Passing Thoughts

Chapter 1 — Syren

The blazer goes on last.

Everything else is strategy. The silk shell — ivory, not white, because white washes me out under fluorescents and I’ve lost too many battles against bad lighting to lose another one today. The pencil skirt — fitted but never distracting, because the jury should remember my argument, not my silhouette. The heels — two inches, not three, because I pace when I close and anything higher turns pacing into a runway walk. I’m not here to be watched. I’m here to win.

But the blazer is the seal. The blazer says *whatever I was before I put this on doesn’t exist in this room.*

I pull it on. Smooth the lapels. Check my reflection.

I look like a woman who has it together.

I have never been less together in my life.

My phone buzzes on the bathroom counter. His name lights up the screen and my stomach drops the way it’s been dropping every time I see it for the past two weeks. Used to make me smile. Used to make me fix my hair before I answered like he could see me through the phone. Now it just makes my jaw tight.

**CJ:** *Good luck today. Go be great.*

Four months ago that text would’ve made me blush. Three months ago I would’ve sent back something flirty. Two months ago I would’ve called him just to hear him laugh before court.

Today I lock my phone, put it face down, and finish my mascara.

-----

I didn’t plan to fall for him.

That’s not true. Let me say it the way it actually happened.

I planned *around* him. I planned to evaluate him. I planned to enjoy three dates, maybe four, before his baggage became visible enough to give me an exit. I planned to be gone before Thanksgiving.

The plan was airtight. He ruined it by being exactly who he was.

My tire blew on Highway 9, a Tuesday evening, seven-fifteen, on my way to a dinner I’d already decided I didn’t want to eat. Some IT consultant named Derek who listed “sapiosexual” in his Hinge bio and opened with a paragraph about wine. I was going anyway because I’m thirty-four and thirty-four means you go anyway. You go because the alternative is another night on the couch with a glass of something red watching a show you’ve already seen twice, and at some point the couch starts to feel like a lifestyle choice instead of a Tuesday.

The tire popped and I pulled over and I stood on the shoulder of the road in heels I had no business wearing near gravel, staring at a flat I had no idea how to change, and a black Camry pulled up behind me.

He got out. Six-one. Clean. Not overdressed, not underdressed — just a man who looked like he picked his clothes with intention but wasn’t about to tell you about it. Button-down, sleeves rolled to the forearm. Watch that wasn’t expensive but wasn’t cheap. Lineup fresh enough to be recent but not so fresh that he’d just come from the barber.

“You good?”

“Flat tire.”

“I see that.” He walked over to it, crouched, looked at it the way men look at things they can’t fix but haven’t admitted it yet. Touched the rubber. Stood up. “I could change it. Probably. But I’d mess up these pants and still do it wrong so let me just call somebody.”

I laughed. He didn’t perform embarrassment about it. Didn’t overexplain. Just pulled out his phone, called AAA, gave them the location, and said, “We got about forty minutes.”

“You don’t have to wait.”

“I know.” He leaned against his car. “But it’s dark and you’re on the shoulder so I’m gonna wait.”

We talked for forty minutes. Forty-one, actually, because when the truck pulled up I was mid-sentence and he held up a finger to the driver like *give her a second.* He paid for the change before I could reach for my wallet. Didn’t make it a thing. Just handed the guy his card and kept talking.

I missed my date with Derek the sapiosexual. I wasn’t upset about it. I’d had a better one on the side of Highway 9 with a man whose name I didn’t get until the tow truck was pulling away.

“Carter James,” he said. Then smiled, just a little, like the name itself was a private joke. “Most people call me CJ.”

I took his number. And then I did what I always do.

I researched him.

-----

People think “researching” someone means a Google search and a scroll through tagged photos. That’s not research. That’s window shopping.

I pulled his bar records. Passed first attempt — impressive, not rare. Prosecutorial track, exclusively — interesting. Win rate above average, case selection strategic, no frivolous charges, no grandstanding. The kind of prosecutor who builds a case like architecture. Every beam load-bearing.

Then I went deeper. Marriage license filed at twenty-three. Dissolved at twenty-five. Ex-wife’s name led to an arrest record — possession, distribution, failure to appear. She left him for a dealer. The internet had opinions about it. I read them all.

Then the son. Kamari James, fourteen. Murdered two years ago. Case unsolved. No suspects. No leads. Just a boy who went missing and was found too late and a father who buried him and went back to work like the courtroom was the only room that still made sense.

I sat on his number for a week.

I should’ve sat on it forever.

But his voice was still in my ear — *give her a second* — and the ease of those forty-one minutes was still warm in my chest, and I told myself the red flags were survivable. I told myself grief makes people sharper, not softer, and sharp is what I like. I told myself I was thirty-four and thirty-four means you call the man back even when your gut says there’s a weight attached to him you haven’t measured yet.

I called. He picked up on the second ring.

“I was hoping you’d use that number.”

I smiled into the phone like a girl. I hated it. I did it anyway.

-----

One month. Three dates. Each one easier than the last.

Date one — dinner at a restaurant he picked because the pasta was handmade and he said “I don’t trust a menu over two pages.” I learned he grew up rough and chose law because he wanted to be the teeth, not the safety net. I told him I chose defense because everyone deserves someone in their corner even when they don’t deserve it. He disagreed. We argued for twenty minutes over tiramisu and both enjoyed it.

Date two — a walk that turned into three hours because neither of us wanted to be the first one to check the time. He told me about his mother. I told him about my father. He touched my back to guide me around a wet patch on the sidewalk and I felt it in my spine for the rest of the night.

