I stiffen. Not at the bumper stickers, though it’s creepy that she remembers. But at the memory of her locking the door, her hand on my chest, my violent reaction.
“I think I made my feelings clear,” I say.
“You did,” she says quickly. “But I need to know… was I crazy?”
She steps a fraction closer, her eyes searching mine with a desperate, brittle intensity.
“For almost five years, we were a team, Ross. We shared everything. And then… you whispered my name. In your sleep. In your bed.” She swallows hard. “You don’t do that with someone you don’t have feelings for. That’s why I thought… that’s why I cornered you. I thought you were afraid to make the first move.”
There it is the logic she’s been clinging to.
I take a breath, cold air filling my lungs.
“I need to be clear,” I say, keeping my voice low. “I didn’t stay late because of you, Tabitha. I stayed late to avoid my life.”
She freezes.
“You were the deadline,” I say. “You were the pressure. You were the work. When I whispered your name, it wasn’t desire. It was anxiety. You were the symbol of the world I couldn’t put down. You were the panic attack I woke up to.”
She stares at me. I can see the gears turning as she replays five years of partnership, recontextualizing every shared coffee, every late-night strategy session. She realizes she wasn’t the muse; she was the stress fracture.
“You were efficient,” I continue softly. “You made the work easier. But if you had been a sixty-year-old man, I would have spent the same amount of time at that desk.”
All color drains from her face. She darts her eyes to her expensive shoes.
“I feel like a fool,” she whispers.
“Don’t,” I say. “I let you believe it. I let the lines blur because it was easier than fixing what was broken at home. I used our dynamic to hide from my wife. That was wrong. I’m sorry I let it get to the point where you thought… where you thought there was an ‘us’.”
Tabitha pulls her hand from her pocket and brushes a stray hair from her face. “Cornering you was a mistake. Touching you was worse. The lie was that I was saving you from a bad marriage, but in reality, I was breaking into a home that wasn’t mine.”
She sighs, a sound that rattles in the cold air.
“I’m leaving the firm,” she says abruptly.
I blink. “You are?”
“I’m starting something new. Arthur is even worse now that you’re gone. I can’t handle the partnership under him. So I’m leaving to start my own firm. The investors are a” She looks at me, a flicker of the old ambition trying to spark, but it’s weak. “I came here to ask you to be my partner. Strictly business. Wespeak the same language, Ross. Even if we don’t… even if there’s nothing else.”
“I can’t,” I say immediately.
She nods, a sharp, finalizing motion. “Because of the office?”
“Because of everything.”
“I figured,” she says. “But I had to ask. We did good work, Ross.”
“We did.”
She pulls her collar tight against the chill. She looks past me, into the warm light of the hallway, then back at the dark street.
“She’s lucky,” Tabitha says. “That you’re finally waking up.”
“I hope so.”
“Good luck, Ross.”
She turns and retreats into the dark. I watch her go. There is no anger in her walk, just a heavy resignation. The click of her heels on the pavement fades, followed by the purr of an engine disappearing down the hill.
