Miller reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, letting her fingers trace down the line of Astoria’s jaw. Astoria’s eyes fluttered half-closed at the touch.
“What?” Astoria asked.
“Nothing. Just looking.”
“At what?”
At you, Miller thought.At the way you look when you’re not performing for anyone. At the way you sound when you come apart. At everything I didn’t know I was missing until only recently.
“At the ceiling,” she said instead. “Very interesting ceiling.”
Astoria glanced up at the unremarkable white expanse above them, then back down at Miller with a raised eyebrow. “Liar.”
“Terrible liar. It’s a professional liability.”
That earned her a real smile, the kind that crinkled the corners of Astoria’s eyes. Miller catalogued it automatically, adding it to the growing collection of expressions she'd learned to recognize: the polite smile Astoria wore like armor, the sharp smile that preceded a devastating argument, the private smile that Miller was beginning to suspect very few people had ever seen.
Astoria settled back down beside her, her head on Miller's shoulder, one leg hooked over Miller's thigh. The weight of her was grounding. Miller traced absent patterns on her arm and watched the city lights paint shifting shadows on the wall.
“What are you thinking?” Astoria asked after a while.
Miller considered deflecting again. It’d be easier to make a joke and keep things light, but she was tired of light. She’d spent thirty-six years keeping things light and look where that had gotten her.
“I’m thinking about how hard it is to leave,” she said quietly. “Every time, it gets harder.”
Astoria’s hand stilled on her stomach. “I know what you mean.”
“If this were just..." Miller trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence. Just sex? Just physical? Just two people burning off tension in hotel rooms? It had never beenjustanything, not from the first moment their hands had touched over scattered papers in the courthouse elevator.
“Just what?” Astoria prompted.
“I don’t know, easier to categorize.” She laughed. “Hey, I’m a lawyer. I like things I can categorize.”
“And you can’t categorize this?”
“Can you?”
Astoria was quiet for a moment. Her fingers resumed their movement, tracing Miller's ribs, the dip of her waist. “No,” she admitted. “I can't.”
Somehow that was reassuring. They were both lost in the same uncharted territory.
Miller turned her head to press a kiss to Astoria’s hair. She smelled like expensive shampoo and sex and something underneath that was justher, something Miller had started to crave in the hours between these stolen meetings.
“I should get going,” Astoria said, but she didn’t move. “It’s almost eleven.”
“I know.”
Outside, a car passed on the street below, its headlights sweeping briefly across the window. The air conditioning hummed. Miller became aware of her own heartbeat, steadynow, and Astoria’s breathing, slow and even against her shoulder.
Thursday morning, Miller stared at the same paragraph of a custody motion for the third time and retained nothing.
The Stewart case was a straightforward dispute over summer visitation. She’d handled dozens, if not hundreds, like it and could practically draft the response in her sleep. But her mind kept sliding sideways, back to the weight of Astoria’s body against hers, the sound she’d made when Miller’s fingers had found exactly the right spot, the way she’d looked in the low light of yet another hotel room?—
Miller pressed her palms against her eyes and exhaled. This was becoming a problem.
Not the affair itself. She’d made her peace with that, or at least shoved her reservations into a box she didn't open during daylight hours. She'd recused herself properly. There was no ethical violation, no conflict of interest, nothing that would get her disbarred or disciplined. On paper, she was clean.
But paper wasn’t the problem.
