Miller pressed her forehead against the steering wheel. It’d been three weeks since the library. Three weeks of sleepless nights and cold showers and forcing herself to focus on other cases while her mind wandered back to the taste of Astoria's mouth, the desperate sound she'd made when Miller's hands found her hair, the way everything had narrowed to just the two of them in that fluorescent-lit room.
She’d tried to rebuild her walls. She'd been professional at the emergency hearing the Monday after; both of them had been. They had barely looked at each other, speaking only through their respective counsel. She'd told herself it was a mistake, a moment of weakness, something that would fade if she just gave it enough time and distance.
But it hadn’t faded. If anything, it had gotten worse.
Miller lifted her head and stared at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She looked tired, like someone who had spent three weeks lying to herself and had finally run out of energy for the pretense.
The truth was that she couldn’t be objective about Valerie’s case anymore. Maybe she hadn’t been truly objective for weeks, not since the preliminary hearing when she’d noticed the exhaustion in Astoria’s eyes, not since she’d spoken up against Valerie’s false claim and watched something shift in Astoria’s expression. The kiss had just made it impossible to deny.
And the other truth, the one she'd been circling for three weeks without letting herself land on it: she wanted more. She wanted to kiss Astoria again. She wanted to do more than kiss her. She wanted things she couldn't even fully articulate yet, things that made her pulse race and her skin flush and her carefully ordered life feel like a house built on sand.
She couldn’t represent Valerie while wanting Astoria like this. It wasn’t ethical or professional, and if she stayed on the case, she knew exactly what would happen: she’d find reasons to be in the same room as Astoria and eventually she’d end up right back where she’d been in that library, only with even less willpower to stop.
Better to make the choice to recuse herself now before she did something that couldn’t be undone and ruin her professionally.
Miller sighed, then grabbed her bag and headed inside.
Rachel’s office occupied the corner of the fourth floor, all windows and morning light and the accumulated evidence of a thirty-year legal career. Framed certificates lined one wall, and photos of Rachel with various judges and politicians covered another. The desk was old mahogany, scarred from decades of use, and Rachel sat behind it like a general surveying a battlefield.
Miller knocked on the open door. “Do you have a minute?”
Rachel looked up from her computer, her reading glasses perched on her nose. “Miller, you’re here early.” She gestured to the chair across from her desk. “Of course. Sit.”
Miller sat. Her hands wanted to fidget, so she pressed them flat against her thighs.
“What’s on your mind?”
There was no point dancing around it. Besides, Miller had rehearsed this enough times. “I have a conflict of interest on the Shepry case. I need to recuse myself, effective immediately.”
Rachel’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes sharpened. She removed her reading glasses, set them on the desk, and leaned back in her chair.
“What kind of conflict?”
“It’s personal.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“I’d rather not.”
The silence stretched between them. Rachel was studying her with the same attention she brought to hostile witnesses, looking for tells, inconsistencies, and the shape of what wasn’t being said.
“Does this involve Valerie?” Rachel asked. “Or Astoria Shepry?”
Miller’s jaw tightened against her will. She should’ve expected the question. Rachel hadn’t built a successful legal practice by missing obvious connections.
“I can’t discuss the specifics,” Miller said. “But I can tell you that my continued involvement in the case would compromise my professional judgment. I’m doing this now because it’s the only right thing to do, before any further damage is done.”
“Further damage,” Rachel repeated the words slowly, turning them over in her mouth. “So something has already happened.”
It wasn’t a question, but Miller still didn’t answer. Rachel was quiet for a long moment. Her fingers drummed once against the desk, a rare tell from a woman who usually revealed nothing.
“You’re a good attorney, Miller. One of the best associates I’ve ever worked with.” She paused. “And you’re doing this because you believe it’s the ethical choice, even though you know it will raise questions and affect your professional trajectory here.”
Miller’s throat tightened. “I know.”
“Do you?” Rachel’s voice was firm. “The partnership track isn’t a given. It’s earned through years of demonstrating judgment, discretion, excellence, and commitment. Walking away from a high-profile case mid-stream, for reasons you won’t explain—there will be people who remember that.”
“I understand.”
