Chapter 51
Eleanor’s House
Monday Evening
The house was too quiet when Eleanor walked in.
She dropped her keys in the bowl by the door and set her briefcase down with more care than it deserved. The porch light spilled a soft glow across the hardwood, but she didn’t bother with the lamps. She toed off her heels and padded toward the kitchen in her bare feet.
Water. Something bland. Anything to settle the sour twist still in her stomach.
Her phone buzzed on the counter.
APRIL.
She stared at the screen.
It rang.
Stopped.
A second later, a text.
You okay? Call me.
Then another.
Or I’m coming over, and I WILL bring snacks.
Eleanor stared at the words until they blurred.
She set the phone face down on the counter.
She poured herself a glass of water and took a sip. It felt like it hit an empty place and disappeared.
A knock sounded at the front door.
She closed her eyes for a second.
April wouldn’t knock. She would barge in.
“Ellie-girl,” a familiar voice called quietly. “Open up for an old man.”
Her throat tightened.
She set the glass down and walked back to the door.
Deck O’Rourke stood on the porch in his worn leather jacket, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a paper bag that smelled faintly of takeout.
“Thought that might be you,” she said.
“Aye, and here I am,” he said. “Let an Irishman in before he dies of starvation, will you?”
She stepped aside.
He came in, moving with the easy familiarity of someone who’d been crossing her threshold since Charleston. He set the bag on the counter and glanced at the glass of water, the phone facedown beside it.
“April texting?” he asked.
Eleanor managed a small smile.
“She’s threatening snacks.”
“Monstrous girl,” he said mildly. “You answer?”
“Not yet.”
He nodded like that was the answer he expected.
Deck unpacked the bag without asking—soup, bread, something that smelled like real food and not whatever she’d meant to find in her fridge.
“Sit,” he said. “Before you fall over. You look like you’ve gone three rounds with a Mack truck.”
She sank onto one of the kitchen stools. The exhaustion hit harder now that she’d stopped moving.
Deck ladled soup into a bowl and slid it in front of her.
“Eat what you can,” he said. “Humor an old cop.”
She picked up the spoon. Her hand shook enough to betray her.
Deck didn’t look at the soup; he looked at the way she was holding the spoon—like it was the only thing keeping her from floating away.
“The law’s a cold bedfellow, Ellie-girl,” he said, his voice slipping into that low Irish rasp. “It’ll take everything you give it and still ask for more.”
He held her gaze.
“But don’t be thinkin’ that walking away from him makes what you feel any less true.”
He leaned against the counter, arms folded, watching her for a long moment.
“How bad was it?” he asked quietly.
She looked down at the glass in her hand.
“Court?” she asked. “Or the circus on the steps?”
“Both,” he said. “But start with the one that didn’t involve that vulture with a microphone.”
She took a sip of soup. It was warm and salty and steadier than she felt.
“Cade and Burke did what they always do,” she said. “Clean. Professional. Katie… did what she came to do.”
Deck nodded.
“And you?”
“I did my job,” she said. “Poked holes. Asked questions. Tried to make twelve people see cracks where Reid wants them to see concrete.”
“He look at you?” Deck asked.
She stared into the soup.
“Not much,” she said. “That makes two of us.”
Deck’s mouth twitched.
“Aye,” he said softly. “There’s the rub.”
Silence settled for a moment, broken only by the quiet clink of her spoon.
Deck pushed off the counter and came to stand beside her, leaning his hip against the island.
“I saw you after,” he said. “Leaving. White as the courthouse marble.”
“Needed to get out of there,” she said.
“Because of the case,” he prompted. “Or because of the boy on the other side of the aisle?”
She swallowed.
“Both,” she admitted.
Deck studied her face.
“This thing with Calloway,” he said. “Over?”
She let out a short, humorless laugh.
“Officially,” she said. “Yes.”
“And unofficially?”
Her eyes burned.
“Unofficially,” she said, “I broke my own heart behind the courthouse.”
A single tear escaped then, tracing a hot, jagged path down her cheek.
