Maya
Reid hadn’t just put her above the law, he was willing to break the law to protect her.
Her phone buzzed in her bag.
"Hello?"
It should have cracked the sky open. It should have knocked the breath from her. It should have made her knees give out right there on the sidewalk.
Instead she only stood there with the phone pressed to her ear.
She had been exonerated, but somehow that was only the second-most impossible thing that had happened to her today.
“It’s over,” her lawyer told her. “Look, I’ve got to go, but I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Maya lowered the phone slowly.
It was over.
She started to laugh.
She thought she was being reasonable when she’d made her lists. She thought she’d been sensible writing out the reality column for herself.
But she didn’t want sensible.
She wanted to do whatever she wanted. She wanted to have whatever she wanted. She wanted to be selfish and greedy and take whatever she wanted from life.
She was going to work less hours, she was going to take on the consulting projects she wanted, and pass on the ones she didn’t.
She was going to hand over the charity work and she was going to have a baby with her husband.
And if that was greedy, then fine.
Maya had her arguments ready by the time she reached her brother’s door.
He would be upset but the consulting work was meaningful too—accessibility at design stage, getting it right before it was wrong, helping more people in the long run.
And Victoria's foundation would take care of the charity. Maya wasn’t abandoning anyone. She just couldn't do everything.
Owen opened the door, wheeled back to let her in.
"I want to give up running the charity,” she said as she followed him inside.
Owen nodded. “Sure,” he said.
Maya kept going. "I want to take the consulting job. The architecture one. And I want a—” She stopped. She wasn’t going to tell Owen about the rest of it, not yet. "I want to work less hours in total. I can't do all of it. I've thought about it and something has to—"
"Maya."
"—give, and the charity has Victoria Hale now, it doesn't need me the way it did, but I know what it means to you and I know what it represents and I'm not saying I'd walk away entirely, I'd still volunteer, I just can't be the one in charge of—“
"Maya,” Owen said, firmer this time.
She stopped.
He leaned forward slightly, his forearms on his knees. "You were twenty years old when you started the charity.” He gave her a long look. "You're allowed to stop."
The arguments she'd prepared dissolved in the face of his words.
“I thought—” She stopped. “I thought you’d be upset.”
“Why?” He looked confused.
“Because it’s important?” She didn’t mean to make it sound like a question.
“It is important,” Owen agreed.
“And because you know what it means. The work.”
Owen’s expression softened.
“Maya,” he said carefully, “you built the thing. That doesn’t make it a life sentence.”
Maya looked down at her hands. “Victoria’s people would handle grants and administration and payroll and compliance and all the awful parts.” She rubbed her forehead. “It’d only really need someone local to oversee coordination but—”
“But?” Owen prompted.
Maya exhaled.
“But who else would be able to do it all? The council and contractors and grant structures and accessibility standards and—” Her hands moved helplessly. “It’s all so specific.”
“That’s easy,” Owen said. "Jenny can do it."
Jenny, who had moved into her grandparents’ house and made herself useful without being asked. Who had driven Edith to aqua class and reorganized Thomas's filing system. Who had stepped in at the bake sale table and served cake to strangers.
Jenny, who could run a team of twenty people and a six month timeline.
Jenny, who… needed a full-time job.
“She would be perfect,” Maya said. “But this would be a part-time position. I know she needs—”
Owen coughed and glanced away. “She doesn’t,” he said, his voice going rough. “She doesn’t need a full-time job.”
He was blushing when he finally met her eyes.
Oh, she thought.
Maya let herself into the Merritts’ house in a daze.
She could hear Edith somewhere in the kitchen, cabinet doors opening and closing softly. The familiar domestic sounds wrapped around her gently.
She needed her wedding ring. She wanted her wedding ring.
“Maya?” Edith called. “How did it go?”
Maya opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
Edith appeared in the doorway drying her hands on a dish towel, her expression shifting immediately. “Oh, darling.”
