"He told their lead consultant that her strategy was, quote,aggressively mediocrein front of three members of his executive team."
I take a long sip of my coffee. "What was the strategy?"
"Honestly?" Camille glances at her tablet. "Kind of mediocre."
"Then he wasn't wrong. I'm not interested in coddling a client. I'm interested in solving the problem. If he's difficult, he's difficult. I've handled difficult."
Camille nods but says nothing, which means she has a thought she's decided not to share. I let it go. We push through the glass doors into the morning heat, and the car is there, exactly where she said it would be, my bags already loaded.
Mornings in Houston have that particular thick quality that feels like stepping into a mouth. I've lived here my whole life, and I have never once made peace with the humidity.
I slide into the back seat. Camille leans in through the window with my tablet.
"The Sullivan file is loaded. I've flagged the Meridian section and the board's specific concerns. Oh, and your attorney called."
I take the tablet. "Which one?"
A pause. "The divorce one."
I look out the window at the street. A woman is walking a very small dog that is walking her, technically, pulling at the leash with the unearned confidence of something that weighs eight pounds.
"I'll call her from the car."
"She said it's not urgent. Just an update on the filing."
"Okay."
"Blaire." Camille's voice shifts — drops out of assistant mode into one of my closest friends. "Are you okay? Do you need anything?"
I turn back to her and give her the smile that means the conversation is closing. "I'm fine, Cammy. Two months in LA, a loft with a cook, and a client whose worst quality so far is a fountain. I've had harder weeks in Houston."
She doesn't look entirely convinced. She's too smart for that. But she nods. Steps back from the car. "Call me when you land."
"I will."
The window goes up. The car pulls out.
I open the Sullivan file on the tablet, cross my legs, and take another sip of coffee.
I do try, in small doses and when there's no one watching, to be honest with myself. Camille isn't wrong to ask if I’m okay. I didn't take this case because it's the biggest fee Monroe Communications has seen this quarter, though it is. I didn't take it because Bennet Sullivan's board requested someone senior, though they did.
I took it because my apartment is too quiet.
Because every room in it has the particular stillness of a space that used to have someone else in it and doesn't anymore, and some mornings I wake up and the quiet is so loud I can't stay inside it.
Because the divorce is moving the way divorces move — slowly, procedurally, with an attorney on each side who bill by the hour and feel nothing — and in the meantime I am still sleeping in the same city as Colt Monroe and breathing the same recycled Houston air and I needed to go somewhere he isn't.
Two months.
Two months in Los Angeles. No Colt, no quiet, no mornings that feel like held breath.
I can do two months.
I turn back to my tablet. Bennet Sullivan looks up at me from the press photo Camille clipped to the front of the file from some charity event six months ago, well before the naked fountain incident. He has dark, wavy hair that falls just past his shoulders. A full beard. Broad shoulders filling out a suit that probably cost more than most people's rent, and ink peeking out from his collar and cuffs in a way that shouldn't work with black tie and absolutely does.
He's objectively good looking.
Who am I kidding? He's insanely hot.
