Chapter 12 #2
Miller stood to retrieve a volume from the shelves. Astoria watched her move across the room in her peripheral vision, watched her reach for a book on a high shelf, her sweater riding up just slightly to reveal a sliver of skin at her hip.
Astoria looked back at her documents so quickly she nearly gave herself whiplash.
Focus, she chided herself.
The minutes crawled past. Astoria forced herself through the appellate decision, taking notes she’d probably have to redo later because her handwriting had gotten tight and cramped.
She pulled another volume from the shelves, intentionally choosing one on the opposite side of the room from where Miller was working, and found two more relevant cases. She was making progress.
At ten minutes till eight, the librarian appeared in the doorway. “I'm closing up the main floor,” she announced. “You're both welcome to stay as long as you need. The door will lock automatically behind you when you leave, so just make sure you have everything before you go.”
“Thank you,” Astoria and Miller said in unison while still avoiding eye contact.
The librarian left. The main lights in the outer library clicked off a few minutes later, leaving only the research room illuminated, a bright box in the surrounding darkness.
Through the glass walls, Astoria could see the shadowed shapes of bookshelves, the empty tables, and the exit sign glowing red above the main door.
They were alone now. Completely, undeniably alone.
The silence took on a different texture—heavier, more present. Every sound Miller made seemed amplified: the tap of her fingers on her laptop keyboard, the rustle of pages, the soft exhale that might have been frustration or something else entirely.
Astoria needed a different volume. She’d been avoiding it for twenty minutes, but the case she was looking for was only available in the bound reporters on the fall wall. The same wall that was directly behind Miller’s table.
She could wait. She could work on something else and find a way to come back to it.
She stood and walked toward the shelves, and after three paces, she heard Miller’s typing stop.
Astoria kept her eyes fixed on the spines of the books, scanning for the right volume. F.3d, F.3d…there. She reached for it, and her shoulder passed within inches of Miller’s head.
“Astoria.”
She should have kept moving. She should’ve taken the book, returned to her table, and maintained the distance they’d been preserving all evening. But instead, she stopped.
“Yes?”
Miller had turned in her chair, looking up at Astoria with an expression that made something twist in her chest. “This is ridiculous.”
“What is?”
“This.” Miller gestured between them. “Pretending we’re not— That we can just…” She broke off, pressing her lips together.
“Pretending we’re not, what?”
It came out sharper than Astoria intended, almost like a challenge. Miller’s jaw just tightened.
“You know what.”
It’d been eleven days since they’d stood close enough in the conference room to breathe the same air, since Rachel’s return had interrupted something that still kept Astoria awake at night.
They hadn’t spoken since. No calls, emails, or accidental encounters.
Astoria had told herself the distance was a relief. But she’d been lying.
“We’re on opposite sides of an active case,” Astoria said. “There’s nothing to pretend about. This is simply how it has to be.”
“I know that.” Miller’s voice was quiet. “I’m not disputing that. I’m just…” She stopped, pressing her fingers to her temple. “I’m just so tired of pretending I don’t feel this.”
The words landed like stones in still water, ripples spreading outward.
Astoria should step back and say something cutting, something that would rebuild the wall between them, something that would make Miller retreat to her side of the room and let them both survive the next few hours with their professional boundaries intact.
Instead, she heard herself ask, “Feel what?”
Miller laughed dryly. “You’re really going to make me say it?”
“I’m not making you do anything.”
“No.” Miller’s voice had dropped and roughened in a way that made Astoria’s skin prickle. “No, you’re not. And that’s the problem. You’re not doing anything. You’re just standing there, and I can’t stop—”
She cut herself off. Her hands were shaking slightly at her sides, and her eyes were bright with something that looked like anger but wasn’t.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Miller said. “I’ve tried. For a week, I’ve tried, and I know it’s impossible and I know all the reasons and none of it matters because you’re all I think about anyway.”
The only sound was the hum from the fluorescent lights. Astoria let the words settle. She should walk away. Every rational part of her brain was screaming it.
“You think I don’t know?” The words came out before she could stop them. “You think I haven’t been trying just as hard? You think I wanted this?”
Miller’s breath caught. “Astoria—”
“Eleven days.” Astoria heard her own voice as if from a distance, the ice queen facade cracking along fault lines she hadn't known existed. “Eleven days since that conference room, and I haven't stopped thinking about what would have happened if Rachel had taken five more seconds to come back.”
The space between them had shrunk without either of them consciously moving. Astoria could see the flecks of gold in Miller's warm brown eyes. Her heart was pounding so hard she was certain Miller could hear it.
“We shouldn’t,” Astoria whispered.
“I know.”
“If anyone found out…”
“I know.”
“It could destroy both of us.”
Miller’s hand came up, hovering near Astoria’s face without touching. “Tell me to stop,” she said. “Tell me to stop and walk away, and I will. I’ll go back to my table, and we’ll finish our research and pretend like this conversation never happened.
Astoria should say. The word was right there, simple and final: stop.
