Page 60 of Take What Hurts

And the next question her brain threw at her was whether this was all worth it. Whether she wanted it enough to muster the will to manage that. The bile rose in her throat and she swallowed the bitterness down as she brought her eyes back to Mattias’s gray ones.

Right then, she made the decision she should have made the first day she walked through the door of this firm, opened her first file, and registered the beginnings of nausea that had since established itself and now sat heavy in her gut. “I don’t think I can do this.” As she breathed the words out, the ever-present knot in her gut loosened.

Mattias frowned. “Do what?”

Elliott stared unseeingly at her inbox displayed on the monitor. “This. This job. These clients.”

“Because you think you’ve disappointed⁠—”

Elliott shook her head. “No. No, I—I think despite how hard I find it sometimes, I think I’m good at what I do, and I think I did the best I could with that file⁠—”

“Better, in fact. Surpassed all expectations we had for any associate in this firm.”

Elliott’s cheeks warmed with the praise. “I appreciate that.” She shot him a small smile. “But no, because this isn’t for me.”

Mattias let out a low hum and pursed his lips. “This was a—well. It was a different sort of a scenario.” He shrugged, grimacing. “I don’t know what she thought she knew about—” He cut himself off, motioning a hand at Elliott. “You. And Ms. Williams. And the timeline of it all. But clearly, she had the impression it was more than what it was at the relevant time.”

Elliott shook her head. “But that’s just it, isn’t it? It didn’t matter that we walked the line. She obviously thought we were together while we were both working the file. She was wrong, but it didn’t matter.” Elliott rubbed a hand over the drying blood on her cheek. “There’s countless situations where that can happen—a client having the wrong idea and making an accusation, I mean. And it’s divorce law, so they can be”—Elliott’s cheeks puffed out with her breath—“inherently unreasonable people.” She brought her eyes to Mattias’s and gave a small smile. “I can’t do it. I mean—” She picked at a hangnail. “I don’t want to. It’s not worth it for me.”

Elliott’s eyes tracked to Hannah, who stared back at her, mouth slightly open. Elliott shrugged apologetically as Mattias huffed, but his ruddy cheeks lifted with a smile. “Well, okay, then. Want a reference?”

THIRTY-THREE

MACKENZIE

Immediately after the farcical meeting with Simon and Adrienne, she’d set her out-of-office and handed over her urgent files to her dipshit colleague, who would make a fucking mess of them. She’d managed it through the vague haziness that had engulfed her brain and made her feel like she was fucking sleepwalking through her morning.

In hindsight, the meeting with Simon and Adrienne shouldn’t have been entirely unexpected in the wake of the conversation she’d had with Anna the previous week. Had Mackenzie paid the little niggle in the back of her mind any attention at all, it wouldn’t have been. But she hadn’t, and the whole morning had been akin to an ambush, right down to the negotiations the firm had done without even having had a conversation with her. The indignation rose hot and tidal, building through her abdomen until it exploded from her mouth in a scream the minute she walked in through the door of her apartment.

And then she collapsed in a heap on the floor. Because it was all gone—all for naught. All those years of work. Of chasing promotion after promotion, despite the way that very act had been the meticulous instigator in shredding her life apart at the seams. Of single-mindedly pursuing a goal on the misapprehension that it would condemn her failures to the bottom of the deepest trench in the ocean—the bleeding and the tears and the quick-and-dirty divorce and the capitulation to her mother. The misapprehension that reaching her goal would be an achievement that would physically hold her together and solidify in herself something tangible she could put on display to the world as ironclad proof that she was worthy.

Worthy of what, she’d never been sure until she was sitting on her hardwood floors, with tears streaming freely down her hot cheeks. No promotion and no job to speak of. Only another failure that—as the tears ebbed and her mind dragged the realization to its forefront and away from the recesses—wasn’t much of a failure at all. It was a liberation.

Because what she was worthy of was an intangible thing Reilly had failed to provide. Same with her mother. And even she’d failed to give it to herself.

And as she watched the tears drip off her nose and become dark wet spots on her pant-clad thighs, the realization cracked against the inside of her skull, the force of it pushing her to her feet and propelling her back and forth across her living room floor.

Because it had all been a catastrophic misnomer—the thought that simply making partner would give her the worth she sought with blind and unwitting desperation. She almost laughed in the silence of her apartment. The thing she sought was something that required acceptance and care and safety and freedom and choice and patience to cultivate. Not competition and manipulation conducted in barren, hostile environments where growth was encouraged but willfully barricaded and inhibited.

And then she did laugh, and the sound of it was foreign to her own ears. Because her worth had shown itself in the past weeks. It had filled her with warmth and had closed up, stitch by agonizing stitch, the cavern in her chest. It had pushed back at her mother. It had made her brave and confident, and ironically, it had given her latitude to be more creative, more flexible in how she did her job.

And Elliott was at the center. As the stalwart presence in her mind driving her to distraction and to push beyond the comfortable confines of the safe box she’d constructed for herself.

Elliott.

Feet pausing in their pacing, Mackenzie opened their message thread for the umpteenth time and, not seeing a response, refreshed the app. She almost scoffed at herself. Since when had that ever fucking produced a different result? She’d already called Elliott three times and left three voicemails—each with an increasingly heightened level of pleading as the panic ballooned larger in her chest with every missed call. She’d finally received a brief I’m good, but it did nothing to quell the panic, and the movement of Mackenzie’s feet resumed—apparently intent to work a hole in her hardwood floors.

She tried showering. Reading. Going for a walk. But the panic grew outward and upward and eliminated any breathing room she had until she finally accepted that nothing except seeing Elliott—having eyes on a safe and well version of her favorite person—was going to alleviate the pressure in her chest. Grabbing her coat off the hook—Seattle’s springtime weather entirely matching the blustery, gray swirling of her brain—she pulled open her front door and walked right into her mother.

“Mom, what—” Mackenzie blinked, frozen with one arm in her coat and one on the handle of the door. Her eyes scanned her mother’s face—so similar to her own but so… cold—and a trickle of dread ran down her spine. Because her mother’s face was impassive. Like stone. It was so discomforting in its neutrality that Mackenzie was compelled to take a step away from her, body half hiding behind the door. “What are you doing here?”

Her mother tilted her head and pursed her lips. It was a mark of condescension that Mackenzie had first withered under as a teenager. Now Mackenzie straightened her spine, brow furrowing and face pulling into a frown as her hazy head scrambled to connect whatever dots were there to connect. Foot tapping dully in the carpeted hall, her mother exhaled, the hand not on her bag slapping against her thigh. “Are we going to continue standing in the doorway, or are you going to invite me inside?” It was clipped and abrupt, and the iciness of it worked to clear some of the haze swirling around Mackenzie’s brain.

Mackenzie shook her head and forced the muscles in her face to relax into her own mask of neutrality. She harvested the pang of anger that had swiftly eclipsed her confusion the moment she opened the door and found her mother there, literally trying to cross a boundary. “Whatever this is, it can happen right here.” She gritted her teeth and sucked in a breath. “I’ve had a terrible day, and I need to be somewhere.” She paused, eyebrow ticking up toward her hairline. “Do you have something to say to me? Presumably that’s why you’ve come here.”

Her mother’s jaw twitched once, before, stonework restored, she brought both hands to the handle of her bag. “A terrible day?” There was no concern there. Only dispassionate curiosity and a glimmer of something like triumph lighting up the blue eyes Mackenzie had inherited.

“Yes,” she snapped. “Terrible. Now if you don’t get to the point, I’m leaving, so what is it?”