Page 20 of Dial L for Lawyer
Then went home and got myself off thinking about what we could have been doing.
She pales. "Caleb?—"
"I called you. I messaged. I kept checking my phone. Maybe there was an emergency. Maybe traffic was terrible." I lean forward, close enough to breathe her in. "It never occurred to me you'd just not show up."
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
"Don't be," I say, too brittle. The humiliation still stings—sitting there like a freshman who mixed up prom dates. For months I told myself I just wanted to fuck her and move on, but seeing her now proves what a liar I've been.
She looks at her hands, trying to rearrange her features into something less guilty. But the guilt is there, and it's oddly comforting to see. Real. Unfiltered. The closest we've come to honest all night.
I stand and toss a few bills on the table—plus more than enough for the tip—and gesture to the door. "Come on. Let's walk."
CHAPTER 7
Caleb
The wind has bite to it, reminding us summer's well and truly over. Serena walks beside me, arms folded—pushing her breasts up again, Jesus—her shoes click-clacking a nervous Morse code along the uneven sidewalk.
We cross onto a quieter street, windblown wrappers flickering around the gutter. The silence is brittle, but she still finds a way to break it.
"I know this is asking a lot," she says, voice shaky, "but if you want to fire me as a client, I'll understand. I shouldn't have come to you, not after?—"
I stop so abruptly she nearly collides with me. Nearly presses that body against mine. The flickering streetlamp illuminates her face as I shove my hands in my pockets to keep from pulling her against me.
"You don't get to decide that," I say, gentler than I feel. "You hired me, and I'm not in the business of quitting."
I'm in the business of getting what I want. And what I want is you.
She searches my face, and for a second I see the woman who made me feel like I’d be invincible if only she’d be by my side.
"OK," she says softly.
A couple stumbles by, arguing in that polite-cruel way only lovers can. Serena watches them, then looks back at me with a mix of emotion in her eyes—risk, cost, possibility, hope.
She takes a shaky breath. "I got scared, Caleb. The night I stood you up. It wasn't anything you said or did. It was all me. I just... I got scared."
"Of what?"
"Of you. Of us. Of how much I wanted..." She shakes her head.
How much you wanted what? Me? Us? Just say it.
She sighs. "It doesn't matter now."
"It matters to me."
We stand in silence, faces inches apart, the flicker of the streetlamp the only witness. Behind her, the city seethes and glows, oblivious to both of us. I could reach out, tuck that hair behind her ear, draw her to me, claim her mouth the way I've been dying to all night.
But I don't. The rules are different now.For now.
Instead, I keep my hands in my pockets, my fingers curled into fists, and clear my throat. "You know, if you'd just told me you were bailing, I would've respected the hell out of it. Maybe even learned something."
She ducks her head, a faint smile ghosting across lips I want to taste. "I was embarrassed," she says after a beat. "You make everything seem so easy, and I make everything impossibly hard. I thought..." She looks up at me, and it almost hurts to see all of her right there, raw and unprotected. "I thought if you knew the real me—the person I am underneath all this…" She gestures at herself loosely, and I track the movement, imaginingmy hands following the same path. "This nonsense. Then you'd think I was pathetic."
Her vulnerability sucker-punches my composure. I'm used to people who posture, not people who confess. My whole life has been an exercise in reading tells, rooting out motives, gaming every reaction. But standing here on a cracked patch of sidewalk with Serena, all the usual strategies seem cheap.
I don't want to fight against what-ifs. I want to worship her. I want to show her exactly how not-pathetic she is. I want to make her come so hard she forgets she ever doubted herself.
