Chapter 14
The Meridian was the kind of hotel that understood discretion and upscale enough that the staff were trained to forget faces, and Astoria had chosen it for exactly that reason.
The bar occupied a corner of the lobby, all amber lighting and leather chairs and the quiet clink of expensive glasses. The sort of place where people came to have conversations they didn't want overheard.
She arrived twenty minutes early and took a table in the back corner, angled so she could see the entrance.
The bartender brought her a gin and tonic without being asked—she must have looked like she needed one—and she wrapped her fingers around the glass without lifting it.
The ice shifted and settled. She didn't drink it, though.
“The conflict is you.”
Miller’s voice had been so steady on the phone.
Astoria had replayed those four words a hundred times since last night, turning them over like stones in her palm, looking for the catch.
There had to be a catch. People didn't sacrifice their careers for someone they'd kissed once in a library three weeks ago.
Except Miller had. She'd walked into her boss's office and recused herself from a high-profile case, torpedoed her career, and when Astoria asked why, she'd said you like it was the simplest thing in the world.
Astoria checked her watch. 6:54 p.m. Six minutes until Miller walked through that door and they had to decide what happened next.
She knew what she wanted to happen. That was the problem.
She'd known since the library, since Miller's hands were tangled in her hair and the desperate sound she'd made against Astoria's mouth.
She'd known and she'd spent three weeks trying to unknow it by burying herself in work and depositions, but sleepless nights were when her mind wandered back to the taste of Miller's lips no matter how hard she tried to redirect it.
Three weeks of pretending the kiss was a mistake and maintaining the fiction that they could go back to before, but they couldn’t go back. Astoria had known that the moment Miller pulled away in the library, teary-eyed. Some lines, once crossed, stayed crossed.
The question was whether they were going to cross any more of them.
It was 6:58 p.m. Astoria smoothed the front of her silk blouse—navy, simple, nothing that tried too hard—and resisted the urge to check her reflection in the dark window.
She was forty-six years old. She'd built a company from nothing, stared down hostile boards and predatory investors, and survived fifteen years married to a woman who'd made an art form of making her feel small. She didn't get nervous.
Yet she was nervous.
The lobby doors opened at exactly 7 p.m., and Miller walked in.
Astoria’s breath did something complicated in her chest. Miller was wearing a simple wrap dress in deep green, her hair down around her shoulders instead of pulled back, and she moved through the lobby with the kind of quiet confidence that made people look twice without quite knowing why.
Her eyes scanned the room, found Astoria in the corner, and held.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then Miller crossed the bar, weaving between tables, and slid into the chair across from Astoria. Up close, she looked as unsettled as Astoria felt. There was a slight tension around her eyes and her hands weren’t quite steady as she set down her purse.
“Hi,” Miller said.
“Hi.”
The greeting sat between them, inadequate yet enormous. A server appeared, and Miller ordered a glass of chenin blanc, a light and zesty white wine. When they were alone again, the air seemed to wait expectantly.
“You came,” Astoria said, then immediately felt stupid. Of course she came. She was sitting right there.
“I almost didn’t.” Miller’s honesty was disarming. “I sat in the parking garage for ten minutes trying to talk myself out of it.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I couldn’t come up with a single good reason to leave.” Miller’s mouth curved upward. “I had plenty of reasons, though, but none of them were good enough.”
The server returned with Miller’s wine. She wrapped her fingers around the stem but didn’t lift the glass.
“I need to understand something,” Astoria said. “What you did with recusing yourself, that wasn't a small thing. Someone like Rachel Hartwell is going to remember, and Valerie is going to weaponize it. You might have damaged your entire career.”
“I know.”
“Then…why?”
Miller was quiet for a moment. Her thumb traced the base of her wine glass, back and forth, a nervous gesture that Astoria had filed away.
She looked up, and her gaze was unwavering despite the slight tremor in her voice. “I couldn't be her lawyer and want you this much. It's not ethical. It wasn't fair to her or to you or to myself.”
The words “want you this much” rooted somewhere beneath Astoria’s ribs and stayed there, warm and terrifying.
“And so, you chose this,” Astoria said. “Whatever this is.”