Date three — drinks. He nursed a bourbon. I had two glasses of something dry and red and when he looked at me from across the table I felt *seen* in a way I don’t usually allow. I am not a woman who likes to be seen. I am a woman who likes to be understood. There’s a difference. He was working on both.

After date three I decided this should be exclusive. I told him so. He said, “I was exclusive after the tire.”

Date four was a Thursday. A night at his place. Dinner. Dessert. I dressed for dessert.

His apartment was clean without being sterile. Organized without being performative. A man who lived alone and knew how to do it without the place feeling lonely. He cooked — lemon pepper chicken, rice, asparagus, the kind of meal that says *I’m not showing off but I did care enough to try*. We ate on the couch because the table had case files on it and he moved them with an apology I waved off because I had the same problem at home.

The food was good. The conversation was better. His hand found my knee somewhere between the entrée and the last sip of wine and I let it stay because I wanted it to. He leaned in. I let him. His mouth was warm and his hands were careful and I thought, *this might actually be something.*

Then I opened my eyes. And over his shoulder, above the fireplace, I saw the photograph.

A boy. Fourteen maybe. Sweet face. Bright eyes. Comic book t-shirt. Smiling like the camera caught him mid-laugh.

I knew that face.

I’d seen it two weeks ago. Slid across my desk in a photograph by a hysterical woman whose daughter had just been named the primary suspect in his murder.

My blood went cold while his hand was still on my waist.

-----

I manufactured an excuse. A case. An emergency filing. Something — I don’t even remember what I said because my ears were ringing and my mouth was on autopilot and all I could think was *leave. Leave before you say something you can’t take back.*

He walked me to the door. Kissed my forehead. Said, “Handle your business. I’ll be here.”

I sat in my car for eleven minutes. I know because I watched the clock on the dashboard change while my hands shook on the steering wheel.

I had taken a case defending the woman suspected of murdering his son.

Not past tense. Present. Active. My case. My client. My responsibility. Confidentiality meant I couldn’t tell him. Ethics meant I couldn’t drop the case without cause. And the woman sitting in a holding facility waiting for me to save her life had no idea that her lawyer had been sharing a couch with the man trying to bury her.

I drove home. I showered. I sat on the edge of my bed in a towel and stared at my phone and thought about every version of this that ended well.

I couldn’t find one.

-----

That was two weeks ago.

Two weeks of dodged phone calls. Two weeks of texts I kept short enough to feel normal but distant enough to build a runway. Two weeks of practicing the apology I’d give when the case was over — *I didn’t know. When I found out I couldn’t tell you. It was the job. You would’ve done the same thing.*

Except I wasn’t sure about that last part. CJ doesn’t operate the way I do. He doesn’t compartmentalize. He prosecutes with his whole chest. The streets gave him CJ. The law gave him Carter. But under both of them is just a man who buried his only son and never stopped bleeding from it, and I just took a seat at the table of the woman he thinks is responsible.

He would not have done the same thing.

I check my reflection one more time. Blazer smooth. Face composed. The woman in the mirror looks ready.

I pick up my phone. Read his text again.

*Good luck today. Go be great.*

He doesn’t know. He still thinks I’m walking into some random case. He still thinks we’re fine. He still thinks the distance has been work and not the sound of me pulling away from something I wanted more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.

I delete my reply three times before settling on the only thing I can send without lying.

**Syren:** *Thank you.*

I drop the phone in my bag. I pick up my briefcase.

I leave.

-----

The courthouse is always cold.

I’ve tried layers. I’ve tried coffee. I’ve tried standing in the sun outside the doors until the last possible second. It doesn’t matter. The moment I walk through security and hear my heels on that marble, the chill finds me. Every time.

Today it finds me faster.

I take the elevator to the third floor. Check in with the clerk. My client’s mother is already seated in the gallery — eyes red, tissue balled in her fist, wearing her church dress because she doesn’t know what else you wear when your daughter’s life is being decided by strangers. She sees me and her face collapses with relief like I’m the answer to something. I nod at her. Firm. Reassuring. The nod says *I’ve got this.*

I don’t got this.

I take my seat at the defense table. Open my briefcase. Arrange my files the way I always do — motions on the left, notes in the center, witness list on the right. The ritual steadies me. Hands have a task. Eyes have a direction. My breath evens out the way it does when I’m building toward an opening statement and the room hasn’t started yet and everything is still just architecture.

I hear the door open behind me. The prosecutor’s side. Footsteps. A briefcase being set down. The rustle of paper. A voice speaking low to the clerk — familiar cadence, familiar warmth, familiar—

I don’t turn around. I already know.

But knowing and seeing are two different injuries, and when the judge calls us to order and I have no choice but to face the room, Carter James is standing six feet from me in a suit I’ve never seen before with a posture I recognize from the night he told me about his mother, the one that says *I am holding something I will never put down,* and his eyes find mine and I watch every version of us die in real time.

He doesn’t flinch. His face doesn’t move. But his eyes — his eyes do something I will carry with me for a very long time. They ask a question and answer it in the same second.

*You knew.*

I did.

The judge speaks. The room moves. Papers shuffle. Someone coughs.

Carter James sits down across the aisle from me, pulls a pen from his jacket, and uncaps it slowly without looking in my direction again.

Whatever we were — whatever we were about to be — the courtroom just swallowed it.

I open my file. I find my first note. I breathe.

The blazer is doing its job. Everything I was before I put it on doesn’t exist in this room.

I just have to make myself believe it.