Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
HARLEY
Six Weeks Later
The baby will be here in four weeks, and the trial isn’t any closer to a verdict.
By now, my stomach announces itself before I even walk through the courtroom doors.
People glance up as I pass the gallery, whispers trailing after me like I can’t hear them.
I press a hand over my belly and force myself not to shrink back.
If anything, I sit taller. Maybe if they see me, really see me, they’ll understand that Easton isn’t just a case file.
He’s a man with a family waiting for him.
It's the defense’s turn now. Rick calls Kennedy first, and she marches to the stand like she’s prepared for war.
She answers every question, sharp and steady, her voice unwavering while repeating her earlier testimony—the victim shoved Easton first, after tampering with her drink.
The prosecutor tries to rattle her, to paint her as biased, but Kennedy doesn’t flinch. If anything, her stare grows harder.
Then comes the bartender. His testimony isn’t perfect, but it’s enough to show the jury there are cracks in the prosecution’s story. Enough to plant the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Easton isn’t the aggressor they all want to believe he is.
The baby kicks during the testimony, strong enough to make me catch my breath. Hope flickers in my chest with the movement, fragile but real. But fear follows, it’s right there beside it, whispering that juries aren’t always kind, that sometimes they really do only see the record and not the man.
I glance at Easton across the room. He sits straighter than he has in weeks, his eyes locked on me. In that moment, it doesn’t matter how long the trial stretches. We’re both holding on, one heartbeat, one kick, one testimony at a time.
“Do you think I said enough?” Kennedy whispers as she slides back into the bench beside me, her hands still trembling from taking the stand.
“You did more than enough,” I murmur, squeezing her arm. “Thank you for standing up for him.”
She grabs my hand and holds it tight. “He’s a good man, Harls. I’d do anything for the two of you.”
“I hope the jury sees that too.” Tears prick at the corners of my eyes, but I blink them back.
Kennedy leans closer, her voice low but fierce. “With that bartender’s testimony, and the other guy from the bar saying he bragged about spiking the drink, they have to believe it. This isn’t about Easton being violent. It’s about some rich asshole trying to get his way.”
Her words sink into me like a lifeline, but I can’t quite let myself believe it. I press a hand over my belly, feeling another kick as if the baby is also reminding me not to give up hope.
They say time slows when you’re waiting for an answer, but whoever said that has never sat through a trial pregnant. Time doesn’t slow; it throbs. It presses against my ribs and spine and the soft underside of my heart.
Unsurprisingly, the courtroom is too cold and the air tastes like it has been filtered through stone. Same wooden bench. Same scuffed floor. Same seal over the judge’s head.
Different day. One that can either break us or make us whole.
Kennedy slides in beside me and hands me the bottle of water she bullied me into keeping in my bag. “Sip,” she whispers, like she’s talking to a skittish animal.
Behind us, Layla settles a hand between my shoulders, steady as a handrail.
His dad sits on my other side, jaw set and wedding band turning around his finger like his hands need something to do.
My mother takes the aisle seat. She’s come.
Again. She meets my eyes, and for once there isn’t a to-do list hiding in hers. Just worry. Just love.
“All rise,” the bailiff calls, and we all do, the entire room moving like one creature. My back complains. The baby rolls and then goes still, like they, too, are listening intently.
The judge takes his place. The jurors file in; faces blank in that careful way they teach you to keep in poker.
I gently press the folded ultrasound photo in my lap.
The paper has gone soft at the edges from being held and breathed, the way Dr. Reynolds taught me for when the panic wanted to take control of the steering wheel. In for four. Out for six.
Easton stands when they come in. He’s been in a suit every day of trial, Rick insisted.
Shoulders square. Chin up. The tie I chose from a page of photos, navy with a small, stubborn stripe, sits straight against his throat.
He doesn’t look at the jury as they take their seats.
He looks only at me. One heartbeat. Two.
That’s all we got before he turns back because his lawyer touches his sleeve.