“I chose to be honest with myself. The rest”—Miller gestured vaguely between them—”I don’t know what this is either. I just know I couldn’t keep pretending it wasn’t there.”
Astoria lifted her gin and tonic, took a sip she didn’t really taste, and set it down. She was buying time, trying to find her footing in a conversation that felt like standing on shifting sand.
“You know…this is still complicated,” she said. “Even without the ethical issue. If anyone found out…”
“Valerie would say she was right all along, that you seduced me or I was compromised from the start or whatever version of events makes her the victim.”
“Yes.”
“And it could affect your case and give her ammunition.”
“Yes.”
“And we could both end up humiliated in ways that follow us for years.”
Astoria almost smiled.”You’re really good at listing problems.”
“Professional habit.” Miller's answering almost-smile faded. “I've thought about all of it. I thought about it all night and all day and I'm still here, so apparently the thinking isn't helping.”
“What would help?”
The question hung between them. Miller’s eyes dropped to Astoria’s mouth, a flicker that was so quick it might have been imagined, then she backed up.
“You could tell me to leave,” Miller said quietly. “Tell me this was a mistake, that we should chalk the library up to temporary insanity and go back to being strangers. I'd go if that's what you wanted.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No.” The word came out rough. “But it’s probably what I should want.”
Astoria leaned back in her chair, studying Miller across the low table. The amber lighting caught the golden threads in her hair and softened the tension around her jaw. She looked beautiful and scared and determined, and Astoria wanted to touch her so badly her hand ached with it.
“I should want that too,” Astoria whispered. “I should be thinking about the case, about the scandal if this gets out, about all the ways this could blow up in both of our faces. And I am thinking about those things. I’ve been thinking about nothing else for three weeks.”
“And?”
“And I’m still here too.”
Something shifted in Miller’s expression. “So, where does that leave us?”
Astoria considered the question. The honest answer was that she didn’t know.
She’d never been in this position before, had never wanted someone like this in longer than she could remember, maybe ever.
The safe answer was to suggest they take their time, think it through, and make a rational decision like the intelligent adults they supposedly were.
She was tired of playing it safe. Her entire life, she’d played it safe and denied herself of anything that felt too much like wanting. Valerie’s familiar voice played in her head, telling her she was incapable of real desire and utterly passionless.
She didn’t feel devoid of passion right now. She felt like she was burning from the inside out.
“I think,” Astoria said slowly, “that we’ve already decided. We’re just not saying it out loud yet.”
Miller’s breath caught, a small sound that was barely audible over the ambient noise of the bar. “What have we decided?”
“That we’re not walking away and we’re going to do this, whatever this is, even though we know all the reasons we shouldn’t.” Astoria maintained eye contact. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Miller didn’t say anything. Instead, she reached across the table and laid her hand over Astoria’s. Her palm was warm, but her fingers were slightly cool from the wine glass. The touch sent a current up Astoria’s arm and into her chest.
“You’re not wrong,” Miller said softly.
They sat like that for a moment, their hands intertwined on the table between their untouched drinks, the weight of the decision settling around them like a held breath.
Astoria could feel her pulse in her throat and the slight tremor in Miller’s fingers that said she wasn’t nearly as calm as she looked.
“So,” Miller said. “Now what…?”
Astoria turned her hand over, lacing their fingers together. Miller’s breath hitched again, and Astoria filed that away, too, to revisit later when she had time to think about what any of this meant.
Right now, she didn’t want to think. She wanted to act.
“I have a suggestion,” Astoria said. “But you should know what you’re agreeing to before I make it.”
“I know what I’m agreeing to.”
“Do you?”
Miller’s grip tightened on her hand. “I’m agreeing to something that could ruin both of us and will definitely complicate everything.
Something that every rational part of my brain is screaming at me to walk away from.
” Her voice dropped. “And I’m agreeing anyway because the thought of walking out that door and going back to pretending I don’t want you is worse than any of the rest of it. ”
Astoria felt the words land, felt them crack something open in her chest that she’d spent years keeping sealed shut. Miller was looking at her like she was someone worth risking everything for. No one had ever looked at her like that. Not even close.