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Sloane’s presence had never been more distracting and all she was doing was working away like Ari wasn’t even there.
She doesn’t give a shit. She probably got it out of her system. It was a novelty. A curiosity fulfilled. Or maybe this is all part of some game.
Ari’s stomach clenched. She wanted to talk to her about it, to ask her directly what she was thinking, but she couldn’t form the words. Fear of embarrassment was too strong to
overcome, so she pushed it down as far as it would go and focused on regretting coming in so hot. She’d intended more of a dialogue, but when Sloane showed up early, all her practiced conversations went out the window.
“Co ee?” Ari blurted, jumping to her feet, desperate to get out of the confined space.
Sloane looked up at her and down at the travel cup she’d brought in with her. “I’m good.”
“Yeah, obviously,” she replied, heart hammering so hard it was impossible to talk without getting out of breath. “I’ll be back then,” she added, banging into a stack of boxes as she bolted for the door. “I’ll be back.”
“You said that already,” Sloane replied with a tight smile before returning to the computer.
Get it together, Ari chastised herself as she raced for the elevator.
SLOANE SAUNTERED BACK to the o ce after court. She wasn’t in any particular hurry to get back, but she’d already covered her cases and Reina’s. After grabbing a chai latte she didn’t really want, there was nothing left to do but face Ari again.
With the speed of a half-decayed snail, Sloane inched down the corridor. She made eye contact with every single person and did her best politician’s smile, but no one stopped to talk to her. Not even Susan the Receptionist, and she literally talked to the indoor plants she tended to throughout the o ce.
If it wasn’t because she didn’t want Arwyn to think she was a wounded teenager, she’d just drop her stu o in the o ce and go home. Well, what was passing as home these days.
Sloane was already pulling her earbuds out of her bag, intent on drowning out her reality until quitting time, when the state of their shared space stopped her dead in her tracks.
“What the hell is this?” she asked, surveying the mess of papers plastered all over the walls and the floors.
Arwyn looked up at her from the mess, a pink highlighter between her teeth as she stopped her furious writing on a large poster board. Her big, brown eyes we
re wild and nearly animalistic as she looked around, as if for the first time noticing her state of a airs.
“I’m making a timeline,” she explained after pulling the marker out of her mouth, sounding annoyed as if it should’ve been obvious.
“You know they make all kinds of computer programs now. Free ones. I’m pretty sure you can do,” she motioned toward the mess, “whatever this is electronically.”
Arwyn rolled her eyes and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I process information better if I can touch it. I’m very tactile,” she replied, apparently un-ironically.
Straining, Sloane realized the avalanche of papers were related to her Dominguez case. Things she’d never seen before. She crouched down to get a better look at the documents and tried not to be distracted by the proximity.
The moment she smelled Ari’s shampoo, she was
transported to the moment against the desk. To the taste of her lips and the sounds of her barely audible moans.
Pushing aside the pang of regret and longing, Sloane picked up what looked like a bank statement. “What is this stu ?”
“You’ll never believe it,” she said, her eyes glistening with excitement and a little exhaustion. “He sent them.”
Arwyn’s laugh was a kick to the stomach. “Apparently he wants to use it as evidence of his innocence. I’m not even sure any of it is admissible, but I’m combing through it anyway. I think you’re dead on with this guy. He thinks he’s got it all figured out. The hubris is astonishing.”
“Or maybe we’ll find out he’s really innocent,” Sloane muttered under her breath. As she picked through some of the items, her eyes widened. “I can’t believe he talked his lawyer into it.”
“Me neither,” she agreed. “That’s why I looked him up.
Apparently, his bread and butter is resolving tra c tickets in Stuart. He’s been out of law school all of a year and I don’t think he knows what he’s doing.”
Sloane ran her fingers through her hair even if it messed up her very intentional carefree waves and held her hair out of her face as she leaned forward. “Is this a timestamped list of his travel?”
“He says he uses this app for keeping track of his milage so he can write it o come tax time. It keeps a log of where he travels as long as he has it active. It’s down to the GPS