“Madam Foreperson,” the judge says, voice even, “has the jury reached a verdict?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
My fingers go numb. I curl them around the paper in my lap, holding the grainy outline in an attempt to ground myself in something that can neither be argued into or out of existence.
The foreperson stands. A woman in a cardigan, hair pinned back like she’s been pinning it back for forty years. She clears her throat, and the sound rattles.
“In the matter of the State versus Easton Ryder Diggs, on the charge of felony assault, we the jury find the defendant … not guilty.”
The words don’t land at first. They hover above us like birds that haven’t decided where to settle. Not guilty. The room inhales. Someone behind me sobs once, an unpolished sound. It might have been me.
“Order,” the judge says, though nothing has exploded yet. He looks at Easton. “Mr. Diggs, you are discharged. You are free to go.”
The bench under me disappears. That’s what it feels like.
My knees wobble. Kennedy’s hand grabs my elbow and Easton’s mother’s hand slides up my spine like a brace.
Easton doesn’t move. He blinks once, twice, as if he needs to hear the words in a second language to believe them.
Rick leans over and says something I can’t hear, something that makes Easton’s mouth part.
The tiniest breath of a grin, shock more than joy, breaks his face open.
“Court is adjourned,” the judge adds, softer than I’ve ever heard him, like even he wants to be a decent human for a second. The gavel taps once. It doesn’t crack this time. It blesses.
The jurors look anywhere but at us. The prosecutor gathers her files with the precision of someone who hates losing and will be filing the feeling away to visit later. Rick shakes hands with nobody and everybody, already turning to shield Easton with his body.
And then the bailiff does the only thing I have prayed for since this all started. He steps closer to Easton and unfastens the small silver cuff on his wrist.
My body moves without consulting my brain. I’m down the aisle before anyone can stop me, one hand on the rail, the other cradling my belly, careful but certain.
“Ma’am—” the bailiff starts, a reflex, but we’re already on the other side of this line they pretend exists.
Easton turns at the sound of my steps, and then his arms are around me.
His face buries in my hair like he’s been underwater for months and I’m the oxygen he needs to survive.
He inhales so hard it tugs at my roots, and I laugh and cry at the same time, overcome with emotion.
“Careful,” he says into my ear, hands spreading instinctively across my back, one lower on my spine and one between my shoulders, the way he’s always held me when being extra gentle. “Careful with our baby.”
“We’re okay,” I say. “We’re okay.” The words shake, but they’re true. For the first time in forever, they’re true.
He pulls back just enough to look at me.
Up close he looks wrecked in the most beautiful way—eyes red-rimmed, a nick on his jaw from a nervous shave, lines in the corners of his mouth that weren’t there a few months ago.
He cups my face with both hands, thumbs swiping at tears I can’t stop, and kisses my forehead like a prayer.
“I told you I’d come home,” he whispers.
“I always believed you,” I whisper back.
Kennedy barrels into us next. She hugs us both in a tangle of limbs and whispers curses before stepping back to wipe her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“If you ever make her sit on that bench this long again, I will personally glue you to it,” she tells Easton.
“I missed you too,” he says, voice rough, smiling at her in a way that says thank you for being her rock when I couldn’t.
Layla reaches us, her hands over her mouth and tears shining.
Then those hands are on her son’s face, checking if he is real.
“My boy,” she says, voice breaking on the last word.
His father doesn’t say anything at first, just folds Easton into a hug like a man closing a trunk after packing it exactly right.
When he pulls back, he lifts his chin and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Let’s get you both out of here.”
We have to, technically, go through a door and down a hall to sign things. Freedom, it turns out, still requires paperwork. Rick keeps a hand between us and the questions being fired from reporters that never seemed to end.
“No comment, no comment, thank you,” he mutters as we walk. Someone from a local station lifts a camera, and my mom, of all people, steps between me and the lens.
“Not today.” she says, calm and terrifying.
In a small room that tries to be cheerful with a potted plant dying in the corner, a deputy slides a plastic bin onto the counter.
