Page 127 of Dial L for Lawyer
"You are perfect."
"No, I mean... she thought I never struggled. Never doubted. Never failed." I laugh, but it sounds hysterical. "She destroyed both our lives because she couldn't live up to something that didn't even exist."
"Come on," he says, leading me outside. "Let's go home."
"Yours?"
"Ours," he says simply. "If you want."
I think about Maya, trying to copy an illusion. About all the years I've spent hating my body, my anxiety, my imperfections. About how exhausting it's been maintaining a facade that drove someone to destruction.
"You know what?" I say. "Yes. Ours sounds perfect."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. But I'm done pretending to be perfect. You're getting the real me. Anxiety, shapewear meltdowns, and all."
"That's all I've ever wanted," he says, kissing my forehead.
As we drive away from the jail, I realize something has shifted. The weight I've been carrying—the need to be flawless, untouchable, beyond reproach—it's gone.
Maya’s cell has bars. Mine was made of expectations. We both lost years to cages that didn’t have to exist. The difference is, I’m finally walking out of mine.
CHAPTER 31
Caleb
The apartment door opens and the first thing Serena does is toe off her heels in the entryway and sigh like she's just let out all her ambition. I want to pick her up and spin her around, but instead I take her purse off her shoulder and put it carefully on the kitchen counter, then hand her a glass of water. She's quiet, but it isn't the shell-shocked silence of the last few weeks. This is something else—something more like relief. Or maybe the tiredness that only comes after a marathon win.
I lean against the counter, just looking at her, memorizing the way her suit jacket sits slightly uneven over her shoulders, her lipstick faded almost completely away but the line of it still ghosting her mouth. She turns to meet my eyes and the exhaustion in her face is beautiful. Honest. The kind of honest that breaks hearts wide open.
"If I don’t take the VP job, what would I do instead?" she asks softly.
"Whatever you want," I tell her, and mean it. If she wants to quit and never work another day, I'd bankroll her pottery habit or drag her to my summer house or strip her out of that suit andspend the next two years convincing her she's already whole. If she wants to take the job at Luminous and become the youngest VP in company history, I'd pop the champagne and host the biggest party in the city. Hell, I'd black out Michigan Avenue for a parade if it would make her smile.
Instead of answering, she drinks down half the glass, then leans her forehead against my chest, arms loosely around my waist. I rest my chin on top of her head and let her settle, feeling her tension melt away, letting everything drain out onto the stone floor.
"Can we do nothing tonight?" she asks, voice small. "Like, nothing at all?"
I grin into her hair. "We're overachievers. Our nothing is still better than most people's everything."
She snorts. "Is that a challenge?"
"Absolutely."
I steer her to the couch and drop her into it, then collapse beside her. We don't touch for a while. It's enough just to be here, just the press of her thigh against mine and the slow pattern of her breath on my sleeve. At some point I must shift to accommodate her weight, or maybe she just slumps closer on her own, but we end up sprawled and tangled, two work refugees in search of a safe harbor, listening to the low hum of afternoon traffic through the windows.
She lets out a long, shaky sigh. Not the type that signals more words, but the kind that means she's trying to let go of things grown under her skin. I resist the impulse to smooth her hair or kiss her temple. Sometimes it's better to let a person just be.
Eventually, she says, "I feel like I should do something productive. But I can't even move. I'm just... pancakes. I'm a human pancake."
"You want me to roll you off the couch so you can be a true pancake on the floor?"
"I want you to roll me off the couch, then get on the floor with me and stay there forever," she says, voice muffled into my sleeve.
"That can be arranged." I nudge her, and she flops bonelessly onto her back, eyes closed.
"What happens to Radiance?" she asks, eyes on the ceiling. "They instigated and bankrolled all of this. What happens to them?"
