Page 149 of The Rules Of Attraction
It made sense.
“It means a lot to hear you say that. It really does.” She sighed. “It was something that killed me to keep from you and I felt worse every day for keeping the secret. I took this job because no one else would hire me as an attorney. I was up to my neck in debt and had to find something. I suffered like I was the one who was guilty, when I didn’t do anything wrong. I lost my job before I realized my dad was so sick, and I came here to restore my name and get some credibility. I can’t live through something like that again.”
“I would never consider going ahead as planned if I thought for one moment that anything could get exposed in court and drag us all into a crazy mess.”
“But you don’t know what could happen. I’ve listened to you talk about how much you wanted the senior partnership, and I’ve held back on telling you how much I just wanted to be a lawyer again, and be me. I worked hard too, and it wasn’t so I could be a PA forever.”
“I know, and I don’t expect you to be a PA forever. Summer… all the stuff that Marc found was from me being worried and wanting to do extra checks. And, all the findings have been done by people with special skills to find this shit. They had to dig deep. A simple run of the mill case won’t require that level of deep investigation.”
“But what if later something happens and it’s found out that you knew what was going on? How can you even trust the people who found the stuff? They could come forward at any moment and say they found it and gave it to Marc who then gave it to you. What would you do then? ”
That was a possibility but one I didn’t want to entertain. “Hopefully I would have sorted things out by then.”
“This isn’t right. Alex you don’t want to be caught up in a lie that could turn uglier than it already is. You told me only two weeks ago that you were worried you’d act selfishly, you knew something was going on from then didn’t you? All the time you looked worried you knew something wasn’t right.”
I thought for a moment, then looked deep into her eyes. I didn’t want to lie or evade the question.
“I did.” At the time I knew about the offshore accounts.
“Alex, the reality of this is anything could happen. We don’t know what the prosecution could have found, and it could get dragged into court. Please see it all for what it is and not what you want it to be.”
I was losing my grip of everything and didn’t even know what to do anymore.
“I’ve worked too hard to mess things up now.” I thought of what my father said back in the office earlier.
He told me he was proud.
I’d lived my whole life waiting to hear those words.
He’d never praised me when I did anything good, because he found some sort of flaw with it. He never looked at all the abilities I had as a good thing, but that I had more experience in certain areas so I should take on whatever he threw at me.
If I brought this to him that would be it. I’d lose more than the chance for the senior partnership.
It would also be that respect that I’d gained from him, from following orders and doing what he told me to do.
“So your choice is the senior partnership?” She held my gaze and looked at me with wide worried eyes.
“Yes.” I heard myself say. “But I’m going to sort out the kinks later. I promise I will do that.”
She closed her eyes, squeezed them and opened them quickly and blinked several times like she couldn’t believe my answer.
“Okay.” Came her breathy reply that held an air of defeat in its tone. “Okay.”
I wanted to continue to reassure her that I would do all that I could to make it okay but what I saw next caught and held my attention.
Whenever I looked at Summer, the first thing I always saw in those beautiful green eyes was that spark.
It was fire that came straight from her soul, and I knew it only burned for me.
In the flashing lights of the club that night, months ago now, I saw it ignite.
But just now I saw the light go out.
The spark was gone.
It went out as if someone had switched it off, and I knew in that moment that I lost her.