“Property. Wallet. Keys. Watch.” He ticks items off a list. Easton signs his name like it’s a test he’s studied for far too long. The deputy pushes a paper toward him. “Release acknowledgment.”
Another signature, the pen shakes just enough to make my throat hurt.
“How’s the baby?” he asks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes dropping to my belly like he needs to see it move to believe in anything else.
The baby rolls once, pressing a heel or an elbow against my palm.
Easton’s face changes. He reaches out like he’s asking a skittish animal for permission, and when I nod, he places his hand there.
The kick comes again, and he sucks in a breath, eyes going bright.
“Hey,” he says, voice soft around the edges. “Hey, peanut. It’s me.”
“It’s us,” I correct, and he smiles like that one word fixes something. Fixes everything.
Rick clears his throat gently. “I’m going to go do three more things you don’t need to see. If you can manage not to say anything to the press until you’re in a car, I’d appreciate it.” He tucks his folder under his arm and, to my surprise, pulls Easton into a quick, fierce hug. “You earned this.”
“No Rick, you earned this, and I can’t ever repay you or thank you enough,” Easton says back.
We step into the corridor. The courthouse doors are ahead, heavy and glassy, and for a second I think about the first time I walked through them alone … how the building seemed to lean over me like a warning.
We pause just before the threshold. Easton looks at me, one eyebrow lifting in the way it does when he’s asking a question without words. Ready?
I nod. “Ready.”
Outside, sound hits us all at once—traffic, voices, a bird that has the nerve to sing over the courthouse steps like this was any other Tuesday. Reporters are everywhere, but Rick and my mother both step into the angles to protect us.
On the sidewalk, out of the flow, Easton stops.
He turns to me, hands lifting and falling like he can’t decide where to put them.
On my face, on my shoulders, on the very obvious curve of our future between us.
He settles for the oldest place, my left hand, and traces the tiny ridge of ink on the inside of my wrist. The matching tattoo.
The promise we made when life was simpler.
“Harley,” he says, “We did it.”
“You did it,” I say. “You told the truth, and you outlasted all the lies.”
He shakes his head, eyes wet again. “We did it,” he repeats, glancing down. “All three of us.”
“We can go home now,” I say, surprised at how solid the words feel coming out of my mouth. For months every plan has been a wish.
“Home,” he echoes. The word sounds new on him, like a shirt you put on and realize you’ve been missing for years.
We walk toward the car. Easton’s mom links her arm through mine. But at the curb, Easton hesitates. He looks back at the building. Not for long, just a glance.
I know that look. It’s the look you give to a place that’s taken something from you, that’s taught you things you didn’t ask to learn. He takes a breath, and then, lets it go.
“Hey,” I say, leaning close so only he could hear. “You don’t owe that place another second. Save all your time for the baby.”
He turns his face toward mine. The sun hits the side of his jaw, and he squints like he’s not used to this much light. “Deal,” he says.
He helps me into the passenger seat gently, carefully, muttering ridiculous comments under his breath about the seatbelt. Before he closes the door, he bends and kisses me, quick and sure. It’s the kind of kiss that says we have time now. When he rounds the other side, he doesn’t look back again.
As we pull away, I press my hand to my belly, and Easton lays his over mine, fingers lacing in the space that will soon be occupied by something much smaller … and louder. The courthouse disappears from the mirror, and I feel like I can finally breathe.
“Tell me everything I missed,” he says, voice a little hoarse, like he’s been swallowing sand and is finally able to drink water again.
“Start with the kicks?” I ask.
“Start with the kicks,” he agrees.
So, I do. I tell him about how it felt when our baby rolled for the first time and how I thought I’d imagined it.
I tell him about the heartbeats and the hiccups.
I tell him about the names we circled, and the ridiculous ones Kennedy keeps teasing us about even considering.
I tell him about therapy and how I’m working on my relationship with food still, no matter how difficult it is.
He listens, keeping his hand over mine like he’s anchoring both of us to the same place.