Chapter 21-Staying
Not because I thought she'd call.
I didn't go up.
I wanted to.
I wanted to go back to her apartment. Take the elevator to the fourth floor and knock on her door until she lets me in. Until she stopped looking at me like distance was the same thing as safety.
Because pushing me away wasn't about not wanting me there. It was about trying to hold onto control when everything else in her life was slipping through her hands.
But when you love someone who's spent years keeping every vulnerable part of themselves locked away, you don't force them open. You stay. And you wait until they choose to let you in.
My apartment smelled wrong when I got home at four AM.
Too quiet. Too clean. Too mine.
The penthouse took up the entire twenty-fifth floor of the building.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Boston Harbor, a first edition on the shelf I'd bought at auction years ago, when I decided filling space counted as living in it.
There was a furniture arrangement the designer had insisted on, a kitchen that had started to feel like mine again, only after two weeks in hers reminded me what cooking for someone actually felt like.
None of it felt right anymore.
I set my keys in the bowl by the door. Different bowl than hers. The ceramic clink was wrong — not the note I'd listened to over mornings at her place.
The coffee maker sat unplugged on the counter. I'd stopped using it two weeks ago, started drinking whatever she made instead. I plugged it in. Skipped the vanilla creamer, she pretended she hadn’t bought it specifically because I mentioned it once.
It tasted like giving up.
I didn't sleep.
Just lie in bed until six, staring at the ceiling. When the Bar's online portal updated at 6 AM, I downloaded the filing on my phone. Forty-seven pages.
By 6:15, I was in the parking garage across the street from her office.
I watched her arrive at 6:19. Spine straight. Stride deliberate. She adjusted her bag strap twice before entering the building — a habit she used to steady herself before stepping into character.
Performance perfect.
Charlotte called at 9:47 AM.
"Tell me you're not sitting outside her building."
"I'm in a parking garage."
"Richard."
I'd taken the third level specifically — sight line straight into her fourth-floor office.
She made a sound that might have been a laugh or despair.
"The Bar called this morning. They've opened a formal investigation. Crowe filed supplemental evidence overnight — more photos, more 'witnesses,' a timeline that makes it look like she and Morrison have been involved since September."
I'd already seen it. Surveillance photos cropped to suggest intimacy. Metadata manipulated to create a false pattern. Three witnesses I'd already identified as connected to Crowe's network.
"How is she doing?"
Silence.
Then: "She's in her office. Door closed. I brought her coffee at eight, and she didn't look at me."
Her office light had been on since 6:23 AM.
"Richard." Charlotte's voice softened. "She has to do this herself."
"I know."
"She has to choose?—"
I watched the fourth floor, far right. Tried to remember what it felt like to hold her. To feel her breathing steady against my chest.
Charlotte let the silence sit for a moment. Then: "But you're not leaving."
"I'm not chasing her. That's different."
"How?"
"Chasing would be calling. Texting. Showing up at her office and making her deal with me before she's ready." I paused. "I'm staying available — doing the work she'd do if she weren't alone. Giving her space to choose me instead of forcing the choice."
Charlotte was quiet for a long moment.
"Richard, your company's legal team working on this?—"
"Is yours to direct however you need."
"Richard, that's?—"
"Charlotte. Use the resources. That's what they're for."
She hung up without saying goodbye.
The second night, I made it until 2 AM before I drove to her building.
Parked in a different spot. Same view of her window.
She was still awake past 2:30.
I pulled up Crowe's Bar complaint on my laptop. Cross-referenced his witness statements against known associates. Found the threads in under an hour — two former clients, one ex-girlfriend with an active restraining order.
Filed everything and sent it to Charlotte.
That was the distinction I was holding onto.
Blaire had asked me to leave. She hadn't asked me to stop protecting her.
The only one that let me sleep.
Day three, I went to the office.
My office. The one I'd barely seen in two weeks.
My assistant did a double-take when I walked in.
"Mr. Carlisle. We weren't expecting you today."