“I don’t know where to start,” Maya said.
Edith’s face gentled further. “Come sit down.”
Thomas was at the kitchen table with reading glasses low on his nose and a newspaper folded beside him. “How was it?”
Maya set her bag down slowly.
“It was awful,” she admitted.
Thomas’s mouth tightened.
“But that’s not—” Maya stopped. “That’s not why I’m like this.”
Edith pulled out a chair for her and Maya sat. Then she said, very quietly, “I think I get to have everything.”
Thomas blinked. Edith sat down across from her slowly.
“I thought,” she said slowly, “that Reid would always choose the law over me.”
Thomas exchanged a glance with Edith.
“I thought I was being realistic.” Maya’s throat tightened unexpectedly. “But now—”
Now she wanted things. Now she wanted everything.
“I don’t have to compromise,” she told them. “Not on anything at all.”
Edith waited. Thomas removed his glasses slowly.
Tears burned unexpectedly behind her eyes. “Is that too greedy?”
Edith reached across the table and took Maya’s hand.
“No,” she said firmly.
Maya blinked at her.
Thomas nodded once. “About time, frankly.”
“Reid chose me,” she said, and the words sounded magical. “He chose me.”
Maya stood on the front step with her wedding ring back on her finger and knocked. She waited for the sound of Reid’s footsteps on the other side.
There was nothing.
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. She was ready for the rest of their lives. She didn’t want to wait. And he wasn’t home.
She touched the ring on her finger.
Then she heard his car.
Maya turned.
Reid’s car pulled in next to hers. He stepped out, his collar open, tie gone. His jacket was hooked over two fingers.
He looked perfect.
He took one step forward, and another. She did too, and then she was running and throwing herself at him. He caught her and just like that she was in the safest place she knew.
Wrapped up in Reid's arms.
She felt his arms tighten around her. It felt like he would never let her go.
"You chose me," she said.
"I will always choose you,” he told her. "I know I haven’t proven it yet, but I hope that one day—“
"I want to come home."
He drew his head back just far enough to look her in the eye. “What are you saying?”
“I want to be your wife,” she said.
She watched the expressions as they crossed his face. A moment of incomprehension, and then shock, and then understanding. His eyes widened, his lips parted.
Then he was holding her too close for her to see him anymore. She was pressed firmly against the warmth of his chest, his heartbeat loud and familiar.
He was trembling. Or she was. She couldn't tell anymore.
"Maya." Her name came out wrecked.
This time it was her who pulled back just enough to look at him.
All his careful control, the neutral expression he wore like armor, was gone.
“I don’t care that you’re too good for me, as long as you choose me,” he told her.
Maya felt something give way. “I’m not too good for you, Reid.”
He laughed. He sounded delighted. “Agree to disagree, sweetheart. But as long as you want me, I’ll be yours.”
She took his face in her hands, tilted his head down so she could say this to him directly. “I do want you. I wanted you from the moment I saw you at that council meeting." She kept her voice steady. "I wanted you when I took your name. And I want you now, and for the rest of my life.”
He was looking at her like she was the only person in the world.
She kept her hands on his face, felt the way his smile moved his cheeks, his stubble against her palms. “You are mine,” she said. “And I am yours.”
His eyes closed. "I'm so sorry," he told her.
"I know." She did.
"I will spend—"
"Reid." She waited until he opened his eyes. "I know."
They stood there.
His hand came up and covered hers. She felt his pulse jumping.
He made a sound she had never heard from him before. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sob. Something in between, rough and undone and completely without armor.
And then he pulled her back in, both arms around her, and she pressed her face into his shoulder.
She felt his mouth against her hair.
“I’m yours,” he agreed quietly, his words spoken into the top of her head. “I always was. But I panicked.” She felt him exhale. "I know now to just trust you.”
Maya closed her eyes.
This. This was her home. This was her solid ground.
"Don't let go," she said.
"Never again," he said. "I promise. Never again."