Stop. Just stop!
I thought wrong. That’s all. I read the signals wrong, got swept up in the moment, made an ass of myself. It happens. People recover from worse embarrassments every day.
Right?
I rub my sternum, frowning.
Why does it still feel like there’s a knife between my ribs?
Because you actually let yourself hope, you idiot. You let him past your walls, and look what happened.
The worst part is that I can’t even be angry at him. He pulled back. That’s his right. People are allowed to change their minds, to pump the brakes, to decide that whatever’s building between them isn’t what they want or need right now. .
I just wish he’d decided itbeforehe touched me.
I close my laptop harder than necessary.
“This is ridiculous. I’m a successful attorney who’s taken down corrupt politicians and cartel-connected businessmen. I’vesurvived things that would have broken most people. And here I am, mooning over a motorcycle club president like a teenager with a diary full of hearts.”
I stand up, needing to move.
“Time to get it together, Bright.” I rub my arms, flicking off the pretend shadow of Stone that feels as if it’s lingered on my skin. “Begone, Stone. I don’t want you here any more.”
Alas, it doesn’t work, but at least I feel slightly less caged in.
I gather the files I’ve been working on, stacking them neatly in my briefcase. The DA documentation can wait until tomorrow. Everything can wait until tomorrow. Right now, I need to go home, pour myself a very large glass of wine, and stop thinking about Boone Armstrong’s hands.
And his eyes. And his voice. And the way he says my name.
“Shut up,” I mutter to myself, grabbing my coat.
The office is quiet around me with only the low hum of the ancient HVAC system and the distant sound of a car passing on Main Street. I like it here. It’s peaceful and uncomplicated. There’s no one to perform for, no one to answer to outside of my clients.
It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time I was a fierce prosecutor on the fast track to District Attorney.
Atlanta feels like a lifetime ago, but some nights—like tonight—the memories press close. The corner office with the skyline view. The designer suits and seven-figure cases. The endless game of political chess where justice was just another piece to be sacrificed when it suited the people in power.
I was good at that game. Too good. I learned to swallow my objections when the DA killed cases that might embarrass his donors. Learned to smile for the cameras while burying evidence that pointed to the wrong people. Learned that “justice” is often just a word politicians use when it’s convenient, and discard when it isn’t.
And then there was Maria Jean Santos.
Her face surfaces unbidden, and my stomach pitches sideways. She was so young and trusting the last time I saw her alive. She was my witness, my key to bringing down a trafficking ring with connections that reached all the way to the state senate. I promised her protection. I believed my own promises.
“I promise you’ll be safe. We’ll protect you.”
The words echo in my head, sharp as the day I said them. My throat tightens, a lump forming.
Lies. Well-intentioned lies, but lies all the same. I promised protection I couldn’t deliver, and Maria paid the price. She and her mother and her seven-year-old brother, all of them gone in a flash of fire and twisted metal the night before she was supposed to testify.
Even now, years later, thinking about that little boy makes my eyes sting. Seven years old. He had a dinosaur backpack. He wanted to be a firefighter.
I blink hard and stare at the ceiling until the feeling passes.
Despite the political pressure to drop the case, I got the conviction anyway. After her death, I worked around the clock until we found other evidence, built another case, and put the bastard who killed them away for forty years.
Rage and guilt and devastation—I poured all of it into that prosecution. I didn’t sleep. I barely ate. I burned through every favor I’d ever earned because nothing else mattered except making sure her death was avenged.
Afterward, her family called me a hero.
