Page 80 of The Devil You Know

Exhaustion has never stopped him from staying at my place before. I want to suggest I can come to him. To say, “since I know for a fact your house is done”, but I don’t. I don’t say a word. Is this progress, the way I’m trying not to jump to conclusions? Or am I silencing a warning voice I should be listening to, just like I did before?

The next morning, his face is strained when I walk into his office. He looks like he’s barely slept.

“How was last night?” I ask.

He rubs the back of his neck. “It was fine. Just a little difference of opinion.”

I raise a brow, meaning, “tell me what happened.”

He raises one back, meaning, “you know I can’t do that.”

I come around to his side of the desk. The door is open so I can’t touch him, but I’m drawn toward him like a magnet anyway. “I was thinking,” I venture tentatively, “that if we’re going away together for a real vacation, then we probably need to go to HR.”

I expect him to be pleased—he was the first one to mention it, after all—but a shadow comes over his face, a wariness flickering in his eyes.

“Sure,” he says, sounding anything but. “Let’s just wait until the Lawson case is done.”

It would take us ten minutes at most to go to HR and get the paperwork signed. Two days ago, he was talking about a week away in Fiji, and now it’s like he doesn’t even want to be in the same room with me.

I’d like to be the version of me that no longer jumps to conclusions, who doesn’t assume the worst, but I’m struggling right now. It feels like whatever was discussed with Fields has changed everything.

I take a deep breath. “Is something wrong?” I hate how weak, how vulnerable, it makes me feel, needing to ask.

His teeth sink into his lower lip before he shakes his head. “Just tired. Between this case and the class-action, I’m beat.”

We work late and return to my apartment. He falls asleep while I’m brushing my teeth, but when I wake in the middle of the night, he’s pulling me close, and there’s a tension in his grip that suggests he’s been up for a while.

“Are you okay?” I whisper, rolling to face him.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I pull him on top of me. I know if I ask, he’ll tell me he’s fine, though he’s clearly not, and all I can do for him now is this.

He moves inside me, slowly and silently, coming with a single sharp gasp, his mouth buried in my neck, and for a moment it feels like we’re okay again.

He collapses beside me—his head on my pillow, his palm curving over my hip.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk?” I whisper. “I can tell something’s bothering you.”

He moves to his own pillow and rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

“What happened at Stadler?” he finally asks.

I stiffen. I’d expected him to ask about Stadler again, but not like this. And not like he already knows. “Who told you about that?”

“Fields said something last night. That you stalked someone there.”

My stomach drops. It hurts so much to hear him bring this up to me, to know that same fucking story is still circulating. I sit up with the sheet held to my chest. “And you believed him?”

He rolls toward me. “Of course not. That’s why I’m asking you what happened.”

“If that was true,” I reply, throwing the covers off and swinging my legs to the floor, “you wouldn’t even have to ask.”

He grabs my hand. “Don’t fucking run off, and don’t act like you’re mad just so you don’t have to tell me the truth. I know you didn’t stalk anyone. I just need the real story.”

I want to refuse because I shouldn’t have to defend myself to anyone. But he isn’t wrong—part of my desire to run off and hide behind my anger is just that…because I want to hide. What happened wasn’t all my fault, but it doesn’t make me look great either.

“I was dating a partner there in law school,” I begin. “Kyle. He was based out of the New York office. He told me he was getting divorced—he’d even shown me the separation agreement—and it was all a fucking lie. I didn’t have a clue he was still with her until I found out she was pregnant. I’m not sure he was ever even planning to leave.”