The door swung shut with a heavy, pressurized thud, cutting off the noise of the hallway. Eleanor barely made it to the sinks.
She gripped the edge of the porcelain until her knuckles went white. The woman in the mirror was a stranger—pale, wide-eyed, lipstick a wound against bloodless skin.
Breathe.
The air wouldn’t go down. It felt like swallowing glass. The walls seemed to lean in, the fluorescent hum drilling into her skull. The tile under her feet stopped feeling like North Carolina. It felt like South Carolina.
Industrial soap. A distant gavel. Reporters shouting through thick glass.
It’s happening again.
The timestamps. The photographs. Harlan’s cold, disappointed eyes. It was the partners’ boardroom all over again—only worse. In Charleston, Charlie had stepped off the tracks the second he thought the train might hit him. Reid hadn’t. Reid had stayed.
And now she had dragged him onto them with her.
Reid. His easy grin, his “negotiations,” the way he looked in the morning light when he thought she wasn’t watching. Reid, who had built a career on integrity in a town that watched its District Attorney like a hawk.
Collateral damage.
The thought doubled her over the sink, a dry, racking sob tearing at her throat.
“Oh, God,” she whispered to the empty room. “Not him. Please, not him.”
She could already see it: headlines, the ethics board, Season Two as Lila Grant peeled back every layer of their privacy. Reid losing the office, the Sheriff’s trust, the ground under his feet. Because of her. Because she was still the Ice Queen from Charleston—the lawyer who contaminated everything she touched.
She turned on the cold water and splashed her face. The shock finally cut through the panic.
The fear didn’t vanish; it hardened. It cooled into the iron that had carried her through the last three years.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a deep, aggressive red lipstick—the shade she wore when she went to war in Charleston. She painted it on with trembling hands that slowly went still.
“You want the Ice Queen?” she asked her reflection. “I’ll give you the damn glacier.”
She looked up. The wide-eyed girl was gone. The defense attorney was back.
She knew what she had to do. You cut off the gangrenous limb before it killed the body. She had to sever the tie—clean and public—so no one at the Bar could say they were still “sharing secrets over breakfast.”
She had to be the villain. The one who walked away. She had to save him, even if he hated her for the rest of his life.
Eleanor steadied herself. She smoothed her hair, straightened her blazer, and wiped the last moisture from under her eyes. She felt the vibration in her pocket—a frantic, rhythmic humming she’d been ignoring since she left chambers.
Against her better judgment, she pulled out her phone.
The screen was a blur of blue links and grainy screenshots.
#VanishedInTheValleywas the top trending topic in North Carolina, but a new, uglier tag was clawing its way up the list:
#SleepingWithTheDA.
She didn't just see hashtags; she saw a video.
A five-second loop of the alleyway kiss, slowed down, set to a mocking, distorted circus tune.
Ten thousand likes.
@JunkieJules:Did you see the look Eleanor Harper gave Calloway before they went into chambers? That’s not "opposing counsel." That’s "see you at my place."
#HarperVsCalloway
