Page 34 of Take What Hurts

Elliott sighed, adding more wax to the ski. “Look, she and I are working on the same file—she’s the opposing counsel, and we met each other for the first time at the airport on the way to the settlement conference in San Francisco I told you about. And we have a lot in common. That’s all it is,” Elliott finished, though she wasn’t sure she’d convinced herself, let alone her perceptive father.

“You mean that’s all it can be.”

She watched her dad move the file to the other edge of the ski and narrowed her eyes. Otherwise, she ignored that he’d, predictably, seen right through her. Because he was right. It was all it could be if they both wanted to avoid a bar investigation. Which they did.

“Why don’t you just quit the file? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?” he asked.

Elliott shook her head and started to scrape the excess wax off the base. “I can’t do that, Dad.”

“Why not?”

Elliott huffed. “Because this matter is important to me. Mattias is trusting me to close it out. The client likes me. And I guess—I—” She paused, the words swirling and unidentifiable in the front of her mind.

“It’s okay. Take your time.” Her dad’s voice was gentle and so similar to the way he used to speak to her as a child when this happened. Her chest squeezed with it, and she took a breath.

She closed her eyes and tried to visualize the words she wanted to say. After a few slow breaths, finally, there they were. “This matter has been going so long and has been to so many different lawyers that if I can close this file out—if I can be the one to do what nobody else has been able to do, I will finally feel like I’m not just muddling through, you know? I’ll feel like I can make it work. Long term, I mean.” Her cheeks were hot, and she kept her eyes trained on the base of the ski and away from her dad’s.

“Kiddo, look at me.”

She sighed and threw the scraper down on the bench, bracing her hand against the ski in the vise. She swallowed hard around the lump that formed in her throat the minute her eyes found Grey’s face.

“You don’t have anything to prove. You are a good lawyer and a good person. Please don’t place more weight on this one file than it’s worth.”

“But what if I don’t feel like I can do it long term? What if it’s too hard?”

Grey leaned an elbow on the workbench beside him. “Do you want to? I mean—” He sighed, and Elliott saw the way his face moved. Almost like he was looking for the right words and had to work to find them too. “Is this what you want? Big law in the city?”

Elliott lifted a shoulder and stared at a spot of dried wax on the bench. “I—I,” she stammered. A moment where the only sound was the low hum of the fluorescent light bulb on the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

“Then is it really worth doing?” His mouth worked for a moment, before: “Is it really worth skipping on someone that I can see makes you happy, for something you think might but probably won’t?”

Elliott was still for a minute, before she picked up the scraper, mind buzzing. What would her life even look like if she didn’t have this job? The thought was nauseating. Because what would she do? How would she pay her rent? She couldn’t speak through the panic welling in her mouth, so she collected the scraper off the bench and started back on the ski.

Her dad took the hint. “All right, I’ll leave it alone. But all I’m saying is don’t let the things that make your eyes bright get away just because it might complicate your life. If I hadn’t taken that advice, neither you or your brother would be here.”

And honestly Elliott wasn’t sure what to think about that.

Elliott was sinking, and not even metaphorically.

She wasn’t sure what it was about blow-up mattresses, but it didn’t seem to matter how they were stored or how new or old they were: Use them one time and, boom, gnomes with pins would find them and poke holes ready for the next use.

And things were deflating fast.

Mackenzie and Elliott had set up in Elliott’s childhood bedroom. Her brother’s room had been turned into a home office mere minutes after he’d moved out. With the couch in the den gone—apparently, they’d ordered a new one, and it hadn’t arrived—and the couch in the living room unsuitable for sleeping, her mother had decided that putting both of them in Elliott’s bedroom would be fun. “Like a sleepover,” she’d said when she’d shown them to the room—much to Elliott’s horror. Elliott had, of course, insisted that a reluctant Mackenzie take the bed, assuring her she would be fine on the blow-up.

Things were not fine.

Her ass cheeks were flush with the hardwood floor, covered by the wool mosaic rug she’d picked out when she was sixteen and her mom had taken her shopping for a bedroom makeover. Her lower back was positively screaming at her.

Elliott groaned and rolled as best she could to find her phone in the darkness. It hadn’t even passed 2 a.m. There was a lot of night left to go.

Despairing, Elliott extracted herself from the wobbly surface of the mattress, gathered her duvet and pillow, and crept across the room to the door. She winced as the knob that had always squeaked stayed true to form and positively shrieked in the silence of the night. She froze, ears on high alert for any noise from the bed.

Sure enough. “Elliott?”

Fucking hell. The woman would be her undoing. Mackenzie’s voice was husky from what was apparently a deep and peaceful sleep. And her name on those lips. Fuck, it was doing things to Elliott. Notably the space between Elliott’s legs, which was pleasantly warm and had been so since the minute Mackenzie’s face had lit up like a firework as Elliott and Grey had returned, freshly tuned skis in hand, from the garage earlier that evening. All of it made Elliott want to wrap herself around Mackenzie and soothe her back to sleep.

Instead, she squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and whispered into the darkness, “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”