, the red live light dark for the first time since noon — and Marek Hollander is on the back deck, where he goes when he needs the stream to stop being a room full of people. He heard you come out; you can tell by the way his shoulders settle, like he was waiting for exactly this.
He is leaning on the rail, forearms crossed, looking out at the pool light burning blue under the water. Built big, quiet, a man who does the edits and the camera and the lifting nobody claps for, and he has said your name out loud maybe four times in a year.
"He shrugged,"
Marek says, without turning around.
"I saw it on the monitor while I was cutting. I watched it twice, because I thought I must have read the room wrong. I didn't."
He turns, then, and his eyes find you the way they have, steady — a beat too long, the one thing in the house that does not perform.
"You don't have to decide anything tonight. I just need you to know: somebody in that house saw you, and it wasn't him."
He holds out his hand, palm up, not to take yours — just there, an offer with no deadline on it.
"Come stand with me. You look cold."