Chapter 9-Deposition
This morning, Richard made eggs.
I watched from the doorway. His shoulders moving beneath his shirt. The precise angle of the spatula. The fact that he made them the way I liked them without asking.
"You're staring."
I wasn't. I was taking stock. There was a difference.
"I'm caffeinating."
He glanced over. Caught me with the coffee mug halfway to my mouth and nothing in it yet.
"Right."
I filled the mug. Took a sip that burned. Watched him plate the eggs. Quick. Precise.
We'd done this before.
The thought arrived without warning. Slipped past every defense I'd built.
Not the eggs. Not the mornings.
It was being in the same room with him. The way we moved around each other without thinking. The ease of him moving through my space like he belonged there.
"Blaire."
I looked up. He was watching me with that look that made my chest tight.
"Where'd you go?"
"Morrison contracts."
"Try again."
I set down the mug. Exactly center on the coaster.
"The Kellerman deposition," I said. "The one I spent three weeks trying to forget."
Something shifted in his face.
"You remember that."
It wasn't a question. But I answered anyway.
"Yes."
The conference room was smaller than it should have been for four lawyers, a witness, and a court reporter.
I arrived early. Set up my files in neat stacks. Arranged my pens by color. Checked my phone three times for messages that hadn't come.
Richard walked in at 8:57.
Three minutes early. The way he always was three minutes early.
He took the seat directly across from me. Not beside his co-counsel. Not at the head of the table.
Across.
Where he could watch me for the next six hours.
"Counselor," he said.
"Counselor."
The court reporter looked between us. Then at her equipment. Like she could sense what was about to happen.
The deposition started at nine exactly.
By nine-fifteen, I'd forgotten there was anyone else in the room.
Richard moved through his questions like a surgeon. Precise. Controlled. Dismantling my witness's testimony piece by piece.
I objected. He rephrased. We went three rounds—him trying to establish the witness had actually seen the documents, me blocking until he did it right—before the court reporter asked us to slow down.
"Your client is lying," he said during the break. We were alone in the hallway. Everyone else had fled for coffee.
"Your client is delusional."
"Blaire."
I looked at him. We were standing too close. Just feet apart.
"This isn't personal," I said.
His mouth curved. Not quite a smile.
"No. It never is."
Something in his voice made my stomach twist.
We went back inside.
He asked about the contract timeline. I objected on relevance. He rephrased. I objected on form.
"Counselor," he said. Still looking at me. Not at the witness. "Are you objecting to the question or to me?"
The court reporter's fingers stopped moving.
"The question."
"Are you sure?"
The smart move: object. Call a break. Look away.
I held his gaze across four feet of conference table.
"Ask your next question."
He did.
I didn't remember what it was.
I remembered the way his fingers tapped against his notepad. The same rhythm as my pulse.
I remembered adjusting my necklace and seeing his eyes follow my movements.
I remembered the exact moment I realized I'd been putting on a show for him. Not Sunshine Blaire. Something sharper. More dangerous.
The deposition ended at 3:42.
We packed our files in silence. His co-counsel left. My client left. The court reporter left.
We were alone.
"That was?—"
"Professional," I said.
He held my gaze. Searching.
"Right. Professional."
I picked up my briefcase. Turned toward the door.
"Blaire."
I stopped. Didn't turn around.
"It doesn't have to be."
"Yes," I said. "It does."
I walked out.
I made it to my car before my hands started shaking.
"You left."
Richard's voice pulled me back into my kitchen. The eggs were getting cold on the counter between us.
"I always left."
He picked up his coffee. Took a sip. Gave me space to change the subject if I needed to.
I didn't.
"I told myself it was professional," I said. "The way you looked at me. The way I couldn't focus on anything except whether I'd object to your next question. I told myself it was just the case."
"Was it?"
"No."
The word came out quieter than I meant it to.
Richard set down his mug. Carefully.
"No," he agreed.
We stood there. Six feet of kitchen tile between us. The same distance as the conference room hallway.
"I was so angry at you," I said. "During that deposition. After. For weeks."
"I remember."
"I thought it was because you were winning."
His mouth curved. That same almost-smile from years ago.
"And now?"
I picked up my coffee. Put it down without drinking.
"Now I think I was angry because you made me feel something I didn't know how to handle."
Silence.
Then:
"What did you feel?"
I looked at him. Really looked. The way I hadn't let myself look in a long time.
"Terrified," I said. "I felt terrified."
