Chapter 19 #2
“Miller.” Astoria's voice was flat and guarded. Her eyes moved over Miller's face, reading something there. “What's wrong?”
Miller opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She'd rehearsed this in the car, had the words lined up and ready, but standing here—seeing Astoria like this, soft and tired—the speech evaporated. “Can I come in?”
Astoria stepped aside without a word. The interior matched the exterior: open floor plan, floor-to-ceiling windows, furniture that looked like it had been selected by a designer rather than a person.
Everything was in muted tones—cream, gray, touches of navy—expensive and tasteful and utterly impersonal.
Miller scanned the space for photographs, for books, for any sign that someone actually lived here.
She found almost nothing.
She spotted a laptop on the kitchen island and a single coffee mug in the sink. There was the faint smell of something that could’ve been dinner.
This was where Astoria came home to every night. This beautiful, empty house on a cliff.
“I’ve been dealing with the fallout all day,” Astoria said, moving toward the living room.
She didn't sit, just stood by the windows with her arms crossed over her chest. “Gerald thinks we can get ahead of it.
The financial records don't actually show anything illegal, just spending patterns that look bad out of context. We're preparing a statement.”
“That’s good.” Miller’s voice sounded strange to her own ears.
“My board is concerned, obviously. The stock dipped three percent this morning, though it's already recovering.” Astoria was talking fast, the way she did when she was trying to control a situation. “The PR team wants me to do an interview, something sympathetic, but I told them—”
“Astoria.”
She stopped and swallowed once before she spoke again. “You didn’t come here to talk about my PR strategy, did you?”
“No.”
Silence hung in the air between them, and Miller couldn't feel anything except the weight pressing down on her chest.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Miller said.
Astoria didn’t move, everything having gone very still.
“The leak,” Miller continued, forcing herself to keep talking.
“Valerie did that. You know she did. And if she’s willing to go that far with financial records, if she’s willing to publicly humiliate you just to gain an advantage…
” She stopped and took a breath. “She’s looking for something to use against you, against both of us.
Rachel warned me weeks ago that Valerie was suspicious and asking questions. Now this.”
“I know.” Astoria’s voice was quiet.
“If she finds out about us, she’ll use it.
She’ll say I was feeding you information while I was still on the case, that I sabotaged her from the inside.
None of it’s true, but it won’t matter. She’ll drag it into court, into the press, into everything.
Your case will get thrown into chaos, and my career will be ruined.
” Miller heard her voice crack and hated it.
“I can’t be the thing that destroys you. ”
Astoria didn’t respond. She just stood there, her arms still crossed and her face as unreadable as ever. The seconds stretched out, heavy and horrible.
“Say something,” Miller whispered.
“What do you want me to say?”
The question felt like she’d been slapped. Miller had expected… Actually, she didn’t know what she’d expected. An argument, maybe, or some kind of pushback. She’d expected Astoria to tell her that she was wrong, that they could figure it out, that she wasn’t going to let Valerie win.
Instead, Astoria was the ice queen Miller had first met in the mediation room, the one who looked through people like they weren’t worth seeing.
“I want you to tell me I’m wrong,” Miller said. “I want you to fight me on this.”
Something flashed across Astoria’s face. Miller couldn’t tell if it was pain or resignation or something else.
“You’re not wrong.” Her voice was flat. “You’re being smart and practical by protecting yourself.”
“I’m protecting us.”
“There is no us.” Astoria’s arms tightened even more around herself. “There can’t be. You just said so yourself.”
Miller felt the words crash against her. She took a step forward then stopped when Astoria didn’t move or reach out for her.
“That’s not—” Miller’s throat closed around the words. “I don’t want this to end, Astoria. I’m not doing this because I want to.”
“I know.”
“Then why aren’t you fighting back?”
Astoria’s jaw tightened, and for a moment, Miller thought she saw something crack in her composure, something raw and desperate trying to claw its way to the surface. But then it was gone just as quickly as it came, smoothed over and locked away.
“Because you’re right,” Astoria said quietly. “This was always going to end. We both knew that. We just let ourselves pretend otherwise.”
Miller stared at her. This wasn’t the same woman who’d opened up to her about Valerie’s abuse, who had trembled in her arms, who had whispered things in the dark that she’d never told anyone.
This was someone else, someone who was armored for defense and already retreating behind walls Miller couldn’t climb.
