Fucking hell, she’d forgotten. With a clenched jaw she stepped closer, yanking a paper towel off the dispenser andsoaking it before pressing it against her red chest.
She sighed. What a disaster.
Jaime glared at her reflection, almost startling at the sight—pale, sallow skin with dark circles under her eyes, which seemed to have circles of their own. She looked like a ghost, a specter who always stood apart.
Jaime muddled through the weekend, reading and taking a call from her mother. She needed more time to regain her equilibrium before seeing her in person again. So, she focused on work. A new case on her docket needed close attention, and she spent her evenings that week reviewing the documents, trying to immerse herself in the details.
By Wednesday evening, she recalled a reference she needed was in a legal volume at her office. So, come Thursday morning, she stood in front of her bookshelf, flipping through the pages.
“Yes,” she muttered quietly, a small victory at last.
She sat back down, drafting detailed notes. However, her mind drifted—flashes of Olivia, memories she tried to banish clinging stubbornly to her thoughts. Still, she pushed on, determined to maintain her focus.
An hour later, a knock sounded, and her judicial clerk, Sara, stepped in, a file in her hands. “Judge Lachlan?” Sara asked cautiously.
Jaime looked up, a tug of irritation rising. She was in the middle of a breakthrough. “Yes?”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt, but there’s something odd about the case you’re preparing for,” Sara said, her tone hesitant.
Jaime frowned, pulling off her reading glasses. “What do you mean?”
Sara shifted, glancing between the papers on Jaime’s desk and the one in her hands. “I was reviewing the docket for next week, and you’ve been working on the Hawthorne case, but it’s not scheduled for another month. The Grayson case is up first.”
Jaime’s heart sank. The detailed notes she had been drafting for days—how could she have missed such a simple thing? She blinked, feeling a wave of disbelief.
It wasn’t just carelessness; this was a rookie mistake. One she hadn’t even made during her early days on the bench.
She cleared her throat, doing her best to preserve her composure. “Thank you, Sara. I decided to get a head start on Hawthorne because of its complexity. I’ll shift my focus back to Grayson now.”
“Of course, Judge. I’ll get the files ready,” Sara said before stepping out.
As soon as the door closed, Jaime let out a groan, dropping her head into her hands. This wasn’t just an oversight—it was a glaring sign of how badly she was losing her grip. She had never made such an embarrassing mistake in her career, and worse, she’d lied to cover it up.
What was happening to her?
When she left her chambers later that day, she froze, her eyes widening as she stared at the familiar figure heading her way.
Her heart pounded and her palms grew damp.
Jaime knew she’d run into Olivia eventually, yet she didn’t feel prepared, and a part of her readied to turn and hide in her chambers. Ridiculous. Jaime straightened and strode forward, prepared to act as if she didn’t see Olivia until the last moment.
She was about to turn and signal Olivia, a colloquial, friendly greeting, when she realized the woman in question might share Olivia’s overall body shape and hair color, but she was in fact, a stranger.
Not Olivia.
A disorienting heaviness settled over Jaime, and she hurried out of the courthouse and almost ran to her car. This was no good at all.
Back home, Jaime took a bath, the heat and calming scents of peppermint and lavender helped, at least in making her drowsy enough to fall into bed and sleep. She didn’t know how she managed to make it through the next day in court, holed up in her chamber stewing, while Friday evening found her once more on the couch, this time, in the dark, her thoughts even more maudlin than before.
dancing with the devil
Astormragedoutsidewhen Olivia sat curled up on her couch, reading.
She’d been meaning to check out this book forever but hadn’t been in the right headspace before. She’d returned to losing herself in fiction, steadfastly ignoring anything related to non-fiction, especially philosophy.
Still, some lines, like how loneliness didn’t imply longing for company, and instead expressed a yearning to be around your kind of people, remained lodged in her mind. She had loved the book Jaime had given her at the fair all those months ago, along with their discussions—utter disagreements, in part—that sometimes still played in Olivia’s mind.
She’d introduced Jaime to a novel she’d liked. Her heart had swelled, leaving her momentarily speechless, but she’d felt like she was walking on air for a while after.
