"You'd think that," Second replied with a wry laugh. "But nope."
"Ugh, that's brutal."
A stall door closed, then another, and the conversation continued while they peed. A silent laugh puffed against my palm, and I caught the end of a grimace from Audrey. She probably knew these women, knew their families and their law firms. No one needed to remind me that this world belonged to her, not me.
"Okay, I'm literally going to die if I spend a whole child-free night bitching about practicing law." The water turned on, then off. "Can we please talk about Jude Bellessi's ass now?"
Audrey's forehead crinkled, her brows pitched up. No poker face on this girl.
"Jesus, he's aged like fine wine," First said with a groan. "And he still has all of his hair."
"My paralegal would call it pussy-eating hair," Second added. "It's always messy but in that freshly fucked way you only get from doing time on your knees."
One—or both?—of them let out a hungry groan. "I bet he's a beast. Like, I'd need a ketamine drip, seventy-two straight hours of sleep, and pelvic floor rehab to recover."
I smothered a laugh against her cheek. Audrey fired a glare at me that could've curdled milk.
"Oh my god, yes. The things I'd let that man do to me—" A grunt and then, "The limit does not exist."
Audrey's lips parted against my palm which sent a lot of incorrect messages to my body. Ones I really needed to shutdown before things became…obvious. She let out an indignant little huff that I was quick to hoard right along with all her other unfiltered reactions. Later, I'd take them out and examine them until the edges frayed and I could no longer mine them for meaning. Later, when I wasn't fighting to put an inch of daylight between us just to keep her from knowing how much she still held over me.
"Be good," I breathed. That my lips brushed the shell of her ear and my cheek rested on her spun gold hair was purely coincidental. Unimportant, really. Then she stabbed me with the other heel. I smiled, only because she couldn't see it.
"Side note, but your para sounds like my kind of people," First said.
"She's the best. If it came down to it, I'd sell both of my kidneys to pay her salary." After a beat, Second asked, "Can I be awful for a minute?"
"Please. You know I'm a vault. And part-time awful myself."
There was a sigh and then, "I've never understood what he sees in what's-her-name."
"Right? Like, yes, she's pretty but she has toreachto get anywhere near his league. It's like he's doing community service."
My head snapped up from Audrey's shoulder at the same time she leaned her forehead against the door and let her eyelids drop. I shifted my hand to cup her jaw. She wasn't going to say anything. She'd sooner give up her corporeal form and the rest of this mortal life than make her presence known to these women.
"Huge fucking reach," Second agreed. "And I'm sorry but the personality is not there. She's about as interesting as an antacid."
"No wonder she's divorced," First said. "Though I heard she came out of it with a nice settlement."
A cruel laugh followed. "He probably paid her to go away."
I didn't want to react to their words, to their cackles. Didn't want to tear this door off the hinges and tell these women where they could shove their opinions. Didn't want to rescue her. Hell, I didn't even want to be here tonight.
But I'd dug myself into a hole and now I couldn't leave without Audrey's help.
I must've telegraphed my desire to make them repeat those comments to my face because Audrey's elbow found its way between my ribs again and she whispered, "Don't."
It was then, probably a result of every muscle bracing for impact, that I fully registered all the places where her body had melted into mine. And I realized the true danger of holding her this way was that it made me think I wanted this. That I wanted her. All because my body recognized her in a way that never should have survived years apart, sending heat and memory straight into my bones. One wrong move and I wouldn't just lose my purpose for being here—I'd lose myself, plain and simple.
I'd known from the second I laid eyes on her that she'd grown and changed over the years but feeling it was a different thing altogether. She was still tall, still lean, but she seemed solid, as if she'd traded in her long, elegant ballerina strength for something more durable. Her hair wasn't the straight column of platinum silk I remembered. She had highlights and layers now, and maybe she'd smoothed it out for tonight but I couldn't find the near-permanent crimp from where she tied her hair into a tight bun every day.
I wouldn't admit to the number of times I let my cheek pass over those strands or the amount of slow, deep breaths I took to swallow down her scent tonight. She smelled the same as always—soft, warm, expensive—but there was something new in there, something I hadn't been able to pin down.
But the real change was the armor. She was tough, weathered in ways she'd never been before. I knew from the hard, slicinggaze and how her jaw ticked with the barely contained desire to verbally whip these old "friends" of ours that she'd come by her steel honestly.
It was about time. She'd needed it. As the women on the other side of the stall door made obvious, there was no surviving this cage match without growing some bulletproof hide.
Laughter followed them out into the hallway but we didn't move until long after the door swept shut and their voices faded into nothing. We stayed in that tiny stall, every inch of Audrey gathered in my arms. Like no time had passed at all.
