CHAPTER 20 Maya
Maya
Reid was seated in one of the armchairs, a folder open on his knee. She paused in the doorway, and her body reacted to him before her mind could stop it. Relief, comfort.
She must have made a sound, because he jerked his head to look at her.
Papers slid from the folder, fanning out across the floor at his feet in a loose, disordered scatter as he stood.
“Maya,” he said. His voice was rough.
For a second, he simply stood there, looking at her, his attention unwavering.
She'd missed him. She’d missed him looking at her like this, as humiliating as that was to admit even to herself. She glanced away, focusing on the papers scattered across the floor.
When she looked up again, Reid had followed her line of sight. He looked surprised to see the papers at his feet even as he bent to gather them up.
Maya sank into the seat opposite him, all too aware of how close he was.
“This will restore access to your bank accounts,” he said, glancing up at her as fumbled on the ground.
Reid sat, sorting the papers, putting them into order before setting them down on the coffee table in front of her.
She stared at the lines of text. The language was dense and formal, full of terms she only half-registered.
For days, everything had been out of her hands. Her name, her work, her money—taken, frozen, twisted into something unrecognizable.
And now, here it was. Something being given back.
She looked up at him.
“Do I need to take this to my lawyer?” she asked.
His jaw clenched. “You could,” he said. His voice was low. “If you want to.” A brief pause. “But it’s all in order,” he added. “I’ve checked everything.”
She had trusted him.
She had trusted him absolutely, without question. She had trusted him with her heart. That had been a mistake.
But this, she could still trust him with. The law, and the paperwork that went into upholding it. That was something Reid Lawson would never betray.
That was his true love, after all.
Maya smiled ruefully to herself and picked up the pen. She pressed the pen to paper and signed.
Maya Lawson.
She’d been so quick to take his name. She’d thought it was who she would be for the rest of her life.
She glanced up. Reid was staring at her hands.
Maya looked back down at the page.
She moved to the next form. Then the next, working through them quickly.
When she finished, she set the pen down.
“That’s everything,” she said.
Reid reached for the folder, gathering the papers together.
“You’ll have access to funds again soon,” he said. “If you need anything in the meantime—”
He held out a thick envelope.
“I brought you cash.”
Maya took it from him, blinking in surprise. The envelope felt heavy in her hand. How much cash did he imagine she’d need?
“Maya,” he said. “I—”
She waited for him to finish his sentence, but he just looked at her. He dragged a hand through his hair. “I fucked up,” he said.
Maya’s breath caught slightly.
“But I’m going to fix it. I’m going to fix everything. I swear to you.”
The force of it caught her off guard.
Reid couldn’t fix this. It was too late. “My lawyer says I should plead guilty," she told him.
"No," he said.
"Reid—"
"I’ll fix it, Maya.” He stood up, abruptly. “I’m going to talk to the prosecutor. I’ll tell them you’re innocent.”
Was she being an idiot to trust him with this? She knew not to trust him with her heart, she'd learned that in the most devastating way possible. But the same thing that had made him break her, would mean he could be trusted now.
No handbook had told her how to build the charity. No one had handed her the right contacts or the right words to say in council meetings. She had learned by doing, by asking questions, by getting things wrong and then getting them right.
But this wasn’t her world. This was Reid's.
At the door, he turned. “It was Julian,” he told her. “He framed you.”
Julian. Brilliant, helpful Julian. Who had let her thank him, over and over, for "volunteering his time."
Julian who Reid recommended to her.
She’d thought she had reached her capacity for anger, but she’d been wrong.
Reid looked wrecked standing there. “So that was my fault, too.”
Maya watched him go. She heard the front door open and close. The engine of his car.
She stared after him for a long time. She could still feel his presence in the room.
Eventually, she dropped her gaze until it landed on the envelope she was still gripping.
She tipped the contents out onto the table. Cash spilled out in a neat stack.
Too much cash.
She stared at it for a long time, and then shoved it back into the envelope. She didn’t know what to think.
She couldn’t stay still. She couldn’t sit in the Merritt’s house while her life imploded around her.
So she walked. One foot, then the other, the rhythm of it burning off whatever was sitting too tightly under her skin.
The street was quiet at this hour. Maya kept her pace steady, the envelope of cash was still in her hand.
She should have left it at the house. She didn't know why she'd brought it.
She needed to do something. She was sick and tired of the world happening to her. She wanted to do something, anything.
She would get flowers for the Merritts, she thought. A card.
The flower shop was one of her favorites. She had been in it dozens of times.
The bell chimed.
The florist looked up from behind the counter. Maya saw the moment that the glance turned to recognition, and then to distrust.