“I can’t,” she admitted, and she wasn’t sure if she meant she couldn't tell Miller to stop or couldn't keep pretending or couldn't survive months of this exquisite, impossible wanting.
Maybe she meant all of it.
Miller’s fingers brushed her jaw, feather-light and devastating in its caress.
Every thought in her head went quiet, and she stopped breathing.
The touch was barely there, just the pads of Miller’s fingers tracing the line of her jaw, hesitant and questioning. It would’ve been so easy to pull away, to step back and break the spell, to retreat behind the walls she’d spent a lifetime building.
She didn’t move.
Miller’s eyes searched her face, looking for permission or refusal, and Astoria couldn’t give her either.
She was frozen, caught between everything she knew she should do and everything she wanted, and wanting was winning.
It had been winning for weeks now, maybe longer, and she was so tired of fighting it.
“Astoria.” Miller’s voice was barely a whisper. “I need you to tell me—”
Astoria kissed her.
She didn’t decide to do it. There was no moment of conscious choice, no deliberate closing of the distance. One second, Miller was speaking, and the next, Astoria’s mouth was on hers, swallowing whatever words had been coming next.
The kiss wasn’t gentle. Weeks of tension cracked open between them—everything that had been building since the mediation, since the preliminary hearing, since every moment they’d pretended not to notice each other.
She kissed Miller like she was drowning and Miller was oxygen, desperate and graceless and nothing like the controlled veneer she showed to the world.
Miller made a sound against her mouth, something between a gasp and a moan, and then her hands were in Astoria’s hair, pulling her closer.
The book Astoria had been holding hit the floor with a thud that neither of them acknowledged.
Miller’s back hit the edge of the table, and still, they didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, the kiss deepening into something that made Astoria’s knees unsteady.
She was burning. After all those years of Valerie’s voice in her head, she was burning alive in a courthouse law library with her hands fisted in Miller Scott’s sweater, and she’d never felt anything like this in her entire life.
Miller’s fingers scraped against her scalp, and Astoria heard herself make a sound she didn’t recognize. She pressed closer, needing more contact, more of Miller’s warmth against her, more of this thing she’d told herself she didn’t want and couldn’t have and shouldn’t need.
They broke apart gasping.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. They stood tangled together between the table and the bookshelves, their foreheads nearly touching, breathing each other's air. Miller's hands were still in Astoria's hair. Astoria's fingers were still twisted in the soft fabric of Miller's sweater.
“This can't happen,” Astoria said. Her voice came out wrecked, nothing like her own.
“I know.”
“We can’t…”
“I know.”
But neither of them let go.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, indifferent to what was unraveling beneath them. Through the glass walls, the darkened library stretched out like a held breath, and the exit sign glowed a steady red.
Miller’s thumb traced Astoria’s cheekbone, impossibly tender after the desperation from moments before. “I should go.”
Astoria nodded, but she didn’t release her grip on Miller’s sweater.
“Astoria.” Miller’s voice cracked on her name. “I have to go. If I don’t go now…”
“Yeah.”
Slowly, like it cost her something vital, Miller untangled herself. Her hands slid from Astoria’s hair to her shoulders, then away entirely, and the loss of contact felt like a physical wound. She stepped back, putting inches between their bodies that felt like miles.
Astoria let her go. She made herself let go, finger by finger, until she was standing alone with her arms wrapped around herself.
Miller gathered her things without looking at Astoria. Her movements were jerky and uncoordinated, nothing like her usual fluid efficiency. When she finally looked up, her eyes were shimmering with wetness.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Astoria shook her head. “No, don’t apologize for—” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Miller stood at the door, one hand on the handle. She looked back at Astoria with an expression that would live in her memory for a long time, wanting and wrecked and so beautiful it made Astoria’s chest ache.
“Goodnight, Astoria.”
The door closed behind her with a soft click. Her footsteps receded across the darkened library, then the heavier sound of the main door opening and closing.
Then nothing, just silence. Astoria stood alone among the books with the sweet taste of Miller still on her lips.
She didn’t move for a long time.
The research she’d come here to do sat abandoned on her table: the precedents Gerald needed and the case law that would defend her against another of Valerie’s attacks. It seemed impossibly distant now, a concern from another life.
Astoria touched her mouth with trembling fingers and was convinced she could still feel where Miller’s lips had been.
Slowly and mechanically, Astoria went back to her table. She packed her laptop and notes, then replaced the volumes she’d pulled from the shelves, though she couldn’t have said what any of them contained anymore. She slipped her feet back into her black heels and pulled on her blazer.
The walk to her car felt endless, the parking garage dim and echoing around her. She slid into the driver’s seat and sat there in the darkness, hands on the wheel but not turning on the engine.
She had kissed Miller Scott. Or Miller had kissed her. It didn’t actually matter who had moved first. They had both moved, they both wanted it, they both let it happen.
Everything was different now. The line was crossed, and there was no going back.
Astoria started the car and drove home through the empty streets, not knowing what Monday would bring, only knowing that for the first time in longer than she could remember, she didn’t feel cold at all.