Chapter 21
The morning light filters in through the guest room curtains, soft and golden, catching on dust motes and the tangled mess of our discarded clothes. I blink awake slowly, brain sticky from sleep, limbs deliciously sore in that “I definitely had sex last night” way.
There’s a man in my bed. Not just any man, a hot one, that made my ovaries clap and self-control disintegrate. His back is to me at first, muscles rippling even as he stretches, all lean strength and sleepy grace. And tattoos. Because of course there are tattoos.
I don’t even realize I’m staring until he speaks, voice gravel-scraped and amused. “You’re watching me.”
I blink. “I am absolutely not.”
He rolls over to face me, hair mussed, eyes heavy-lidded and still a little smug. He looks like sex and satisfaction and trouble, and I really hate how much I like all of it.
“Do you regret last night?” he asks.
It’s not casual. He’s not teasing. He’s looking at me like he actually wants to know the answer .
I inhale, slow and steady, and say the only honest thing I can. “The only thing I regret is that it didn’t happen sooner.” I pause. “But… you should know my divorce isn’t final yet.”
Caden’s expression doesn’t shift much. Just his brows, the tiniest flick. “But it’s over, right? The marriage?”
I nod. Then, because I can’t not say it, “If he’d murdered someone, I’d be more likely to forgive that than cheating on me with my sister. ”
His eyes go wide and he lets out a laugh, one hand dragging down his face. “That’s nice to know for the future.”
“So, we have a future.” I can’t tell if I’m teasing.
He’s definitely not, when he says, “We most definitely have a future.”
He’s still grinning when he asks, “You still ignoring your family?”
I exhale, that guilty little balloon inflating in my chest. “Yeah.”
He’s quiet for a moment, tracing a finger along my bare shoulder. “That pit in your stomach, every time they call or you think about them?”
I nod; throat tight.
“It won’t go away until you face them. ”
He moves lower, trailing kisses like warm brushstrokes down my stomach. Each one a little softer, a little slower, like he's memorizing me through his mouth.
My breath hitches. “Caden…”
“Mm?” he hums against my hipbone, lips curling into a grin that I feel , low and deep and involuntary.
“This is not helping me avoid emotional intimacy.”
He chuckles, dark and fond, reaching up to kiss my lips. “Who said anything about avoiding it?”
His lips land on my neck, as his hands wander over my breasts.
He gives some attention to my erect nipples, licking and biting.
I run my hands through his hair as he moves lower, kissing my stomach, belly button and then his mouth is there , and I forget how to be sarcastic.
Forget how to be scared. I’m just sensation, writhing and flushed and shameless, fingers tangled in his hair, one knee hooked around his shoulder like my body already knows this man.
Knows how he makes me come apart and want to put myself back together just to do it again.
He sucks my clit like it’s a damn straw, making me bow off the bed and then he thrusts two fingers inside me, immediately finding my g-spot and curling his fingers. I forget to breathe.
By the time he crawls back up the bed, slow and smug and kissed all over, I’m boneless and out of breath, and probably in love with him, which is honestly rude.
He settles beside me, propping himself up on one elbow, brushing hair off my forehead like we’re soft and safe and domestic. “Still want me to leave?” he murmurs.
I shake my head, dizzy and dazed. “I don’t think I could walk right now even if I wanted to.”
He grins. “Guess I’ll make breakfast, then.”
From the hallway, a bark. A yip. A high-pitched, unmistakable sound of judgment.
“...After we let the girls back in,” he amends, already standing.
I watch him walk away stark naked, all muscle and tattoos and competence, and for a second, I think, damn.
He keeps his promise.
After I drag myself out of bed, sore in all the best ways and still flushed from whatever the hell that was last night, Caden’s already in the kitchen, shirtless, humming something low and gravelly while flipping pancakes like this is just another Sunday.
Thankfully he has put on an apron. He kisses me like it’s habit, hands warm on my hips, and I don’t hate it.
We have breakfast. He feeds the dogs because they won’t stop staring at him. Roxy has officially imprinted on Caden, and the puppy, who still doesn’t have a name because I’m emotionally stunted and can’t commit, is trailing him like he’s made of peanut butter and belly rubs.
Eventually, he showers. With me. Because of course he does. And round six is slower, wetter, lazier. Neither of us is in a rush and maybe we’re trying to memorize each other now. When we’re done, he wraps me in a towel and kisses my shoulder.
He pulls out his emergency suit from the trunk of his car. “For coffee spills and client tantrums,” he tells me, buttoning the jacket while I sip my coffee on the counter. “Not for one-night stands. Which, for the record, this is not.”
God help me, I believe him.
I feel good. Not just tingly, post-sex, half-dressed good, but grounded. Like I’ve finally come home to myself. For the first time in forever, I look at my reflection in the hallway mirror and I don’t wince. I smile. A real one.
Caden kisses me on the way out. He smells like cedar and ambition, and he leaves just in time, because no sooner do I close the door, that I hear the rumble of a familiar car pulling into the driveway.
Not Michael.
The judge .
And just like that, my spine straightens, heart lurches, and my morning takes a hard left into what-the-hell territory.
Because the last time I saw him, I detonated his image of his son.
And now… now I have no idea what he’s here to say.
I open the door, heart already halfway up my throat, only to find him standing there calm as a Sunday sermon. Judge, Michael’s father, but nothing about the man in front of me says “father of the man who wrecked my life.” Today he’s just… himself. Dignified. Imposing. And oddly warm.
