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“Why won’t you talk to me?” Kamryn frowned. She kept a reasonable distance between them, not wanting to invade Elia’s space at all, but still wanting some kind of answers. “You’ve always talked to me, even when you wouldn’t tell me things.”

Elia’s mask cracked. “I can’t talk to you.”

“Why? I don’t understand.” Kamryn had struggled to fill in that one particular blank for days now. And they were running out of time. The ethics meeting had been pushed back, which meant that Kamryn had far more time to think about Elia and her odd behavior lately.

“Kam…” Elia’s lower lip quivered.

Was she going to break? Kamryn wasn’t sure she could handle that, especially if she was the reason behind it all.

“You told me that this wasn’t fake and then you walked out.” The hurt in her voice was evident. Surely Elia would be able to hear it. “I’m sorry that I put you in this position. That I threatened your job even more than it already was.”

“You should know more about whether or not my job was threatened than anyone else. You hold all the power in this, Kam.”

“Do I?” Kamryn frowned. She wasn’t sure about that. She’d never thought Elia felt as though she’d been forced into any kind of relationship with her. “Did you feel like you didn’t have a choice to be with me?”

“No.” Elia’s hard mask immediately cracked. She reached out and took Kamryn’s hand in hers. “No, I never felt like that.”

“Then where’s this coming from?” Kamryn broke the grasp Elia had on her. She wasn’t sure she could touch Elia after an accusation like that. Yes, Kamryn was Elia’s boss, but she’d never—if anything it was the opposite, wasn’t it?

“Accept my resignation, Kam. Stop putting it off. Let me have a clean break and move on.”

“Where will you go?” Kamryn dropped her gaze to her feet, unable to meet Elia’s eyes.

“I don’t know, but I need to put an end to this.”

“End to what?” Kamryn already knew the answer though, and it did include whatever relationship the two of them had going forward. Elia might not have said as much but Kamryn was certain that’s what Elia had meant.

“Everything.” Elia looked at her directly in the eye. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be someone I’m not.”

“I’m not asking you to be.”

“No, you’re not.” Elia smiled sadly then. “But everyone else is.”

Kamryn shuffled forward slightly. She wished they weren’t in a bathroom in the middle of an insanely busy cafe. She wanted more time with Elia, more quiet intimate time with her than she was going to get here. Kamryn wrapped her fingers into Elia’s, lacing them together and squeezing lightly. “I want to fix this.”

“You can’t fix everything,” Elia whispered.

“But Icanfix this.” Kamryn nodded, more confident now than she was before. She’d been doing so much research on who had erased the files and wiped Elia’s record. She’d eliminated Jessup as a possibility already, and Elia. “I promise you I can fix this.”

“But at what cost?”

“At what cost is it if you don’t let me try?” Kamryn cupped Elia’s cheek. “Because I love you.”

“Kam—”

“No, it’s my turn to talk. You blindsided me with that, and it’s my turn to say something.” Kamryn stayed still, making sure that Elia understood the importance of this conversation. “I don’t know if it’ll work out in the end for us, but I wasn’t lying when I said there was more, that it was never fake between us. It’d have been so much easier if it was, but it wasn’t. It’s not,” Kamryn corrected herself. “And I’m not lying or holding back now.”

Kamryn dropped her gaze to Elia’s lips, to the way she continued to stay where she was, nearly pinned between the wall and Kamryn, as lost in this moment as Kamryn was.

“I love you,” Kamryn repeated. “Please just trust me.”

Elia turned her cheek into Kamryn’s hand. The softness of her skin, the warmth, was everything in this moment. Kamryn smiled at it, at the way that Elia’s eyes fluttered closed briefly.

“Let me love you,” Kamryn whispered.

“I can’t stop you from loving me,” Elia said opening her eyes again. “I can’t stop you from doing anything that you set your mind to. Just like you can’t stop me.”

“Are you that determined to leave Windermere?”