"Of me?"
"Of wanting you."
The admission hung between us. I waited for him to move. To close the distance. To do something with what I'd just given him.
He didn't.
He just stood there. Watching me with an expression I still couldn't explain.
"Thank you," he said finally.
"For what?"
"For telling me."
Not for wanting him. Not for the admission itself.
For telling him.
For choosing to open up to him.
And not running.
My chest tightened.
"The eggs are cold," I said.
"I'll make more."
"You don't have to?—"
"I know."
He moved to the stove. Started over. Gave me space to think about what I'd just admitted.
I watched him work. The familiar efficiency.
My phone buzzed. Morrison contracts. Partner meeting in an hour. Reality bleeding back in.
"I have to go," I said.
"I thought so."
I picked up my briefcase. Straightened my blazer. Put on the face I'd worn for years.
It didn't fit the way it used to.
"Blaire."
I stopped. Turned.
Richard was watching me from the stove. Spatula in hand. Standing in my kitchen like he'd been doing it for years.
"It's okay," he said. "That you're scared."
My throat tightened.
"I'm not?—"
"Yes, you are."
He said it gently. The way he'd said it's okay that you forgot.
"And it's okay," he continued. "You don't have to have it figured out. You don't have to pretend to be fine."
"What if I don't know how to be anything else?"
The question escaped before I could stop it. Raw. Unfiltered.
Exactly the kind of thing I'd spent years training myself not to say.
Richard smiled. A real one this time.
"Then we'll figure it out."
We.
The word settled somewhere in my chest.
I should have said something. Should have pushed back. Should have reminded him this was temporary. Ten days. Just until the threat was handled.
I didn't.
I just stood there. Memorizing the way he looked in my kitchen. The angle of morning light across his shoulders. The certainty in his voice when he said we.
"I have to go," I said again.
"I'll drive."
Not a question. Not a negotiation.
We didn't make it to the car.
I wasn't sure who moved first. Maybe neither of us did. Maybe it was just everything we hadn't done finally giving out beneath the weight of one honest confession.
One moment, I was reaching for my briefcase. The next, his hand was on my wrist, turning me to him, and suddenly I didn't care about anything except the way he was looking at me.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It wasn't careful.
It was it doesn't have to be and I always left crashing into me all at once.
His lips claimed mine like he was finally done holding himself back, and something inside me came apart so fast it almost hurt.
A sound broke from me against his mouth—soft, shaky, completely unguarded. The kind of sound that never would have survived in any place in my life where I still needed control.
But here, with him, composure was the first thing to go.
He walked me backward until my shoulders met the wall beside the door.
"Tell me to stop," he said against my mouth. Not a demand. A door left open.
I reached for his collar instead.
He understood. His hands found the buttons of my blouse — methodical, unhurried, nothing like the urgency of the kiss — and I realized that was more undoing than the kissing was. The patience. The deliberateness. Like he had all the time in the world and intended to use it.
"Richard—"
"I know."
He didn't stop. Neither did I.
My blouse fell open beneath his hands. He eased the fabric down my shoulders, slow enough that I felt every inch of it, and the second his palms met bare skin, I stopped thinking about anything but him.
After that, I didn't think in words at all. Only sensations.
The steady glide of his thumbs along my ribs. The heat of his hands. The way my breath caught when he touched me like I was something precious instead of something fragile.
And then he paused.
Just long enough to look at me.
Not casually. Not hungrily. Really look at me—the same way I'd looked at him in the kitchen, like he was trying to understand what had changed between then and now.
Like he was seeing the difference too.
"You're staring," I managed.
"Yes," he said. No deflection. No pretending otherwise.
Something about its honesty made it harder to breathe.
His mouth found my throat, the curve of my shoulder, the edge of my collarbone. I got his shirt half-open, my hands flattening against the hard warmth of his chest, and beneath all that impossible control I could feel the way his breathing roughened. The way his body reacted to mine.
Terrifying and wanted. Both at once. The way it had always been with him.
He undid the clasp of my bra with one hand, and I exhaled sharply against his neck. I reached up, pulled it off, let it fall.
He unbuckled his belt one-handed and I felt the shift in him — less patient, more present — and then I was not thinking about Morrison contracts or partner meetings or the careful order of the life I'd built to keep myself safe.
I wasn't shaking.
I was choosing this.
His mouth found my breast. I stopped trying to stay quiet.
"Richard—"
"I know." Low. Certain.