I almost smile because that’s the closest thing to banter we’ve had since this morning. The kind of normal we used to have before we complicated everything.
We walk another stretch in silence, the kind that starts pulling at my patience. The restaurant’s in sight now, the gleam of glass and white linen already visible through the trees. I should leave her alone, but she’s tense, and I’m restless, and I need to focus on something other than the memory of her back under my hands while I zipped her dress.
I clear my throat because the quiet is starting to get under my skin. “You can stop pretending you don’t want to say something,” I tell her.
“I don’t,” she says, eyes straight ahead.
“Liar.”
She exhales sharply. “Fine. I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“This,” she says, motioning vaguely toward me and the suit I’m already regretting. “You could work anywhere, Rowan. You could walk into a hundred firms and get an offer tomorrow. You’ve got the grades, the record, the?—”
I raise a brow. “The what?”
She hesitates. “The... terrifying calm.”
That earns a quiet laugh from me. “You think I’m calm?”
“I think you pretend to be.”
She’s not wrong, but I’m not giving her that. “And you pretend not to care.”
Her jaw ticks. “This isn’t about me.”
“It never is, according to you.”
“Don’t do that,” she says, stopping long enough for Waffles to sniff the edge of a planter. “I’m asking a serious question.”
“About what? My career?”
“About why you picked this firm.” She finally looks at me, her eyes sharp and searching. “Hale & Brooks is a machine. You know that. So why here?”
The question is too careful to be random. She’s not just curious. She’s trying to figure out if I’m self-destructive or just strategic.
I shove my hands into my pockets and keep walking. “Because it’s where the power is.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one that matters,” I say. “You spend three years in law school listening to people talk about justice and ethics and balance, but when you get out, all that matters is who has leverage. Hale & Brooks has it.”
Her steps slow beside me. “You sound like you don’t even like what you’re doing.”
“I don’t have to like it,” I say. “I just have to win.”
“That’s bleak.”
“It’s true.”
She studies me for a long moment, and I can feel it—the quiet shift between irritation and concern that she probably doesn’t even notice she’s giving off.
“You don’t have to prove anything to them,” she says quietly. “You’re already better than half the people they’ll hire.”
“That’s not the point,” I tell her.
“Then what is?”
