Chapter Ten
Max
It’s been a month and Bart likes Cal’s office better than his bed under my desk.
Cal has a couch in his office, a real one, leather, the kind Bart sinks into immediately and then refuses to leave—and Cal has never once told him to get down, which means the battle of me trying to persuade Bart back to his bed was lost on day three.
Now Bart spends most of the day there, arranged across the couch like he owns the place, and occasionally wanders out to check on me. Then promptly goes back.
I watch Cal through the glass.
He’s on a call—pacing the room, one hand turning a pen end over end on the desk he is perched on.
He does it like he’s listening to something he disagrees with—a trait that I am happy to report was one I did remember of Cal.
Bart is in front of him on the couch and Cal steps away from his desk, leaving the pen, and his free hand drifts over to scratch behind Bart’s ears.
Completely automatic. Like Bart has always been there.
Something about this pinches something in my chest. I look back at my screen and frown. This is what could have been, and the image of it makes me a little queasy. I try to focus.
The Halbrook case. A man wrongly convicted twelve years ago on the testimony of a single witness who has since recanted.
Cal took it three years ago and hasn’t let it go, which tells me everything about what kind of lawyer he actually is when no one is watching—not the kind who takes cases he can win, the kind who takes cases that matter, when no one else will, and then figures out how to win them.
It surprised me at first, because this wasn’t the type of case Ellison & Parker was taking when I worked here years ago.
Not that the partners didn’t work some pro bono cases every now and then.
But allowing someone to take these lost causes on regularly seems like a Cal thing more than something the whole firm is doing.
I’ve learned more in four weeks working beside Cal than I did in two years at Ellison the first time.
Not because he explains things—he doesn’t—but because watching him work is an education in what it looks like to actually care about what you’re doing.
To be in it for something other than the win or the money or the way it looks on a letterhead.
Or trying to prove yourself to your daddy that you deserve a senior partnership.
Annoyance prickles my skin. Like Patrick. Patrick, who cared about how things looked. That’s the whole of it.
I look up again. Cal is off the phone. He’s writing something, his pen moving quickly across a legal pad, and the afternoon light from the window behind him is highlighting every dark curl on his head and his broad shoulders in a way that has my mouth opening on a deep inhale and I’m going to stop noticing right now.
I look at my screen.
I look up again.
He’s looking at me.
I look at my screen.
“It’s Friday,” he sings it as he creeps towards his door.
I don’t look up. “I’m aware.”
“It’s five-fifteen.”
“Also aware.”
A pause. The sound of his footsteps getting closer, but I refuse to look.
“Have dinner with me.”
I look up. He’s leaning in the doorway of his office, jacket off, sleeves rolled up to expose the arms that kill me every day, Bart at his feet looking between us like he’s watching tennis, a wag of his tail each time someone talks.
I raise my eyebrows and take a play out of his book. I cross my legs and arms and turn my chair, leaning back to look up at him fully.
“It’s just dinner,” he says. “You eat food. I eat food. We’ve been doing it every day at lunch for a month, this is just the later-in-the-day version.”
“The later-in-the-day version has a different name.”
“Is it not called dinner?” He clips on Bart’s leash, like he thinks I’ll concede.
“That’s not what the modern world calls it, no.” And I close my laptop. “Let me get my coat.”
We walk towards the elevators and he leans down, his height doing things to me.
His words warm the shell of my ear as he breathes out on a whisper, “You know, if you want me to call it a date, Sims, I will. I just don’t want to jump the gun.”
My breath hitches in my throat and I focus on my steps, force myself to keep pace with him but I feel the blush creep up my neck. I roll my lips to keep from smiling.
“Don’t hurt yourself trying not to smile, Max,” the grin on his own lips is audible.
The elevator doors are open, and it’s already occupied as we approach it.
Patrick. Again.
The universe has a very specific sense of humor to drop the word ‘date’ and Patrick to me in the same moment.
Cal doesn’t break his stride while mine falters briefly. He steps in, holds the door, and I follow because he’s already made the decision for us. And you know what? I’ve already taken the stairs countless times this month to avoid this.
We arrange ourselves in the small space with the careful geometry of people pretending not to notice each other or breathe the same air.
I stare at the floor numbers as the elevator doors take a painfully long time to close and hold my breath. Bart sits beside me, oblivious, and I wish I was a dog.
Beside me, Cal is very still. Unlike me, because I feel like I’m vibrating. I can feel it though—a slight shift in the air around him.
And it hits me all of a sudden. Something I hadn’t thought about once in the past month: he knows.
Cal knows who Patrick is and what Patrick did and he has known for a while. He knows what Brenda did, he probably knows how many women Patrick cheated on me with.
My face heats, and not in the glorious way it did minutes ago at Cal’s implications of a date.
Because for the second time since being in this office, the embarrassment of Callan knowing I quit law school fills me.
He knows Patrick was the reason. Knows of the humiliation I faced at this exact law firm when Patrick ripped our lives to shreds and that same mortification is suddenly a wave crashing on top of me, over and over again.
“Max.” Patrick’s voice. Careful and warm in the way he’s been whenever we’ve been in the same room this month. Trying. Why? I don’t know, because I’d rather hear nails on a chalkboard than any version of his voice. “You look great. Really.”
I stare straight ahead. Thinking about the conversation Monday morning that I will be having with Richard about a new stipulation regarding Patrick keeping his mouth shut around me.
“We should—” Patrick starts.
“She keeps a pretty full schedule,” Cal says. Easy. Conversational. Like he’s commenting on the weather.
Then his hand finds the small of my back—just his palm, flat and warm through the fabric of my jacket—and I feel my shoulders drop half an inch.
Then his hand moves. Small circles. Slow ones. Like he’s done it a hundred times. Like this is our normal. The warmth from his palm spreads across my back and through my body, and suddenly it’s all I can focus on. The place where he’s touching me. My eyes flick up to Patrick.
Patrick looks at Cal. Then down at Cal’s arm behind my back. Then back at me. He frowns almost imperceptibly. Then looks at the floor.