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“He didn’t tell you?”

Now I’m the one frowning. “Who? And tell me what?”

“Lucas. He quit.”

Everything in me freezes.

There’s no way I just heard that right.

“You’re going to have to repeat that,” I say woodenly.

She leans back in her chair with a big exhale. “I know. Insane, right? He just…quit. On the spot, just like that. I thought his boss was going to have an aneurysm.”

I think I’m gaping at her. He just…left?

Once again, I’m hit with the need to get out of here. But this time, it’s for a very different reason.

“I, uh, I’m going to get going,” I tell Samantha. “I’ll drop these in the conference room. Thanks for everything, yeah?”

She waves me off with a smile. “It was nice meeting you, Charli. Hopefully we’ll work together again sometime!”

I practically run for the conference room. I’ll just drop off these papers, then ride over to Lucas’s apartment and wait for him there. If he kept the same door code, he should be okay with me⁠—

The second I open the door to the conference room, I’m pulled inside and pushed up against the wall.

Lucas.

“Hey, baby girl,” he murmurs.

My heart stutters, and I can only gape at him. “What are you doing here? Samantha said you quit.”

He nods, smiling proudly. “I did. I still have to serve out my two weeks, though. And anyway, I was just waiting for you.”

I can’t stop staring at him. Can’t make sense of everything.

Finally, I ask simply, “Why did you do it?”

His smile drops, the air growing serious. “You know why,” he says softly.

I swallow roughly. Hopeful. “I need to hear your answer, though.”

After a moment, he nods and takes a step back to sit on the edge of the table and fold his hands in his lap. He sucks in a deep breath before saying, “You were right. The culture of this firm is awful. I was ignoring all the shitty cases and people because I was scared of what life would look like if I wasn’t here. I—” He swallows and presses on. “I never thought I’d stay here as long as I have, I swear to you. It was only supposed to be a steppingstone. But…” He shakes his head and looks down. “I don’t know, I guess I got stuck, got too used to the privileges. I stopped looking for other jobs. And then I got so used to this lifestyle that I stopped caring about the cost.” He looks up and meets my eyes again. “I was a coward. I told myself the side work I was doing evened out the bad I overlooked during the day. I lied to myself for so long. Until you.”

My heart beats faster at his admission. “The side work was important,” I whisper, wanting, needing him to know I always respected him. That that was never the issue.

He nods as he stands and moves closer to me, his hand reaching to brush my hair over my shoulder. “It was. And I’m proud of the work I did. But it wasn’t enough. It didn’t outweigh the shit I did at this firm.”

I wonder if he can see how desperately I’m hanging on to his words.

He pulls in a deep breath. “So…I quit,” he finishes simply.

“Just…like that?”

“Just like that.”

“You did all this thinking in thirty-six hours?”

“Baby girl, I would do a lot more than that in thirty-six hours for the woman I’ve fallen in love with.”