Chapter 19 Tara

Chapter 19

Tara

W hile Holly was baking, Tara was trying to put out work fires. Technically, she was on vacation, and also technically, the offices were closed for Christmas, but only the senior partners actually got to turn their phones off during things like weddings, trips, or national holidays. Her law clerk had been keeping her up-to-date on everything going on in the office, which she'd been surreptitiously checking in on when no one was watching.

Every time Cole caught her with her work email open, he threatened to install nanny software on her phone and laptop that would allow him to cut off her internet after too many hours per day.

He was a menace, but currently, he was a menace who had been distracted by trying to keep the brides from panicking about their cake situation. So, he wasn't there when a text came in from her clerk that she needed to call immediately .

She'd specifically hired this woman because she never, ever overstated or overreacted to any situation, so Tara knew whatever she needed to say was a big deal. She hid in the library (choosing the window seat and not the big cushy armchair where she knew for a fact Hannah and Levi had had sex; why did her friends tell her so many things?) and called Charleston.

"Boss," Lucy said as she picked up, her voice neutral.

"Lucy," Tara said, "please tell me you have great emergency news, not terrible emergency news."

"Should I lie to you?"

Tara growled, banging her head lightly against the window. Outside, snow fell in beautiful swirling flakes that danced around the evergreens as if on fairy wings. It was the snow globe Cole always described Carrigan's as, but it didn't make her feel warm and cozy, only trapped. "Tell me."

She could hear Lucy grinding her teeth on the other end of the line. "The judge was seen at a party in Hilton Head doing Jell-O shots with the prosecutor."

Tara didn't have to ask which judge, or which prosecutor. She had one huge, potentially career-altering case coming up that she'd been working to bring to trial for two years. The prosecutor had thrown every absurd obstacle under the sun at them, including trying several times to get the case reassigned. Now, apparently, he'd sunk to trying to sway the notoriously fair judge by other means.

"I should never have left town," Tara groaned. "I would have been at that damn party, and I could have kept an eye on them."

"I have photos," Lucy said. "I'm emailing them now. I can start drafting a motion for him to recuse."

Tara tapped her nails on her iPad, where the email from Lucy had come through. She gritted her teeth.

"Draft it in case we need it, but I think this may require a bit more… finesse."

If she were in Charleston, she would happen to stop by the judge's favorite brunch spot and surprise him by sitting down at his table. She would lean over and set her chin in her hand, smiling innocently at him, and ask how his night had been. Of course, if she were in Charleston, she would never have allowed this to happen.

"I'm never going on vacation again," she muttered.

"You have to, boss. You were starting to get jaundiced from the office lighting," Lucy told her flatly. "You can fix this. I believe in you."

She could fix this. She would call up the judge on his home phone, which she happened to have the number to because he played golf with her dad, and she'd mention casually that she'd seen some interesting photos from a party last night, and that she hadn't known he was a Jell-O fan. Whatever ground the prosecution thought they'd gained in the judge's favor would disappear, because he knew that if he stepped a foot out of line, Tara would be there, watching.

He liked his shots, but he loved his reputation as a man above corruption.

"You're the best, Lucy," she said genuinely. Lucy was way too good, and too moral, for this job, and eventually she'd take a job as a public defender or something that let her look herself in the mirror every day. Tara would miss her when that happened, but she would understand.

"Back at ya, boss. Have some fun, yeah?"

Tara sighed, looking again at the freezing wilderness outside the window. "Yeah. I promise." She was having fun, and she would pay for every second away by having to work twice as hard when she got back.

She called the judge before Cole could find her and stop her.

Like clockwork, he arrived as soon as she hung up, looming in the doorway. He was probably trying to lean insouciantly, she assumed because he was jealous that Levi looked so cool when he did it, but he was taller than the old Victorian doorway, so he was more lurking than anything.

"Why are you staring at me like you're worried I'm going to spontaneously combust?" she asked. "You're freaking me out."

He closed the door behind him but didn't move fully into the room, just leaned back against the door. His face, normally alight with mischief, was still and drawn, and he kept pushing his hair off his forehead. It was a nervous gesture of Levi's that Cole must have picked up while here, because she'd never seen him do it before. Of course, he was so rarely nervous.

It was strange to see him with new mannerisms, but she guessed the longer they were physically apart, the more she wouldn't know his every move. She wondered, when that happened, if any connection would still exist between them, or if they would become people whose parents were friends. Could whatever invisible string held them to each other hold up when it wasn't reinforced by habit and proximity?

"Fraser, get in here," she said. "Say whatever it is you're standing there trying to force yourself to say."

He walked toward her, his long legs covering the small library in a couple of steps. Folding himself in half, he sat down on the floor in front of the window seat, hugging his knees.

"I need to ask you something," he said, and his ocean-blue eyes were the gray of an incoming storm.

She motioned for him to continue. "Ask away."

"You're going to get mad at me."

Oh, Cole. "I think you'll live."

"I need you to do me a favor, and you're not going to like it, but I know you won't do it for yourself so I'm asking you to do it because I need you to."

She put down her phone, moved her iPad off her lap, and really looked at him. Now she was getting nervous. Maybe she didn't want to hear whatever this was.

"Spit it out, baby doll."