“Astoria, please.”
“You should go.” Astoria’s voice was steady, too steady. “You came here to end this, so end it.”
The words hung in the air between them. Miller felt tears burning behind her eyes and blinked them back, refusing to cry, refusing to fall apart while Astoria stood there like a statue.
She wanted to cross the room, take Astoria’s face in her hands, and make her see that this was killing Miller too. That she wasn’t choosing this because it was the easy way out. That walking away from Astoria was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
I’m falling in love with you.
The words pressed against her teeth, desperate to escape. She swallowed them down.
What good would it do to speak them? Astoria had already made up her mind to not fight or argue or give Miller anything to hold onto. She was letting her go, and Miller couldn’t tell if it was because Astoria didn’t care enough to fight or because she cared too much to ask Miller to stay.
“Goodbye, Astoria,” she whispered.
Astoria nodded. Her face was pale, and her expression looked as if it were carved from stone. “Goodbye, Miller.”
Miller forced herself to turn and walk toward the door, even though everything inside her body was screaming at her to stop. Her hand was on the handle when Astoria’s voice stopped her.
“Miller.”
She looked back. Astoria stood exactly where Miller had left her, silhouetted against the dark windows. She looked smaller somehow, fragile in a way Miller hadn’t seen her before.
“Thank you,” Astoria said softly. “For doing this in person.”
Miller’s throat closed. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and stepped out into the night. She made it to her car before the tears fell, and she made it three blocks before she had to pull over.
The tears had started in Astoria’s driveway and hadn’t stopped.
They blurred the road, the streetlights, the dark shapes of houses.
She was driving blind, her hands shaking on the wheel, and some distant part of her brain recognized that she was going to kill herself or someone else if she didn’t stop.
She pulled onto a side street, put the car in park, and left the engine running.
She pressed her hands over her face and sobbed in the dark.
It wasn’t pretty crying. It wasn’t quiet or dignified or the kind of grief you could tuck away and manage.
It was ugly, gasping, the kind of mourning that came from somewhere deep in her chest and ripped its way out.
She cried until her throat ached and her eyes burned. She cried until there was nothing left.
Then she sat in the silence and stared at the dashboard.
She’d done the right thing. Of that, she had no doubt. Valerie was poking around and their affair was a loaded weapon waiting to go off, and staying with Astoria would’ve destroyed them both. Miller did what she had to do to protect them.
But it didn’t feel like protection. It felt like she’d carved something essential out of her own chest and left it bleeding on Astoria’s floor.
The clock on the dash read 9:47 p.m. She’d been sitting there for almost twenty minutes. Miller wiped her face with the back of her hand, checked her mirrors, and pulled back onto the road. The drive home passed in a blur of stop signs and traffic lights. She didn't remember any of it.
Her apartment was dark when she got home. She didn't turn on the lights, just locked the door behind her, dropped her keys on the counter, and walked to her bedroom without bothering to get undressed.
She lay in the dark on top of the covers, still in her work clothes, and stared at the ceiling.
The apartment had never felt this quiet or empty before. She'd lived here for three years and had always liked the solitude, the space that was entirely her own. But tonight, it pressed in on her like a weight.
She should eat. Her body felt hollow, but the thought of food made her stomach turn. She should shower and wash away the smell of Astoria’s home on her. She should sleep. Tomorrow, she’d have to get up and go to work and pretend she was fine.
Instead of getting up to eat or shower, Miller closed her eyes.
She thought about Astoria standing by those windows, the way she hadn't fought, the way she'd just let Miller walk out the door.
Astoria’s words, thank you for doing this in person, replayed in her mind.
Astoria had said it like Miller was a colleague delivering bad news.
Maybe Miller had imagined the connection, the vulnerability, the moments when Astoria had looked at her like she was something precious.
Maybe Astoria had been playing a role the whole time, the way she played roles in boardrooms and courtrooms and everywhere else.
But she didn’t believe that. She’d felt what was between them and had seen Astoria cracked open after years of keeping everyone out, but Astoria didn’t fight tonight. Miller didn’t know what that meant.
She turned onto her side and pulled the pillow closer. The tears had dried on her face, tight and itchy, but she didn't get up to wash them off. She stayed in the dark and let herself feel the weight of what she’d lost and the shape of the empty space within her heart where Astoria used to be.