He knew who she was and he knew what she'd been arrested for.
Pleading guilty meant no prison. It also mean the community she had given everything to would never look at her the same way again.
Maya lifted her chin. She was not going to grab the nearest bouquet and flee. She was going to stand here for as long as it took and choose something good enough for the only people who had stuck by her without question.
She spotted the right card almost immediately. The flowers took longer.
Her fingers moved along the arrangements, considering and rejecting. Too bright. Too funereal. Too much.
She could feel the florist watching her.
He thought she might steal something.
The thought was humiliating.
She had gone, in the span of one weekend, from someone you greeted by name to someone you kept your eye on.
Her vision blurred.
Maya blinked rapidly. She was not going to break down between the chrysanthemums and the tulips.
She selected the flowers. Pastel blooms, small but lovely. She turned and carried them to the counter, the card in her other hand.
The shopkeeper scanned the card and the bouquet. The total appeared on the screen.
Maya reached into the envelope, pulled out some cash.
His reaction was small, just a slight compression at the corners of his mouth, a fractional shift in his eyes as they moved from the money to her.
Maya kept her expression neutral. Her hands were steady. She was fine. She was completely fine. She was simply standing in a shop she had been coming to for years, buying flowers with cash.
She counted out the money with steady hands.
She shouldn’t have brought the envelope with her. She shouldn’t be carrying this much cash.
That had been stupid.
He took the notes, pushed the change back across the counter without comment.
She picked up the flowers.
The bell chimed again as she stepped out. The cold air met her face.
She had done nothing wrong.
She lifted her chin slightly, adjusted her grip on the flowers, and started walking.
Her steps were steady. Her posture was straight.
The flowers were slightly crushed where she had tightened her grip without realizing.
She looked down at them.
I have not done anything wrong, she thought.
Suddenly she was crying, her shoulders shaking, her breath coming in ragged, hitching gasps. She couldn't make it stop and she couldn't make it quiet. She pushed her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound.
She was crying on the sidewalk, clutching a bouquet of flowers.
She found the Merritts in the sitting room. The flowers were already in a vase on the side table.
Pastel blooms, carefully arranged, the crushed edges hidden, turned just so.
Maya hovered in the doorway for a moment before stepping in.
Thomas looked up first. “There you are,” he said, as if they had been waiting for her. “Come and sit.”
Maya crossed the room, her gaze flicking once more to the flowers.
“They’re beautiful,” Edith said mildly, following her glance.
Maya let out a small breath. “They got a bit crushed.”
“It happens,” Edith said. “They just need a little support to be their best.”
Thomas smiled softly. “Like most things.”
Maya lowered herself onto the sofa.
Thomas closed his book and set it aside. “He’s a damn fool,” he said. “Let’s start there.”
Maya turned her hands over in her lap. Looked at her bare ring finger.
He was supposed to be hers. He was the thing she took for herself. Just for her. Not because he was useful or because the community needed him or because Owen liked him or because he made practical sense.
"He was—" She almost smiled. “Mine. I just—I wanted him.”
It had been unreasonable of her.
“I always knew the law was important to him,” she said. "And I didn’t mind at all. I liked it.” She looked up briefly, then back down.
Edith made a quiet sound that might have been agreement.
"I was lying to myself." The words came out steadier than she expected.
The truth was that her horrible, greedy, secret heart couldn't share him.
Couldn't share him with anything. Not even the very thing that she loved about him.
“I wanted to be the most important thing for him.
I wanted to be the thing he chose when it came down to it.
I wanted—" Her voice broke slightly. She pressed her lips together and waited until it steadied. "I wanted to be special.”
Edith and Thomas didn't say anything. They just waited.
"I can't ask him for that," Maya said. "I can't ask Reid Lawson to put me above the law. That's like asking him to stop being himself. That's—it's too much."
"Is it?" Thomas said. His expression was mild.
"Yes," she said. Firmly.
Thomas said nothing.
"It is," she said again, slightly less firmly.
"Even if I asked him," Maya said, "even if I sat down in front of him and said, Reid, I need you to choose me, I need to know that when it comes to it, when it's hard, you will choose me—" She stopped. "I know what he'd say.”
She knew who he was now. The law would always be first for him, and she would always be second, and she would spend the rest of her life waiting for the next time it mattered.
She looked down at her bare ring finger again.
"I can't live like that," she said quietly. "I love him too much to live like that."
Thomas leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees.
"Maya," he said.
She looked up.
He held her gaze for a moment, steady and unhurried.
“You should ask him anyway. He might surprise you.”
Maya looked down at her hands again.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't have anything left to say.