BEHIND HIS WALLS

Chapter 14

Mara gave herself one night.

One night to be sad. One night to let herself feel everything she had been trying so hard to hold back. She cried in the shower, allowing the tears to come without fighting them, and afterward she sat on the couch with a cup of tea between her hands, staring blankly at the wall as the apartment grew quiet around her.

For the first time, she allowed herself to admit the truth.

She had fallen for him.

Not completely. Not irrevocably. Not in the all-consuming way people wrote about in books. But enough.

Enough that being pushed away hurt.

Enough that his fear had somehow become her pain.

She closed her eyes and took a slow breath before having the conversation with herself that she'd been avoiding.

You didn't move across the country for a man who can't decide whether he wants you.

Mara wiped the tears from her cheeks.

You came here for you.

That was the truth.

She had worked too hard and sacrificed too much to let her entire future become dependent on whether Sean Ashford was brave enough to let someone love him again. She could care about him. She could understand why he was afraid. She could even imagine a future where she might love him completely.

But she couldn't build her life around waiting for him to decide whether she was worth the risk.

That wasn't love.

That was a waiting room.

And Mara refused to spend her life sitting in one.

The next morning, she walked into Ashford & Cole with her shoulders back and her chin held high, exactly as her mother had taught her. She had practiced that walk on her first day, when she had been terrified she didn't belong. Now she walked the same hallway with a different kind of confidence.

Sean's office door was open.

The light was on.

He was sitting behind his desk, reading through a file.

Mara saw him.

And kept walking.

She didn't slow down. She didn't look twice. She didn't wait for him to notice her, and she certainly wasn't going to spend the morning wondering whether he would look up.

She had work to do.

Later that morning, they crossed paths at the coffee station.

"Morning."

Her voice was calm and professional.

"Morning."

His voice matched hers.

But when Mara walked away, she could feel his eyes following her.

She didn't turn around.

She had a trial to win. A career to build. A life to create.

And if Sean Ashford wanted to spend the rest of this case hiding behind his walls, that was his choice.

She wasn't going to spend her life standing outside them.

For the first time since she'd arrived in the city, Mara walked down the hallway without wondering whether she belonged there.

She knew she did.

And that knowledge belonged to her.

Not Sean.

Not the firm.

Not anyone else.

Her.

Almost.

She believed it completely.

Almost.