Reid
“You fucked up,” he said.
Victoria Hale sat straight, her hands still folded, her expression composed but something behind her eyes had shifted.
"I appreciate that you're angry," she said.
He’d caught the first flight out that morning. He didn’t intend to be here any longer than necessary.
"Maya Lawson is innocent. The case against her is going to collapse." He looked at her directly. "You had the best thing that's come across your desk in years. And you threw it away.”
He knew how it sounded. He knew he was projecting.
He was all to aware that his anger wasn’t solely directed at her. He could hear it in his words, in the bitter recriminations. He just didn’t care.
Her brows lifted again. “That’s a bold position to take, given your role in her arrest.”
“So we both fucked up,” he told her. “The real thief was her bookkeeper, Julian Cross.”
Victoria watched him for a moment longer, her expression unreadable.
He hadn’t come here with a plan. Not a real one, just a need to start fixing things, wherever he could.
“Reinstate the offer,” he said finally. "The charity's funds are intact. Cross never extracted the money. Every dollar is sitting frozen in evidence accounts and will be returned in full when he's convicted."
She frowned. “It’s not about the money. The damage has already been done. Public perception doesn’t reverse itself.”
“Please,” he said. “I made a mistake and I’m correcting it. But I’m not the only one who made a mistake here.”
Victoria was silent for a long moment.
“You’re pathetic,” she told him. Then she reached for one of the files on her desk, tapping it lightly with her fingers. “If I made a mistake, it was because of your actions. But I’ll review it,” she said. “But I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for your wife.”
He was pathetic. But at least he’d managed to convince Victoria Hale to rethink her position. He turned to leave.
“You seem very angry for a situation you caused,” she said pointedly, when he was at the door.
Reid paused, and looked back.
“I’m angry at myself,” he told her.
Reid sat by the window. The plane was carrying him back to Maya. Back to home. It should have felt like movement. Like progress.
Telling Victoria Hale she’d fucked up had felt good, but what did it change?
Flying there, talking to Victoria Hale. It wasn’t enough.
Every second felt like wasted time. Another second where Maya’s name was still attached to something it shouldn’t be. Another second where people like Victoria Hale got to move on from her, as if she were a bad investment instead of a person whose life had been detonated.
He could still see her hands. The angle of her wrists. The way the cuffs had dug into her skin.
Nothing he did was going to be enough to balance what he’d done.
Reid stared at the back of the seat in front of him.
It didn’t matter if this felt inadequate. It was still necessary.
Fixing the legal side was… procedural. It had steps. It had a sequence. You followed the trail, you presented the evidence, you forced the correction.
But what he had broken wasn’t something you could trace neatly back to a single point.
It was everything.
His thumb brushed absently over the edge of his wedding ring.
She had taken hers off.
He had done that. He’d broken their marriage. Now she was not in his house or in his life or in the thousand ordinary places he had had her.
He turned the ring again.
He had kicked her out of her home and slammed the door in her face.
He pressed his fingers briefly against his eyes.
When he opened his eyes, his ring caught the light.
He didn't deserve her. He had known that from the beginning, had carried it like a low-grade fever for the entire length of their marriage—the lie that she wasn’t really his.
He had been wrong about that.
He understood that now.
She had chosen him. Fully and without reservation. She had turned toward him in her sleep. She had walked straight to wherever he was in the house just to be near him.
She had said love you, be careful driving home on the worst night of his life and even after that he had still been too stupid to course correct.
He had repaid her love with fear and insecurity.
The cabin hummed around him.
He was going to spend his life making this right. He would do whatever she needed.
He would make sure she was never homeless again.
It was almost a relief. He knew exactly what to do.
Reid turned his ring one more time, and left it where it was, and closed his eyes.
The call connected on the fourth ring. "Reid?" his mother-in-law said brightly.
Reid strode through the arrivals terminal. “Can you put me on speaker? I want David to hear this, too.”
A beat, some fumbling, then Maya’s father's voice telling him he was listening. Good. Reid needed to tell this to both of them.
“The next time Maya calls either of you asking if she can stay with you, the answer is yes."
A pause. "Oh! Well, we're always happy to have her—"
"I don't care if there's no room in the RV. You get her on a flight and then you call me and I'll pay for a hotel suite. I'll pay for a month if I have to. I'll pay for six months."
"Sugar—"
"I don't care what it costs," he said, to both of them now.
His wife would never again have nowhere to turn.
“Structure it as a gift, put it into a trust, whatever is safest,” Reid said. “Full transfer of title, I want her to own the house.”
The attorney sat back in his chair, fingers steepled, studying Reid.
“Your wife?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?” The attorney frowned. “You wouldn’t have any rights to the property. She could sell it, lease it, or otherwise dispose of it without your consent.”
“I’m sure.”
“You would retain no legal interest.”
“Maya should own it outright. That’s what I want.”
His attorney would make sure that no court, no creditor, no future complication would ever be able to touch it. It would be hers, completely.
The attorney held his gaze for a moment longer. “Why?” he finally spluttered.
Reid didn’t hesitate.
“I put her in a position where she didn’t have a home,” he said. “And that’s not something that’s ever going to happen again.”
“All right,” the attorney said at last. “If that’s your wish.”
Reid nodded once.