For three weeks, that vibration at eight-fifteen had meant her.
Tacos or Thai?
Did you see the juror in the third row sleeping?
One tired heart emoji after midnight.
He grabbed the phone.
News alert.
#MercerTrial:
DA Calloway Faces Ethics Probe Over Photos.
He stared at the screen for a long second.
Eleanor had been right.
The silence that followed felt louder than the alert itself.
It was ridiculous.
A grown man sitting alone in the dark with a hairpin.
But the image of her in that alley, back braced against the brick, eyes bright with a hurt she’d tried to hide, wouldn’t leave him.
“What we have can’t survive this.”
Not we. Not I. Just the thing between them, offered up like a sacrifice.
He closed his eyes.
She’d meant every word she’d said about Charleston, about the headlines, about protecting him from the same. He’d seen it in her face.
And he’d heard the lie in the way she’d said it.
If it had been a fling, if it had been casual, it wouldn’t feel like this—a hollow under his ribs every time he caught himself glancing toward the defense table out of habit.
He set the pin carefully on the table in front of him.
Then picked it up again, like he couldn’t quite let her go.
She thought this was over.
He didn’t.
But belief didn’t change what tomorrow would look like.
Tomorrow she’d walk into his courtroom, sit at the defense table, and fight him with every ounce of skill she had.
And he’d do the same.
He ran a hand over his face.
“Fine,” he muttered to the empty room. “We’ll do it your way. For now.”
He set the hairpin on the bookshelf where he kept the few things that mattered and turned out the light.
