She set the phone down, screen still glowing.
The kitchen suddenly felt smaller.
The cameras on the street had been bad.
This was worse.
This was what happened when a moment that had been hers—private, fragile, almost happy—became content.
And somewhere underneath the noise of the hashtags and the echo of flashbulbs, one quiet truth settled in her chest.
Whatever was coming next, it wasn’t only about Mercer anymore.
Somehow, she had become part of the story.
27
Eleanor’s House
Eleanor’s house, usually her refuge, felt suddenly too big. Too quiet. Too full of other people’s voices.
She dropped her keys on the entry table and stood in the stillness for half a beat. Then the night caught up to her all at once. The porch kiss. The creekside patio. Reid’s mouth on hers under the streetlamp. And then—headlights, microphones, strangers deciding how the evening ended.
Her chest tightened. It should have been their decision. Hers and Reid’s. Not a podcaster’s. Not a camera crew’s. Not the internet’s.
She paced the living room, bare feet silent against the rug, the gaslights on the porch casting a soft glow against the windows. Anger burned deep, hot, and tight. She stopped pacing. This was not how she wanted to leave things—with a shattered date, a half-finished kiss, and a van full of strangers dictating the last word.
“No,” she said into the empty room.
Before her nerves could catch up, she snatched up her keys again and headed for the door. She slid into her car.
What are you doing?whispered the cautious part of her that had learned, painfully, to be careful with charming men and public scrutiny.
Her shoulders squared, a slow resolve settling in.Deciding for myself,another part answered.
The route wound away from her rambling neighborhood into a neater grid on the opposite side of Sylva. Here, mature trees arched overhead, creating a dark tunnel of leaves. She eased off the gas, scanning the mailboxes. Numbers only. No names. Discreet—of course. DAs didn’t advertise where they slept.
She spotted it: a sharp brick-and-siding home with clean lines and a circular drive. The vanity plate on the car—VERDICT—glinted under the porch light.
She parked under the dense shadow of an oak and stepped out. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs as she reached the door. She didn’t give herself time to retreat. She knocked.
Reid didn’t open the door; he yanked it back, looking like a man who had been pacing his own cage.
But the District Attorney hadn’t come to the door. The man in the doorway was taller somehow without the armor of his three-piece suits and courtroom veneer. Six foot two, broad-shouldered, half-dressed, with his white shirt hanging open and untucked like he’d torn it apart with his own hands. His hair was a wreck—finger-combed and wild—and his eyes were dark with something she had never seen in a courtroom. Not anger. Not control. A starved intensity. Her gaze tracked lower, helpless and heat-struck, following the trail of dark hair that narrowed as it disappeared into the waistband of his slacks.
“Harper,” he rasped, his voice a low vibration she felt in her bones. “You’re either lost… or you’re making the most dangerous decision of your life.”
“I’m not lost,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt. “And I’m furious.”
One corner of his mouth kicked up, slow and knowing. He reached out, his hand wrapping around her nape, his thumb grazing the sensitive flesh behind her ear as he hauled her inside. He slammed the door shut, the solid thud of the deadbolt echoing through the hallway like a gavel striking wood.
He didn’t just cage her; he crowded her, his chest a searing wall that forced the air from her lungs. He tasted like expensive bourbon and a man who had reached his breaking point. The hand at her nape was firm, his fingers knotting in her hair with a possessive strength that shattered whatever was left of his professional restraint the second the bolt clicked home.
“On the record?” he whispered, his face inches from hers. “I’ve been thinking about doing this since the second you walked into that courthouse two and a half years ago. If those vultures think they get to see the end of this story, they’re dead wrong. This part? This is for us.”
The words hit her like a crack in something she had spent two and a half years holding together. A dozen professional warnings flashed in the back of her mind—conflict of interest, career suicide, the inevitable fallout of a DA and defense attorney crossing the line. She knew all of it, and in that moment, she didn’t care. But the logic didn't stand a chance against the way her body was already reaching for him. She had thought it too. In every courtroom glance. Every argument that ran a second too long. Every moment she had looked at him and then looked away.
The anger that had driven her across town fused with a sudden, sharp craving. Eleanor reached up, her fingers tangling in the hair at the base of his skull, pulling him down. When their mouths met, it wasn’t a question—it was a collision. It tasted like a rebellion against every camera lens and every headline.