“Morning,” he says, not waiting for an invitation as he steps inside. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
I blink. “Um… no. Just breakfast. Or what’s left of it.” My cheeks flare. Thank God Caden already left. My underwear might still be somewhere under the couch.
The dogs trot up, tails wagging. He crouches slowly, hand out. “Well, hello there. Aren’t you the cutest”
“They like you,” I say, surprised.
“I like them.” He scratches behind Roxy’s ears with a soft grin. “Always wanted a dog. Michael was allergic. Of course.” The way he says it is so dry, I almost snort. Almost.
In the kitchen, I pour him a coffee because that’s what you do when a retired judge invades your kitchen and pets your rescue dog like he’s been waiting his whole life to meet her. He accepts it with a thank you and takes a long sip before looking me dead in the eye.
“Michael signed the papers?”
“Yeah.” I cross my arms, wary. “Last week.”
He nods. “Good. At least he can still follow orders.”
I blink. “Orders?”
“I told him,” he says, calm as ever, “to either give you what you wanted, or he’s out of the will.”
My mouth opens, but he’s already continuing, so I don’t get a word in.
“He is, by the way. Out. I amended everything. It’s all going to charity now. There’s a women’s shelter on the west side. I liked their mission statement.” He says it like he’s picking a place to eat lunch, not upending generational wealth out of sheer, quiet principle.
“You… what?”
He shrugs. “You gave him ten years. And he gave you betrayal.” Another sip of coffee. “I gave him my name, but he turned out to be a coward. We all have to draw lines somewhere.”
I just stare. Here I though Mike was finally doing something right .
“I have something I need to get off my chest,” he says next, eyes suddenly heavier. “But I told myself I’d wait until your divorce was final, before I told Michael.”
My pulse thuds. “Told him what?”
He looks down into his mug. Then back up at me, and for once, just once, Judge looks a little less certain.
“I think it’s time you knew, too.” Taking a deep breath, he starts.
“About thirty years ago I was an ADA. Assistant District Attorney for the State of New York,” he says, his voice smooth, almost rehearsed. I can hear the years of weight behind it.
“I was seeing hundreds of cases,” he continues. My pulse has picked up, and I can feel the heavy tread of anxiety in my chest. Something tells me I’m not going to like this.
“This one case,” he says, and there’s a hitch in his voice. It’s brief, but it’s there. Something breaks, cracks in the perfect facade. “It changed everything.”
I lean forward, suddenly aware of how close I am to the edge of something awful.
The words that spill from his mouth next are like an avalanche.
“It was a rape case. The perpetrator had been a student. He drugged and raped his partner in a class.” His face doesn’t change, but something shifts in his eyes.
“She was from a prominent family. Very scared to tell anyone, her parents, her friends. No one knew. She never said a word,” he goes on.
“But I knew. Because I was already investigating him for doing it to other women. But this? This was the first time he did it to someone he knew.”
He takes small sips of his coffee while my stomach churns.
“I convinced her to come to court to see his arraignment, thought seeing him in cuffs would take away some of her fear, maybe even convince her to testify,” he continues, “and then the father of one of the other victims comes in, all calm, and he shoots him. Straight to the head. Dead before he hit the floor.”
I swallow hard, but it doesn’t help the tightness in my throat.
“Justified, of course,” he adds, like it’s something that doesn’t need further discussion.
And in a way, it doesn’t. if someone did that to my child, I might react the same way.
“But why tell me this?” I ask.
He doesn’t look surprised. He just keeps going. “That day, the woman, she was shaken up. So, I invited her to my office. Assured her that now, with him dead, she was free.” He pauses. “Only she tells me she will never be free. Not really. Because she was pregnant.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. Pregnant . I feel my breath catch. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear any more. But he keeps going, and I can’t look away.
“She told me she wanted to keep the baby. But she didn’t know how to tell her parents. How to tell anyone. Because, if they believed her, the baby would always be labelled- the product of rape .”
And there it is. Judge doesn’t stop. No, it’s like if he stops, he may not speak up again.
“So, I proposed. Literally.” He says it with this strange casualness, like it’s just a chapter in a book I should be flipping through.
“I told her if we married, it would give her some security. She’d have my name on the baby’s birth certificate, and I’d have her family’s connections.
She agreed. We married, moved to Chicago, and started over. ”
And suddenly, it’s like the ground beneath me is gone. I can barely breathe. Michael . The pieces fall into place. The story wraps around me like a suffocating blanket.
“That woman was Paula Miller… I took her last name, but I had promised her the baby would have mine, so we named him Michael.” he finishes. He nods like the weight of it is no big deal, like the brokenness in his voice isn’t there at all.
My head spins. I blink a few times, struggling to keep up. But the words keep crashing against me, against everything I thought I knew .
“So, you’re saying Michael’s not your son?” The words come out in a burst, and I feel stupid for even asking it.
He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t even flinch. “No, he’s not. Not biologically anyway,” he says, as if that’s the end of the conversation.
I stare at him, my brain a million miles away, and suddenly, it all starts to make sense. The way Paula never seemed close to him.
“Is that why Paula left?
And he answers, like it’s some justification, like it’s supposed to make everything clearer:
“It was hard for her. The pregnancy. Everyone knew it was a shotgun marriage. And the older Michael got, the more he looked like that man.”
I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know what to do with all of this. So, I just sit there. Silent.
When I found out about Michael’s affair, I wanted to destroy him. But this, this might actually kill him .