Finn smirks and gets into position. I stretch my fingers around the bat and debate knocking myself upside the head with it before the ball cuts through the air.
A crack shoots down the middle of the field as I manage to hit the ball. Finn’s whooped cheer cuts the tension, and then I’m laughing without the weight of what’s been on my mind. It’s free of worry and fear, and for right now, I’ll take it.
For now, everything is normal again.
18
Future Hall Of Famer: Opinion on this guy?
The photohe’s attached features a tall, athletic-looking, dark-haired man doing a bench press in a brightly lit gym. His thick thighs are spread symmetrically while he stares up at the bar with a rabid glare. At first glance, yeah, he’s hot. But I know better than to go out with anyone solely based on looks at this stage in my life.
Been there, done that a thousand times.
Me: Are you going around the gym taking photos of random men?
I shake my head at his continued antics and set my phone back down before signing my name on yet another piece of paperwork. It’s been three days since Finn’s fake date, and while we’ve texted a few times since, he’s got one last game against Texas tomorrow before he can come home. Baseball season is exhausting, even when you’re not the one playing.
My phone buzzes beside the turquoise, bedazzled stapler Kellan got me for my birthday last year. I pull my eyes away fromthe blur of tiny, printed black words on my paperwork and focus on the text.
Future Hall Of Famer: Would you prefer I go to a library or hockey rink? And answer carefully. There IS a right and wrong answer here.
Me: Feeling a bit territorial, Finny?
His answer comes immediately, followed by a GIF of a cat glaring into the camera.
Future Hall Of Famer: Of my honey bun? Yeah, I am. No hockey players for you.
Me: Buzzkill.
Future Hall Of Famer: Careful or I’ll pass territorial into jealous territory.
I read his message three times before replying, my heart quickening just enough to knock me off-kilter.
Me: I don’t think I’ve ever seen you jealous.
My throat tightens before I swallow and tuck my phone beneath a few papers. My skin feels warm, like I’m blushing or something from simple, innocent text messages. It’s not the first time in the last three days that I’ve felt this, either. Maybe I’m sick. I haven’t gotten the flu in years, but it’s not like I’m immune.
Yeah, maybe I should take a personal day tomorrow. I could relax and find a new show to watch for the first time in months. If that doesn’t help me feel more like myself, then I’m not sure what will.
There’s a firm, quick knock on my office door at the same time I feel my desk vibrate. My breath hitches. I ignore the text and put all my focus on work. Immediately, I feel the unnerving tension leave my body.
“Come in!”
The door opens, and that brief moment of relaxation disappears. Rowena Shaw’s presence sucks all the air from my office, and I push out of my seat, standing behind my desk. My blistered heel screams at me when it rubs against the back of my new high heel. I keep the wince hidden behind a mask of easy confidence.
“Good morning, Aubrey,” she says.
Her voice almost always sounds the same. Smooth and dry with a hint of judgment. But when it’s just us, that judgment lessens, filling with respect instead. Hearing that subtle change for the first time was just as fulfilling as if she’d outright declared that she was proud of me. I remember everything about the case that earned me her utmost approval and even have the photograph of me and our joint client hung up on the wall across the room.
Few lawyers get to have one like Rowena Shaw as a mentor. Even fewer get to be on the receiving end of her friendly tone of voice, let alone easy banter. Spencer, for example, never will.Asshole.
I smother my smugness before it can show and gesture for her to come further into my office. “Good morning, Rowena. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Victor’s on about the Winston case again, but you know how it goes by now. You snooze, you lose.”
“Wasn’t Graham the one originally approached?”
Rowena blows out a loose laugh and takes a seat on the white leather couch. Her long, white-blonde hair is down today, draping across her plum suit jacket. She pulls it over oneshoulder and crosses her legs, revealing the bare lengths of her tan legs beneath her matching knee-length skirt and then the red bottoms of her black pumps.
