Chapter 4-New Rules
Of course it did.
I opened the door, and Richard was standing there with an overnight bag slung over one shoulder and a paper grocery sack in his other arm, looking like he'd done this a thousand times before. Like walking into my apartment was the most natural thing in the world.
"I brought food." He held up the bag as he stepped past me. "Assumed you hadn't eaten."
"I was going to order something."
"When?" He set the grocery bag on the kitchen counter and the overnight bag at the mouth of the hallway. "After you finished reorganizing everything twice?"
"I didn't reorganize anything."
"No." He glanced at the living room, a brief sweep that took in the throw pillows, the stacked books, the wine glasses visible through the cabinet glass. "But you thought about it."
I stepped back to let him further in and locked the door behind him. All three locks.
He started unpacking the bag. Bread. Cheese. Tomatoes. Fresh basil. The exact sandwich I'd eaten every Thursday during Hendricks, down to the heirloom tomatoes.
I stood in the kitchen doorway and tried to remember the last time anyone had been inside this apartment.
Charlotte, maybe. Eighteen months ago. The thought made my throat tighten — pressure I shut down immediately and pushed aside for later. Later, which really meant never.
"You don't have to do this," I said.
"Do what? Make dinner?" He found a cutting board without asking where I kept them. "I'm staying for ten days. Figured we should establish some ground rules."
"Such as?"
"I cook. You don't argue about it." He sliced a tomato with the kind of practiced efficiency that suggested he actually knew what he was doing. "You go about your normal routine. I stay close enough that anyone watching knows you're not alone."
"That's it?"
"For now." He glanced up. "Unless you want to discuss sleeping arrangements."
"The guest room has a bed."
"Even better." He layered cheese onto bread with meticulous precision. "Other rules: you don't lock me out of rooms. You don't go anywhere alone. And you stop pretending like this isn't bothering you."
"I'm not?—"
"Blaire." He set down the knife. "Your jaw's been clenched since I walked in."
I forced myself to relax. Felt the tension ease.
"Adrenaline," I said.
"Sure." He returned to the sandwich. "We can call it that."
The silence stretched. I should have said something. Established boundaries. Reminded him that this was temporary, that I didn't need protecting, that I was perfectly capable of?—
"Why did you really switch to private practice?" The question escaped before I could stop it.
His hands stilled on the cutting board.
"Things change."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed. "It's not."
He finished assembling the sandwiches — two of them, perfectly constructed — and slid one across the counter to me.
"You want the truth?" He met my eyes. "I got tired of acting like justice had anything to do with it. At least in private practice, no one pretends otherwise."
"That's cynical. Even for you."
"Is it?" He took a bite of his sandwich.
"You spent six months convincing a jury that you cared about construction workers you'd never met.
I spent two years prosecuting people I knew were guilty but couldn't prove beyond my own reasonable doubt.
We're both just going through the motions, Blaire.
The only difference is I stopped lying to myself about it. "
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him he was wrong, that I did care, that the act wasn't all there was.
But the words stuck in my throat.
Because he was right.
He'd always been right about me.
That was the problem.
"Eat," he said, gentler now.
I picked up the sandwich.
It tasted exactly like I remembered.
Four years ago — Fulton County Superior Court, downtown, The Hendricks trial, Day 12
The problem with Richard Carlisle wasn't that he was good—though he was, annoyingly, ruthlessly good.
It wasn't even that he was handsome—though I'd watched senior partners lose their train of thought when he walked into rooms—or that he moved through a space like someone who'd never questioned whether he belonged.
The problem was that he noticed everything.
I'd just finished my cross-examination of the defense's expert witness—a brutal twenty-three minutes that left the man stammering about statistical models he clearly hadn't actually run—when I caught Richard's eyes across the courtroom.
He was second chair for the defense. I was second chair for the plaintiff. We'd been circling each other for six months, ever since I'd joined my father's firm, Whitmore & Locke, and he'd moved from the DA's office to Whitfield & Stone.
His expression was unreadable. But there was something in the way he tilted his head, just slightly, that made my back stiffen.
Recognition.