"I need you to start taking care of yourself." He had stopped pulling at his hair and was sitting with his hands on his knees, the most still she'd ever seen him. "You're burning yourself out as fast as you can, trying to martyr yourself to prove you deserve the oxygen you take up. And I get it. Your fucking parents, they made you think you needed to earn every breath. But I can't let you burn up. Not again."

Tara knew what he wasn't saying.

While she had been at boarding school, she'd picked up some poor habits from some of the other girls. It had been a shitty time, she'd felt like she was careening out of control, and a lot of things had seemed like a good idea, from vodka to diet pills to shady hookups. But that had been during the dark time. Cole had shown up and pulled her out of that, but it wasn't fair of him to equate that time and this. That had been a conflagration. This was… a controlled burn.

"I'm more healthy, emotionally and physically, than at least eighty percent of our social circle," she protested.

Cole guffawed. "Tara Sloane, that's the worst rationale I've ever heard. Bailey Ellis has been on a juice and cocaine cleanse for the past five years. Rachelle Parkins thinks Gwyneth Paltrow is an actual prophet, and I think she's in a candle cult. And that's not getting into anyone's relationship with gin."

"Ugh." Tara crossed her arms like a toddler. "I'm fine."

Why did they have to talk about this? She thought they'd silently agreed that they were going to pretend nothing had ever happened and go about their lives pushing it under the rug with everything else from their past they never talked about. It was a big rug, there was room for a whole lot of mess.

"Fine like you're taking vitamins and sleeping? Or fine like you only ended up in the hospital from dehydration and exhaustion once this year?" he clarified. He still had her pinned with his stare.

Please. She'd never ended up in the hospital. She was very good at walking the line of burning the candle at both ends without self-destructing.

She picked at her sweater. "It's not that bad. Honestly. I work too much, but it's only for now. I just made partner."

"And then what? The goalposts move, and it's until you become a judge? Or state senator?"

This conversation fucking sucked. "Why are you asking this?"

"I don't know, Tar," he said sarcastically, throwing up his hands, "the last time you had a terrible year and we didn't see each other for a while, I had to show up and drag some dude out of your bed. A DUDE!"

He had done that. She didn't know why. She could still hear him as he dropped her back off at school, with a final warning that if she didn't get her shit together, he would move in and sleep on the floor, no matter what her roommate thought (or the administration at her all-girls college).

She did have her shit together, mostly. No one made partner without losing some sleep or destroying their stomach lining with caffeine. She wasn't out of control, because Cole had asked her not to be, and sometimes in this life, when we didn't want to do it for ourselves, we held on for other people. He'd saved her life, not just that semester of college but the night of the fire.

When she had been transfixed by the flames, then racing toward the building and trying to run in to make sure no one was there, he'd pulled her away, sheltering her body with his when the windows started exploding. He had scars on his back from where he'd been hit with burning glass, and every time she saw him in a swimsuit, she wanted to trace them with her fingers, as if she could magically erase them by will alone.

He'd told the cops, when they arrived, that he'd come up with the idea. Because he knew that his family would cover for him but hers might not.

She would stay on this side of the line, with work and everything else that might kill her, because she owed Cole her life, even if it felt like she didn't deserve to. Even if it felt like she never worked hard enough to earn that. And she would stay on this side of the line when it came to love, because she'd almost killed the only person she'd ever loved with her whole heart. He should understand that.

She was so frustrated that he was acting like he didn't understand that.

"Is that why you're so intent on getting me together with Holly?" she said sadly. "Because you think I'll be happy again, and you'll be released from your imagined responsibility to make sure I don't hurt myself? And bonus, she'll make sure I eat vegetables and sleep?" Tara looked out the window, because she couldn't look at Cole. "I release you. I, Tara Sloane Chadwick, vow to you, Nicholas Jedediah Fraser III, that I am in no danger of reverting to any of my self-destructive teenage behaviors, and I release you from any obligation you may think you have to protect me."

Cole didn't answer, just snorted at her.

She heard him stand up and brush himself off.

"Are you going to stop talking to your shitty, abusive family and working yourself to the bone? Because until you do, I'm still on the clock."

Tara bristled. "They're not abusive. Not like Miriam's parents."

"Oh, do you want me to go get Miri and ask her what she thinks?" Cole planted his hands on his hips. "I was there, Tar. You were desperate to get free of a home full of people who hated you, and you made a really bad decision— with me . And now you think you deserve to suffer forever in penance, and look, I do not blame you for being an abuse survivor who stays in contact with her abusers. I know it's not as simple as saying you should walk away."

When she rose and tried to speak, he held up a hand, and she let him finish because she didn't have words, and because he never talked about the fire, even obliquely.

"But it's been half a lifetime now. Can you at least think about starting to forgive yourself?"

Swallowing, she said, "How can I? How could I deserve that?"

He ran a hand down his face. "Have you forgiven me? Do you think I deserve to pay miserable penance for the rest of my life?"

Of course she didn't. She knew all the reasons why he'd done what he had, and while it didn't excuse his participation, she knew he had made, and continued to make, restitution.

He held up his hands. "Do you think it might be time for like… trauma therapy? We can go together."

When she didn't answer him, he sighed and said, "We're not done talking about this, but do you want to go eat cake? Because I heard there is some. Available."

She was going to take this conversational out. Anything to distract him from the fact that she had been up here, working, and that she hadn't promised him what he'd asked.

"Don't think I didn't see your iPad, Chadwick," he said as they were walking downstairs to the kitchen.