Maya
She had forgotten her phone.
That was all. She had gotten halfway down the corridor with her lawyer and realized her phone was still on the table and she had said, quietly, I'll catch you up, and turned back.
She could make out Reid's voice, but the words themselves didn’t carry.
Until she pushed open the door.
She didn't hit on you.
Maya froze.
You know that and I know that.
Holy shit.
I’m going to frame you.
The floor seemed to tilt under her sensible shoes.
She thought of the morning she came home from the holding cell with all her belongings in a clear plastic bag, looking for Reid to make it make sense. She thought about the door closing in her face.
She thought of the Merritts' guest room, the nights spent staring at the ceiling. She thought of admitting to Thomas and Edith that she wanted to be the thing Reid chose.
He had chosen her.
He had put her above the law.
As if there was no question where she stood.
Happily, he had said, about burning it all down.
Her hand was pressed flat against her sternum, though she hadn’t done it consciously.
She thought about the two columns she’d written out. Her impossible, perfect life and the sensible reality she had to accept. The accounting of what she had lost and what she was building instead.
She thought about Reid on his knees at her feet.
She thought abut needing to be first, of being greedy, of asking for the unreasonable thing from a man whose first love was the law.
And here was Reid Lawson, proving the impossible.
Reid's first love was not the law.
She was his first love.
Reid didn't look caught or desperate or like a man in crisis. He was looking at her like she was the only fixed point in the room, like he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
"I forgot my phone.” Her voice came out unsteady.
Reid looked at the table, he picked up her phone.
She crossed the room and took it from him. His hand was warm where it brushed hers.
Her heart was hammering.
Someone requested an adjournment but Maya didn't follow the specifics. She couldn’t think about anything except Reid’s words. The way he threatened Julian. No, not threatened. Promised.
Sullivan said something to Reid. Reid looked at Maya—brief and unreadable—and then he was gone, following Sullivan down the corridor with his jacket over his arm.
Her lawyer was already opening his folder. "Right," he said. "While we have a moment."
It was just an adjournment. Nothing had changed with the case. But for Maya, everything had.
“Maya."
Her lawyer was watching her over his glasses.
“Sorry.” She pulled herself back with effort. “Yes. I’m listening.”
He walked her through what came next. Things that had mattered five minutes ago, and should still matter now. But all she could think about was her husband.
Perfect life.
Reality.
Reid, somehow, impossibly, had crossed the line between them.
When her lawyer stood, she understood that she was free to go.
She gathered her bag and walked out into the corridor. At the elevator, she pressed the button and waited.
She wanted to go home.
Not the Merritts' house, warm and kind as it was. Not the apartment she had viewed with its laminate floors and its alley view. Not the theoretical future she had been constructing, sensible and safe and built around the reality column of her list.
Home.
The house where Reid's family had put down roots deep enough that their presence was part of the texture of the place. The house she had moved into and made theirs. The kitchen. The bedroom. The garden she knew the name of every plant in.
The elevator reached the ground floor.
She walked through the lobby, through the doors and out into the afternoon.
She thought about her two columns. She thought about her sensible, practical compromises.
She thought about her husband standing in a beige deposition room choosing her.
Was it that easy? After all this, could she just believe that?