I'd seen it before — in my father's face when I'd told him about law school, in Rowan's eyes the night I finally left him. That particular look meant someone had seen past the surface and found what I kept hidden underneath.
The emptiness.
During the lunch recess, I ran into Richard waiting by the elevators.
"Nice work in there," he said. His suit was navy, perfectly tailored. "The statistical model angle was smart. Almost made me believe you actually cared about Mr. Hendricks' construction workers."
"Almost?" I pressed the down button with more force than necessary.
"You're good at the empathy thing. The concerned frown, the slight pause before the follow-up question, the way you lean in just enough to make the witness feel heard." He smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "But you don't actually care about any of them, do you?"
The elevator arrived. The doors slid open.
"That's a hell of an accusation from someone defending a company that knowingly used asbestos-contaminated materials."
He stepped into the elevator beside me.
"And what exactly are you observing?" I asked.
"That you're very, very good at your job." The doors closed. "And that somewhere along the way, you figured out how to pretend you care without actually feeling it."
I should have been angry. Should have torn into him with the same precision I'd just used on the expert witness. Should have made him regret every word.
Instead, I heard myself say: "And you're different?"
His smile changed. Became something sharper, more honest.
"No," he said. "That's what makes it so easy to spot."
The elevator descended in silence.
Two floors from the lobby, he added, almost conversationally: "For what it's worth, I think you're going to win this one. Your closings are better than mine."
"I know."
He laughed — actual, genuine laughter that made something in my chest contract.
"Christ," he said. "You really are something."
The doors opened to the lobby.
I stepped out first, not looking back.
But I felt his eyes on me all the way across the marble floor, and the thing that scared me most wasn't that he'd seen through me.
It was that part of me had wanted him to.
Today
We established a routine that helped opposing counsel to negotiate a settlement efficiently. Richard claimed the guest room without ceremony.
We worked from our respective spaces during the day, communicated primarily via text, and maintained the illusion that our lives didn't overlap.
Except it wasn't an illusion.
By 9 PM, I sat at my dining table with the Morrison contracts spread across the polished wood, and Richard had set up his laptop at the opposite end, reviewing discovery documents for a case I didn't ask about.
He'd already texted once — brief, businesslike: Team's sweeping your car at seven tomorrow.
Don't move it tonight. — and then set his phone face down and hadn't looked at it since.
It felt wrong.
Not dangerously wrong. Not uncomfortably wrong.
Familiar wrong.
Like slipping back into a language I'd taught myself to forget.
"You hum when you're reviewing contracts," Richard said without looking up from his screen.
I stopped mid-markup. "No, I don't."
"You do. Same three notes, over and over." He finally looked up. "You probably don't even know you do it."
"That's—" I caught myself. "How would you know that?"
"Hendricks’ trial. We spent six months in the same courtroom." His mouth quirked. "You did it then, too. Usually around 4 PM, when you'd been staring at documents too long."
The fact that he'd noticed should have bothered me.
The fact that he'd remembered should have frightened me.
Instead, what bothered me most was the small, traitorous part of my brain that whispered: He remembers.
Not like Rowan, who said he loved me but never noticed the small things. Not like Charlotte, who called every week but never asked the right questions.
Richard noticed. Richard remembered.
Richard saw me.
And years ago, during the Hendricks trial, when he'd cornered me in that elevator and called me out with surgical precision — when he'd looked at me with those dark eyes and said you figured out how to pretend you care without actually feeling it — I hadn't been angry.
I'd been relieved.
Because finally, finally, someone had seen past the performance and hadn't run. Hadn't looked at me like I was broken. Hadn't tried to fix me or save me or convince me I was wrong about myself.
He'd just seen me.
And then he'd smiled like we were in on the same terrible joke.
"You're staring," Richard said now.
I blinked. "I'm thinking."
"About?"
About the fact that having you here felt like standing at the edge of a cliff.
About how I pushed you away because you were getting too close, and I couldn't handle what that meant.
About how you were the only person who'd ever looked at me and seen the emptiness and not immediately tried to fill it with their own needs.
"The Morrison contracts," I said.
"Right." He returned to his laptop. "Of course."
The apartment settled into silence again. The kind of silence that should have been comfortable, but instead felt like someone holding their breath.