Page 181 of Lady and the Hitman
I nodded. But I wouldn’t.
Not this time.
I stood, dragging the sheet with me as I retrieved my phone. I scrolled back to Trevor’s post, fingers trembling, then hit “save” on the photo. I would need it. Not for proof—but for fuel.
He thought he could silence me with scandal.
He didn’t realize he’d just handed me my opening line.
I sat on the edge of the bed, the photo still glowing on my screen.
It should’ve humiliated me. Shamed me. But it didn’t.
It made me ache.
Not from embarrassment—but because I’d never looked more alive. Not in a single headshot, not in any staged lecture hall photo or polished byline. Not even when I’d been standing in front of hundreds at speaking engagements, perfectly rehearsed and perfectly contained.
There in that rooftop shot, caught in a moment I never meant to be public, I was something else entirely.
Real.
Unapologetic.
Mine.
I felt Ronan behind me—close, steady. I didn’t have to look to know his eyes were on me. Watching. Waiting.
I turned slowly. “I’ve spent years telling women to own their choices. To step into their power. And yet … now that I’m actually doing it, the whole world wants to tear me down.”
Ronan didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
“But maybe …” I hesitated. “Maybe that version of me needed to go.”
He tilted his head, just slightly.
“I wasn’t lying in my writing,” I said carefully. “But I was curating. I made myself palatable. Respectable. A feminist academic with sensible shoes and carefully controlled rage. And now? I don’t even know who I am.”
His eyes searched mine. “Then who do you want to be?”
I looked down at the blanket bunched in my lap. “That’s the problem. I don’t know yet. I thought I’d be devastated to lose my column. My lectures. My place at the table. But maybe I’m not. Not really. It’s like …”
I trailed off.
He waited.
“It’s like the more they strip away, the more space I’ll have to actually be someone new.”
Ronan’s voice was low, thoughtful. “That scares you.”
“Terrifies me,” I admitted. “I worked so hard to be taken seriously. To be respected. But what if the version of me I respect now is someone they never would’ve approved of?”
He reached out and ran a knuckle down the side of my face. “Then fuck their approval.”
My throat tightened.
He didn’t say it like a throwaway line. He said it like truth.
I thought of everything I stood to lose.
