Charged

I saw them for exactly what they were, pieces of paper that meant nothing unless the man that possessed them did something worthwhile with his time and his talent.

It wasn’t until I left for the day after ignoring more than one email from Orsen demanding that I take on his friend’s case that it occurred to me that Avett hadn’t left because she was hurt about what Orsen said to her; she left because she was hurt about what he said to me. She would weather blow after blow that landed on her because that’s how she operated, but she couldn’t stand to see someone she cared about, maybe even loved, in the line of fire. She didn’t want me to put my job and possible promotion in jeopardy because of our relationship. I’d made no secret about how important my career was to me. She was protecting me the only way she knew how … by destroying the good and forgoing her own happiness. She would blame herself if my position at the firm was threatened because we were together and she was cutting off that culpability at the pass.

I called myself every kind of idiot I could think of for not recognizing her motivations sooner. I was too busy formulating my counterargument and dialing in my cross-examination that I fully planned to level at her that I’d forgotten that the girl I was falling for was equal parts whirlwind and martyr.

CHAPTER 15

Avett

It took a few days of moping around my mom’s house and refusing to take Quaid’s calls for my parents to ask what had happened with the handsome attorney. My mom didn’t ask so much as give me pleading looks every time our eyes met that indicated she thought I should do whatever it took to fix the situation. I wanted to tell her for once I broke things for the right reasons and not because I purposely wanted to feel like I had ripped my heart out and left it resting at Quaid’s feet. I wounded myself but I did it so that the man I was pretty sure I was in love with didn’t have to hurt, and hurt he would if we stayed on the course we were on. Quaid deserved more than being caught circling a ceaseless dead end because he wanted to be with me.

There was no mistaking the disdain or judgment on his boss’s face when he saw the easy affection that existed between the two of us and his hostile words were as true as they were painful to hear. I wasn’t suitable or proper to the lifestyle Quaid lived and I wouldn’t ever fit in with the kinds of people he worked with and longed to impress.

I’d finally felt the level of pain and agony that I had been hunting since the night everything went wrong. My heart felt like it wouldn’t ever work right again and everything on the inside of me ached and throbbed like it had taken the worse beating imaginable. I would never feel like I had paid my dues to Autumn, and I would always carry around blame and responsibility for what happened to her, but Quaid had helped me to see that we were all responsible for our own actions and the only thing we could control was ourselves and the person that our choices molded us into. Making bad choices, repeatedly, hadn’t made me into a bad person, but the way I handled those bad choices and let them twist into something worse had made me into a person that was desperately out of control and in need of guidance.

Walking away from Quaid and the goodness he offered didn’t necessarily feel like the right choice, but I knew I was making the decision for all the right reasons and that was leaps and bounds ahead of where I had been before meeting him. I finally met the right guy; it was a shame I would always be the wrong girl for him.

My dad was more direct than my mother. He always had been. He waited until Mom went to bed one night and then sat down with me on the couch when I was deep into an Archer marathon, wishing I could be as kickass and as strong as Lana was. It was a pretty sad state of affairs and a pretty clear indication that my heart was hurting that the hilarious superspy hadn’t managed to make me laugh once in the two hours I’d been zoned out in front of the TV. It wasn’t my heart that was broken in this fall; it was all of me.

My dad threw a beefy arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his side so that my head was resting on his chest. I let out a quivering sigh and let my eyes drift closed so that the tears that had been threatening to fall since I walked out of Quaid’s office once again gathered behind my eyelids.

“You want to tell me what happened?” My dad’s voice rumbled deep and soothing over my head as I breathed in his comforting Dad scent. “Despite his terrible taste in motorcycles, I liked the guy. I liked him for you and we both know that never happens.”

I laughed a little and sniffed as it tried to turn into a sob. “Right guy, wrong place and wrong time. Not to mention, I don’t think I was ever really his type.”

My dad harrumphed and I felt the hair on the top of my head move with the disgruntled sound. “He tell you that?”

He sounded offended on my behalf, so I lifted my head so I could look him in the eyes to make sure he knew that I was the one that had walked away, not Quaid. “No, Dad, he never said anything like that but I knew the end was coming before things even really got started. We don’t live in the same kind of world.” I laughed bitterly and laid my head back down. “One of his suits cost as much as my entire wardrobe.”

My dad made another noise in his throat and curled his fingers around my shoulder so he could give me a squeeze. “You know better than to judge a man based on what he puts on his back. All that matters is that it’s a strong back, one that can carry whatever load is stacked on top of it. I know I taught you better than that.”

“It’s not the clothes, it’s everything. Where he lives. Where he works. Where his future is headed. We have common ground but we only seem to find it when we’re naked.”