A/N: I started writing and this tumbled out. Not beta-read but was grammar checked. Just a short something I felt like sharing.


The cold night air was sobering, and she felt a new wave of dread hit her as she realised that she would have to face the consequences of her actions.

She'd shot to the bathroom, tears gathered in her eyes and breathing shallow as she entered the empty room. It was late and there was no one else around, thankfully. She'd slammed the door shut behind her and gripped the edge of a sink basin as she expelled a long, shaky breath in an attempt to regain composure.

She couldn't believe what she'd just done.

She hadn't intended to. It wasn't planned out, she just saw him and acted on impulse. Mike had been asking her if they wanted to be together and Louis gave her a long speech about losing the love of his life, and then he was there, walking into her office talking about something she was too stunned to listen to.

She was telling the truth when she told him she just had to know.

She needed to know what she might be losing. She needed to know whether he would kiss her back, whether he could feel about her the way she felt about him. She needed to know how he'd react, what he'd do.

There were better ways to go about it, though, and she knew that and it was tearing her up because she didn't do this. She didn't throw herself into a situation without thinking about it first, without evaluating how safe or risky it could be.

Except maybe she was starting to, maybe it was a new her. She'd nearly fallen into bed with a married ex just a few weeks before. That was a huge risk and she'd nearly ignored the consequences to satiate her need to feel needed and wanted and loved, while the man she so deeply loved was in the arms of another.

She'd hidden in the bathroom for a short while, which she found even more hideously mortifying but she couldn't bear the thought of running into him. She emerged with the hope he'd have left and he had, the coast was clear as she gathered her things and left the firm herself.

And that night's air was both freeing and suffocating at the same time.

To be out of the confines of the firm, their shared home with so much history, was a relief. The whole place was filled with Harvey and she couldn't tolerate it. Yet to be outside, the cool air prickling her skin, her hindsight was even clearer and she felt like a fool. He was with somebody else, he was in a relationship, and she just did to him the one thing he hated.

She decided to walk home, clear her head and her heart.

The loud cacophony of engines and horns and people that inhabited New York grounded her a little, made her realise that there are a life and a world outside the bubble of Pearson Specter Litt. A world outside of her and Harvey, as hard as that was to remember sometimes. She would get so caught up in him and in them, to the point she could misread a whole situation because of it. He was always her blindspot and, as poetic as it sometimes seemed, she hated it.

She hated that the man who could disarm her, who surprised her, who she most wanted to let her guard down for, didn't want to be with her.

She had hoped that once he'd worked things out with his mother, maybe they'd be ready. But they weren't.

She couldn't help but remember the look of concern that struck his face when she asked for more. She knew at that moment that the door was closed on any romantic entanglement. She hadn't even been sure what the more she asked for was, just something. She wasn't exactly fulfilled personally or professionally.

And COO was great, she loved it. She was glad that was the solution she had come up with. But it didn't fix it, the gaping hole in her heart. That feeling of emptiness, like something huge was missing. And she hated that it was probably him, and his smile and his whiskey and his goddamn waistcoats.

Donna Paulsen didn't like to wallow, but she knew that she'd get home and soothe her wounded heart and pride with wine while thinking about them, and him, and what their life could be if they hadn't spent the last twelve years running scared and unable to communicate. She knew that dwelling on the maybe's and could-haves was futile. She didn't make a habit of it, but sometimes the only way forward is to lose herself in forbidden feelings for a night and go to bed praying she'll be able to pick up the pieces of her heart in the morning.