Chapter Seven

Patrick Caldwell noticed me within my first year. He gave me more responsibility. Then more. By year three, I was running my own cases. By year five, I was his most trusted associate.

Last year, I won a case that made the papers. A small tech startup suing a larger corporation for intellectual property theft. David and Goliath, the journalists called it. I spent eleven months on that case. I memorized it like a language. When I stood up in front of that judge for closing arguments, I felt something I had never felt before in my life.

Completely, absolutely sure of myself.

We won. Decisively.

My mom called me crying. Jade sent flowers to the office. Patrick took me to dinner and told me senior partnership was within reach.

I went home that night, to my real apartment now, not the studio, a proper one in the East Village with bookshelves and a table and a bedroom, and I sat on my couch in the quiet and felt something I recognized slowly as peace.

I had built something. I had built a life out of the rubble of another one, and it was good. It was solid and mine and no one could take it from me.

How can I forget the two more important part about the last six years.

The first is Marcus.

Marcus Webb came into my life three years after the divorce. He was an architect, calm and steady, with kind eyes and a laugh that filled the room. We dated for almost two years. He was good to me in all the ways that count. He never made me feel like I had to shrink. He met my mom and she adored him. He brought me soup when I was sick and showed up to my work events and never once made me feel like a burden.

But I couldn't give him what he deserved.

He told me on a Sunday evening, gently, without anger. "I feel like part of you is somewhere I can't reach," he said. "I've been trying for two years and I think I always will be."

I wanted to argue. I tried to find the words to argue. But I sat there across from him and I felt the truth of it like a stone in my chest.

We ended it cleanly. He moved to Chicago last year. I think he's seeing someone now. I hope he is. I genuinely mean that.

The second thing is that I never fully stopped wondering.

Not about the romance. Not in the way people assume.

I stopped being in love with Ethan Harrington somewhere around the second year of rebuilding myself. I know this because one day I thought of him and it just… didn't hurt the same way. The sharp thing became a dull thing and eventually it became just a fact, the way an old scar becomes part of your skin.

But I wondered sometimes about what happened to him. Whether he had taken over his father's company fully.

Whether his mother got exactly what she wanted. Whether he ever thought about the girl from Newark who used to read beside him in that quiet corner of the library.

I never looked. I told myself it was because I didn't care.

Maybe it was because I was afraid of what caring still meant.

Priya brings me a coffee at two in the afternoon without being asked. She is growing on me rapidly.

"I pulled everything on Harrington Legal," she says, setting a thick folder on my desk. "They've been operating for three years. E. Harrington passed the bar exam, graduated Columbia Law with honors. They've won four out of five major cases." She pauses. "He's good."

"I know," I say.

"So are you," she declares.

I look up at her.

She shrugs. "I looked you up before I took this job. I knew who you were. That Davison Tech case? That was legendary."

I pick up my coffee. "Flattery noted."

She grins. "I'm not being flattering. I'm being strategic. I want to be on the winning side."

I almost smile. "Then let's make sure we win."

She settles into the chair across from me and opens her notepad and for the next four hours, we work.

At seven in the evening, when the office has emptied out and the city lights are coming on outside the window, I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling.

Eleven days until the first hearing.

I open the case file one more time. And there, in the top right corner of the opposition's filing, I see it again.

Harrington Legal. Lead Counsel: E. Harrington.

No Ethan. Just E.

Like he knew. Like he made it formal on purpose.

Like he was ready too.