“This.” She gestured helplessly between them. “You heard them out there. They aren’t talking about David Mercer. They’re talking about the DA sleeping with the defense.”
“Let them talk.”
“No.” Her voice cracked before she fused it back together with iron. “Not after Charleston. I told you—I won’t let it happen again.”
Reid took a step forward, looming over her.
“I am not the partners in your father’s firm. And this is not Charleston.”
“You’re right. It’s worse.” Her eyes flashed with tears she refused to let fall. “In Charleston, I was a junior associate. Here, you’re the elected District Attorney. If this turns into a mistrial, they won’t just take your job. They’ll take your reputation. They’ll say you compromised a murder case for a woman you’ve wanted for years.”
She met his eyes.
“I will not be the reason you lose everything you’ve built in this county. I will not be your Exhibit A.”
“You’re lying,” he said.
He moved closer until his face was inches from hers. The air between them felt charged, tight with anger and want and everything neither of them could survive.
“You’re trying to protect me, and I’m telling you I don’t want it. I want you.”
For one terrible second, her resolve nearly shattered.
“I can’t watch another man I care about get destroyed because of me,” she whispered.
“Then don’t. Stop deciding for me,” he said, his voice breaking. “Stop acting like you get to choose what I can survive.”
“That’s exactly what we have to do.”
“No.”
“Yes.” She went very still. The tears vanished from her face as if a door had slammed shut somewhere deep inside her.
“This is not a negotiation,” she said.
Reid stared at her.
The word negotiation—their word—hung in the air like a ghost.
Once, it had meant teasing smiles in his kitchen and the promise of one more minute. Now she had turned it into a blade.
“You don’t get to decide this for both of us.”
“I already have.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Her throat worked once. Then she lifted her chin.
She felt the muscles in her neck lock. Her face smoothed into the cold, porcelain lie of the Ice Queen.
“We are done.”
He looked like she’d struck him.
“Eleanor—”
“No. You were right before. You are the District Attorney. I am the defense attorney. That is all we are now.”
