Chapter 4
David
As in-house counsel at a cosmetics company, the cases I worked were boring but predictable.
The infrastructure worked. Someone else worried about revenue.
I left at five-thirty, picked up Michaela, and had dinner on the table by seven.
A life built on routine and control—two things that have become roughly as reliable as the Chicago weather since Kelsie’s petition landed on my desk.
My phone shows three missed calls from a client, two texts from Marta confirming she’ll be back Monday, and one voicemail from Michaela that I haven’t listened to yet because the last one was a seven-minute review of a documentary about octopus intelligence and I need to be emotionally prepared.
I also have Nora Harrison’s safety plan protocols in my inbox, which I signed yesterday while pretending I couldn’t smell her perfume from across the desk.
I haven’t thought about that meeting once.
Not once.
I’ve thought about it approximately forty-seven times—including once in the shower with my hand around my cock, imagining her on her knees in front of me.
The other forty-six focused on the brush of her fingers when I took the pen. The way her voice dropped half a register when she said if there’s anything I can do. The moment I almost turned around when she said my name, and the very good reason I didn’t.
I didn’t turn around because if I had, I would have walked back to her desk, put my hands on either side of her chair, and done something that would have gotten us both in front of a school board inquiry before the ink was dry on the safety plan I’d just signed.
What I wanted to say was, Nora. I haven’t slept properly in a week because all I can think about is your taste, and I’m losing my mind.
What I said instead was, Principal Harrison. Thank you for your time.
I hate myself.
I redirect my attention to the office-chair dispute. Privately, I’m rooting for the jousters.
A knock on my office door. Eddie, coat on, laptop bag over his shoulder. “I’m heading out. Do you need anything before I go?”
“No. Have a good weekend.”
“You too.” He hovers. “Are you . . . staying?”
“For a bit.”
“It’s Friday.”
“I’m aware.”
“It’s almost seven.”
“I’m aware of that too.”
Eddie has the look of a man who wants to say something about work-life balance but has correctly calculated that his tenure does not yet support unsolicited life advice directed at a founding partner. “OK. Good night.”
“Good night, Eddie.”
He leaves. The office settles into quiet. Just me and the chair case.
I sigh and check the time even though only a minute has passed.
I should go home. My mother picked Michaela up again today, and I just know she and my daughter are getting up to no good together.
As a pediatrician, my mother lectures every first-time parent on the dangers of processed sugar, but when it’s her granddaughter, she believes in the healing power of Sour Patch Kids and Domino’s.
Michaela is probably already teeth-deep in a pint of chocolate-chip ice cream and halfway through a Law you bring the competence. It’s a system. Which is why I come to you with both good news and better news.”
“Is the good news that you’re leaving?”
“The good news is that Mom took Michaela to her place tonight. She took her shopping, they had dinner, and now they’re having a sleepover. Blanket fort. Popcorn. Something involving a documentary about—”
“Octopuses.”
“No. Seals. Michaela has apparently moved on and claims she’s obsessed.”
“Since this morning?”
“Eight-and-a-half-year-olds can be fickle.” He grins. “Point is—you’re free. No one waiting on you. No bedtime. No seven-minute voicemails about marine biology.”
I stare at him. “You arranged this.”
“I made a phone call. Mom was thrilled. Michaela squealed—so did Mom, actually.”
“Caleb—”
“Which brings me to the better news.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and holds it up. “ETA three minutes.”
“ETA for what?”
The front door of the office buzzes. Caleb doesn’t answer. He just smiles—the smile he uses when he’s done something he knows I’ll hate and is confident I’ll forgive.
“Caleb. ETA for what?”
Voices in the corridor. Multiple voices. One loud enough to precede its owner by a full ten seconds.
“Kingsley and Kingsley!” Dominic Cruz’s voice fills the hallway like he’s announcing a prize fight. “Where’s the champagne? Where are the leather chairs? Where is the—” He appears in my doorway, takes one look at the office, and stops. “Where is the anything?”
Bennett is behind him, carrying a paper bag that smells like Thai food.
Logan trails a few steps back, holding a six-pack of craft beer in one hand and a bottle of something amber in the other.
