Page 150 of The Lonely Road

I don’t start to hyperventilate until after I get back to my office, lock the door behind me, and sit with my face in my hands.

He’s here.

He’s back.

Oh my God.

What does it mean?

Nothing, Taya. It means nothing.

My email notification goes off. I don’t check my inbox. I can’t. I’m frozen. Part of me desperately wants to see him—to ask him why. Why me, why us, why any of it? Another part hopes I can keep my head high and tell him to go to hell.

And all of me aches for him.

My man. My love. Back in town after breaking my heart and my trust in the worst way possible.

My email beeps four more times.

I open my laptop.

Aldridge’s firm has filed six motions overnight.

Discovery demands, expert qualification challenges, a request for additional briefing on the historical use records, a motion to compel production of all communications between defendant’s counsel and any tribal water authority dating back five years, and two supplemental objections to exhibits I filed three weeks ago.

I lean back in the chair and look at the ceiling.

I know this play.

I ran this play.

You take a solo practitioner up against a firm with unlimited associates, and you bury them—not in one devastating motion, but in volume. You file constantly. You set deadlines that are technically compliant but practically impossible for someone without a paralegal team. You make them spend every hour responding instead of building. You exhaust them until they miss something, or until their client runs out of money, faith, or both.

Aldridge knows I know this play.

He’s running it anyway because he has no choice—Colbeck’s interim order scared them, and this is the only lever they have left.

I have one too: the ability to outwork everyone in the room.

I pull up the first motion.

I start reading.

As irritating as Aldridge can be, this barrage of filings is almost a blessing. It keeps my mind off a certain man who is checked into the Ridgeline Inn.

By noon, I have response frameworks drafted for four of the six.

I drink coffee and skip lunch.

I am completely in my element.

There’s a knock at my door at four in the afternoon. My bones all but creak from lack of movement as I walk over and open it.

“Afternoon.”

I wave Kaz in.

“You want coffee?”