She didn't ask why I hadn't been in. Just brought me coffee the way I used to drink it — black, no sugar — and I didn't correct her.
I pulled every case Crowe had touched before he was disbarred and found what I was looking for in under two hours.
The pattern.
He'd done this before. Three times. Always targeting attorneys who exposed his misconduct. Always using fabricated evidence of ethical violations. Always waiting years between identification and execution.
Patient. Methodical. Exactly like the surveillance on Blaire.
I documented it. Sent it to Charlotte.
At noon, Declan video-called from whatever nondescript hotel room he was operating out of that week.
"The sedan's registered to a shell company — Mercer Holdings LLC. Mercer's real, but he's being bankrolled. Bank records show incoming transfers from three different accounts, all linked back to Crowe's known associates."
I leaned back in my chair. "How long to trace the full network?"
"Already done. Sending you the documentation now." A pause. "You look like shit, by the way."
I caught my reflection in the laptop screen. Hadn't shaved in three days. The stubble made me look older. Harder.
"Thanks."
"When's the last time you slept?"
"I'm fine."
"Right." He didn't push. That was why I hired him — he knew when to shut up. "I've got surveillance on Crowe's office and his apartment. If he makes a move, I'll know."
"And Blaire's building?"
"Cameras are monitoring all entry points. No one's gotten close." Another pause. "Except you. Every night, parked in the parking garage."
I didn't respond.
"Richard." His voice shifted — less professional, more friendly. "You're paying me to watch her building while you sit in a car watching her building. You see the problem here."
"I'm giving her space."
"You're torturing yourself."
"That's the point."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "The Bar hearing's in six days. I'll have the final witness connections by tomorrow. Everything you need to prove premeditation."
"Send it to Charlotte."
"Not to Blaire?"
"No."
He didn't ask why. Just nodded once and disconnected.
The surveillance operation I'd been funding for weeks ran twenty grand a week. Declan's team, the equipment, and the background checks on Crowe's witnesses.
Worth every penny.
I'd have spent ten times that if it kept her safe.
That night, Emma called.
"Richard? Are you okay?"
I was in my car outside Blaire's building. Again.
Her light had been on since six. A Saturday, and she hadn't left the apartment.
"Fine."
"You don't sound fine."
"Emma—"
"She pushed you away, didn't she?"
I watched the shadow move across her window. Pacing. She was pacing.
"She's scared."
"So you're just... what? Letting her be scared alone?"
"I'm not with her. I'm not invisible. I'm here when she's ready." I paused. "There's a difference between giving up and giving space."
Emma made a sound I was learning to recognize — the specific frustration of someone who loved people who hurt themselves.
"That's very mature of you."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"I say that like you're sitting in your car watching her apartment instead of being up there with her." A beat. "I know what that looks like, you know. Watching someone you love from the wrong side of a door."
I didn't say anything.
"She asked me to leave."
"And you always do what people ask?"
"When they mean it, yes."
"And you think she meant it."
Blaire's hands had shaken when she told me she needed to focus. How she wouldn't look at me. How she said I can't do both, like she was reading from a script she wrote years ago.
"I think she's terrified. And I think she's doing what she always does when she's terrified — controlling as much of her surroundings as possible and pushing away anything that feels like a risk."
"So you're just going to let her run."
"I'm going to let her choose."
Silence.
Then: "You really love her."
Her apartment went dark.
12:03 AM.
"Yeah," I said. "I really do."
I stayed parked there for another hour after Emma hung up, staring at Blaire's dark window and imagining her inside the apartment alone.
Awake.
Restless.
Checking the locks the way she did when the world felt like it was slipping out from under her.
I couldn't fix that for her.
Couldn't make her trust me, couldn't make her stop running, couldn't do anything except stay there and hope that when she was ready to stop being afraid, I was still the person she reached for.
I finally started the car sometime after midnight.
The drive home felt wrong in a way I couldn't explain. Like every mile between us was something I'd have to earn back.