He looks vaguely uncomfortable, in the way Logan always looks vaguely uncomfortable in social situations Dominic forced him into.
“This is your office?” Dominic walks in without waiting for an invitation, turning in a slow circle. “David. Brother. This is—”
“It’s new,” Caleb says.
“It’s bleak.” Dominic runs a finger along the edge of my bookshelf. “Where’s the art? The credenza? The obligatory photo of you shaking hands with someone important like me?”
“Don’t you all have somewhere else to be?” I ask. “Fiancées and live-in girlfriends to rush home to? Random women to talk into your bed?” That last one’s for Dominic, the only single man out of the four.
“Nope,” Dominic says, popping the P. “You know my heart is taken. I’m just waiting on the acceptance letter.”
“The girls went to Lockwood to discuss ‘bridesmaid stuff.’” Bennett air-quotes as he sets the Thai food on my desk. “So we brought dinner.”
“To discuss groomsmen stuff?” I ask, looking at Bennett, who’s marrying Layla in the spring. “The girls” generally consist of Caleb’s live-in partner, Serena, and Logan’s fiancée, Audrey.
“God, no,” Dominic says. “I would rather swallow glass than discuss boutonnières with Mercer.”
“I heard that,” Bennett says flatly.
“Good. I meant you to.”
“We’re actually here for you.” Logan sets the beer and whiskey on my desk next to the Thai food. “Dominic said you’d need whiskey. I brought beer as a redundancy.”
I try to act like I’m not mildly touched by the effort, but I am. Despite everything, the people in this room are the closest thing I have to a family outside of Michaela. And they went out of their way to make sure I didn’t feel alone tonight.
“Plates are in the kitchen,” I say, because I refuse to confess to sentimentality.
Logan pads off to retrieve them. Dominic sets about suggesting how I might arrange my desk for maximum power projection.
“You need a better chair. A real chair, David. That thing is going to give you a herniated disc.”
“It’s fine. I’m not here for the furniture.”
“You’re going to be here a lot, and if your spine collapses, you won’t be able to fully savor your eventual victory over your ex-wife. Whose name we do not say because she’s basically Voldemort.”
I ignore him, which is my standard response to Dominic’s digressions, and stand as the others migrate toward the conference room—the nicest space in the office beside reception because Caleb refused to let me reduce the budget for client spaces—even after I reminded him that most of his clients were billionaires who expected him to go to them and most of my clients were still at the stage of picking legal pads over chairs.
But the room feels better with more bodies in it.
Like an actual space where things happen, where people belong.
Plates arrive, and the food disappears at a rate that would be impressive if it weren’t so alarming.
Dominic tells a story about a woman who tried to seduce him by pretending to be a process server, only for Logan to correct him that the woman was, in fact, an actual process server, and Dominic had simply misinterpreted the paperwork.
Bennett listens, smile small but genuine, nodding along.
Caleb hovers near the window, balancing a beer on the sill and watching the city settle into dusk. At one point he meets my eye and lifts his bottle a fraction. Which sets Dominic off.
“To Kingsley and Kingsley,” he says, raising his glass. “May your printers never catch fire and your billable hours be plentiful.”
“The printer caught fire?” Bennett asks.
“Eddie put legal-size paper in a letter-size tray,” Caleb says.
“That shouldn’t cause a fire.”
“And yet.”
“Your associate set the printer on fire.” Bennett shakes his head. “Mercer Capital has a surplus HP LaserJet in storage. I’ll have Jenna send it over Monday.”
“Jenna,” Dominic repeats, his voice going dreamy. “How is my Jenna?”
“Your Jenna?” Bennett scoffs, picking up his chopsticks. “She’s my assistant. And if she heard you laying claim to her like that, she’d cut the soles from all your shoes so you had to walk around the city barefoot.”
“I’d take my chances,” Dominic says, grinning. “Jenna’s a goddess, and I’m not afraid of a little pain in the name of love.”
“You’re not afraid of a lot of pain,” Logan says. “You have a documented history of ignoring the red flags.”
Dominic points his chopstick at Logan. “Those weren’t flags. They were festive bunting.”