She didn’t brush it away; she didn’t seem to have the strength to move.
She sat there, looking smaller than the kitchen stool she was perched on, while the weight of the day—the case, the cameras, the look in Reid’s eyes—finally took its toll.
“Ah, lass,” he murmured.
He didn't offer a platitude or a tissue. He reached out and rested his heavy, calloused hand over hers on the counter, anchoring her to the room. The same way he had when she’d walked out of the Charleston courthouse with her world in pieces.
“Let it out, lass,” he said, his voice thick with a gravelly sort of tenderness. “The law doesn't give a damn about your heart, but I do. You’ve been holdin’ everyone else together so long, you forgot you’re allowed to break a little too.”
He squeezed her hand, a firm, grounding pressure.
“You did what you thought you had to,” he said. “Doesn’t make it hurt less.”
“I won’t let them do it to him,” she said, voice low. “Not what they did to me. Not what they said.”
He nodded.
“I know,” he said. “You’re tryin’ to take the bullets for both of you. But remember—”
He tipped her chin up gently until she met his eyes.
“—you’re not standin’ in front of the line alone this time.”
Her throat tightened.
“Don’t forget that.”
She blinked hard.
“What if the jury believes him?” she whispered. “What if they send David away and I helped do it by walkin’ away from Reid when he needed me?”
Deck shook his head.
“The jury’s job is the truth,” he said. “Your job is the fight. His is the other side of the same. What you two had—or still have—that’s separate. It has to be.”
She gave a small, broken smile.
“That’s what I told him,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to feel like this.”
“Love’s messy,” Deck said. “Justice is messier. You picked two hard trades, Ellie-girl.”
She huffed out something that was almost a laugh.
He tapped the bowl.
“Eat,” he said. “Then sleep. Tomorrow you go back in there, and you’re Eleanor Harper—the one who scares prosecutors and makes judges check their rule books.”
She nodded.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Deck squeezed her shoulder.
“Any time,” he said. “That’s what the Irish bloodhound signed up for.”
He let her finish what she could, then gathered the dishes and rinsed them without comment. When he left, he paused at the door.
“Answer that girl’s text at some point,” he said. “Or April will truly descend with snacks, and we’ll never get her out of your kitchen.”
A real smile tugged at Eleanor’s mouth.
“I’ll call her,” she said.
He nodded, satisfied, and stepped back into the night.
When the door clicked shut, Eleanor leaned her forehead against it for a moment.
Then she turned off the light and went to find whatever sleep she could.
Reid’s House
Monday Night
The house was too quiet when Reid walked in.
He dropped his keys on the console table and shrugged off his jacket, draping it over the back of a chair instead of hanging it up. His briefcase hit the kitchen counter with a soft thud.
He poured himself a glass of water, then set it down untouched.
The day replayed in fragments: Katie on the stand. Cade’s careful words. Burke’s steady voice. The flash of cameras on the courthouse steps. Lila’s bright, hungry eyes.
Eleanor standing in that alley, back against the brick, watching him walk away from her.
He moved into the living room more out of habit than intention. The couch still held the faint impression of where she’d sat a week ago, bare feet tucked under her, case files spread out between them as they’d argued over voir dire strategies and takeout containers.
Something small glinted on the edge of the coffee table.
He frowned and reached for it.
A silver hairpin.
Simple. Practical. One tiny engraved knot at the end.
She must have left it the last time she’d been here—when her hair had fallen out of its knot halfway through a rant about pretrial motions, and he’d teased her about “losing structural integrity.”
He turned the pin between his fingers.
There—a faint trace of her perfume on the metal. Clean and soft, something with citrus and vanilla and the kind of quiet warmth he’d already started to think of as home.
The scent hit him harder than he expected.
He sank onto the couch, the hairpin still in his hand.
As he sat there, his phone vibrated on the cushion beside him.
Reid’s heart kicked once before he could stop it.
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.
And for the first time in a long time, Reid Calloway dreaded the morning—not because of the case, but because of the person he’d have to pretend he didn’t love across the aisle.