I turn to walk away and he grabs my arm. “They’re making you partner.”
I stare at him blankly. It can’t be true and honestly…I don’t even want it anymore. Fields intentionally humiliated me yesterday by announcing Ben and Craig’s promotions at that meeting, so fuck him. I still want to crush the boys’ club, but I’ll crush it from the outside in. “Bullshit.”
“They weren’t going to,” he says. “I found out the other night. I agreed to head up the San Francisco office for a year if they made you a partner once we won, but I thought I’d get a chance to discuss it with you first. I had no clue Fields was going to do that. I really thought the announcement was going to be about you.”
I want to continue believing it’s all a lie, but he’s too smart to tell one I could easily disprove.
I shake him off. “You were pulling away. I saw it.”
“No,” he says, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “I was sick over the situation and desperately trying to figure out how to fix things, Gemma. And wishing I could discuss it with you and knowing I couldn’t, not ‘til the case was done. You wouldn’t even have wanted me to tell you that before we went into the negotiations.”
I want to argue, but he’s right. If I’d known, it would have unnerved me. Instead, I went into settlement feeling indomitable and it showed.
“You’ve never once invited me to your place,” I insist, as if the whole bit about making partner is irrelevant. And it is. There are too many other pieces of this that don’t fit. “You didn’t want me to meet your family or your friends, and then you put off going to HR when I suggested it.”
“You spin a story in the courtroom better than anyone I know, but the way you narrate your own life sucks,” he says, eyes flashing. “Because you know why you haven’t met my friends, and I was the one who brought up HR months ago, so where does that fit into your theory about what a prick I am?”
I laugh angrily. “So did Kyle. Look where that got me.”
He pulls his phone from his pocket and starts swiping. “You still need me to prove I’m different? Fine. This is my family.”
I roll my eyes. If he thinks letting me into some tiny corner of his life now could possibly make up for shutting me out of it, he’s insane. I open my mouth to tell him exactly that, and then it closes.
The photo is of him, his younger brothers…and Walter, my client.
I blink. “Why is Walter in a photo with your family?”
“Because he’s my stepfather.”
My jaw hangs open. “Bullshit. Why would…why would—”
“I never meant to take Brewer Campbell from you, and Walter’s in-house had quit, so I asked him to hire you for a while until I could find another way to fix the situation. I knew if I told you the truth, you’d refuse the job.”
He’s right. I would have.
My back presses to the wall, trying to make sense of everything. I spent two years hating him over a stolen client, without a clue he’d brought me a better one in its place.
“You should have told me,” I say quietly. I’ve been begging Walter for ages to hire someone in-house.
“You’d have refused to keep working for him if you knew,” he says, “and Fields was never going to make you partner without him. I thought it could wait.”
He steps toward me slowly, as if I’m a small animal he might frighten off. I’m scared to believe him, but if this is all true…then everything he did, he did for me. I think of the night we spoke about my mom—him saying, “you want to burn the world to ash just to make sure her path is clear.”
He was talking about me. And he’s been clearing my path every day since we met.
“I’m sorry, Gemma,” he says. He’s close enough now that if I reached out, I could touch him. “If I’d had a clue it was going to go down that way, I’d have refused Fields’ offer. You mean a thousand times more to me than any promotion, and you mean a thousand times more to me than staying at FMG. Whether I go to San Francisco or even remain at the firm is entirely your call. But please tell me you understand why I did it.”
My eyes sting. I nod, and when he finally closes the distance between us, I allow it, resting my head against his chest. His arms wrap around me and we remain that way for a long moment.
“I’m not going back to FMG,” I tell him. “I will never make that firm another dime for as long as I live. But do you lose the promotion if you don’t go to San Francisco?”
“I couldn’t care less about that promotion,” he says. “If you’d wanted to stay at FMG, I’d have suggested we go to San Francisco together. But since you don’t…I have a better idea. What if we both left FMG and went out on our own?”
I’m so dumbfounded I can barely find the right words. “You want to leave? And start a new firm with me?”
He gives a quiet laugh. “Just imagine how many non-paying clients you could bring in if we set up our own shop. And yes, of course I’d leave. You only stayed because you had something to prove, and I only stayed because I was in love with this woman there who loathed me.”
“You love me?” I ask.
His thumb swipes a tear off my cheek. “This can’t be a surprise to you. I’ve been in love with you for two years straight. You were the only reason I interviewed there in the first place.”
I think of him then, watching me that first day. Saying, “I know who you are” with that same tender thing in his eyes I’ve seen a thousand times since. I narrated our story in the worst way possible, just like he said. But I’m going to tell it a different way from this moment on.
“I love you,” I whisper. “And I wanted to make partner, but for the past two years, you were the reason I stayed there too.”
He laughs as he presses his lips to mine. “I know,” he says quietly. “But I’m glad you finally figured it out.”
On the way back to LA, I call my father and tell him I’m not taking the job, and then I fire Sophia Waterhouse after reminding her that false abuse claims are a felony.
Ben and I spend the flight mapping out how we’d structure our firm, and who we’ll bring with us. Terri, of course, and Ben’s assistant. I argue that none of the associates are smart enough, especially Nicole, and Ben says I’m being an asshole, which is entirely possible.
“So do I finally get to meet everyone?” I ask him.
He laughs. “Yes…my mother, Tali, and Drew have been relentless about this for months. They’ll probably show up at the airport if they know we’re coming in.”
“And do I get to see your place?” I ask.
A flicker of uncertainty crosses his face. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess.”
“What the hell is in there that you’re so worried about? Is it, like, a doll collection? A bunch of mannequins posed on the couch in sexy lingerie?”
He laughs. “That would be slightly less embarrassing than the truth. You’ll just have to see for yourself.”
Our flight lands and he directs our driver to Santa Monica rather than my apartment. I’m not sure which of us is more nervous about this big reveal. What could possibly be so awful about the interior of a home he’s spent two years working on?