Chapter 22 #2
Closing remarks. Scheduling details. Procedural requirements for the visitation arrangement, delivered in the same measured tone the judge has used all morning—as if what she has just done is administrative rather than seismic.
The court reporter begins packing up. The clerk gathers files. The ordinary machinery of aftermath.
“This hearing is adjourned.”
David is on his feet before the word is finished.
He moves through the gate between the counsel table and the gallery without pausing, without speaking, without looking at Brent or Caleb or anyone. He passes my row, and for one fraction of a second—one beat of my hammering heart—his eyes catch mine.
I’ve seen David Kingsley hold himself together. I’ve seen him coming apart. I’ve seen him carry the weight of his life on a frame built for exactly that purpose by a father who taught him that carrying was the only form of love worth doing.
I’ve never seen him look like this.
Beaten down.
Broken.
Since the moment Kelsie left, his entire existence has centered on the happiness of his daughter—her safety—and in a few hours inside a courtroom, all of that effort was weighed against some therapy and a rich husband’s affidavit, and the scale tipped.
Then he’s past me. Through the doors. Gone.
I’m on my feet before I’ve made a decision. I push past the row, past someone’s knees, murmur “excuse me,” and follow him into the corridor.
He’s already at the end of the hall. Long strides, shoulders locked, his tie wrenched sideways like it was strangling him. He hits the main doors with both hands and pushes through into gray light.
I run to catch up and push through after him.
The parking lot is concrete, cars, and the flat indifference of a Chicago November that doesn’t care what just happened inside. David is halfway across it, keys in hand, heading for his car.
Shit.
“David!”
My voice cracks across the parking lot—too loud, too sharp, the voice that stops two hundred children in a hallway and once shut down a screaming match between two parents at a school assembly.
He stops.
Mid-stride. Frozen in the colorless afternoon.
I close the distance. Heels on concrete. Heart in my teeth.
“Where are you going?”
His eyes swing to me, jaw tight. “To find an open bar and drink until today doesn’t matter anymore.”
I step into him before he can move again and catch his wrist.
His hand is cold around the keys. Mine isn’t steady either, but I close my fingers over the fob anyway and pry it gently out of his grip.
The thing I’m trained to do here is step aside.
Hand him the keys. Soften. Disappear into the institutional version of helpfulness—the one that keeps me useful without being visible.
I can feel the muscle memory of that move in my arms. I don’t make it.
I curl my fingers around the metal instead and hold on, because someone once loved me so quietly I didn’t even notice I was being left, and I’m not doing that to this man today.
“No.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t understand the word. Or like he understands it perfectly and doesn’t have anything left to fight with.
“Nora—”
“I’m not letting you get in a car like this.” I hold his gaze, because if I look away I might lose my nerve. “You can hate me if you need to. You can be furious. But you aren’t driving somewhere to disappear into a bottle while your daughter is waiting for you.”
Something flashes in his face then—pain, anger, exhaustion, all of it so tightly packed it almost doesn’t have room to show.
“She’s not waiting for me,” he says, voice rough enough to scrape. “She’s with Serena.”
“For now.” I take a breath. My own lungs feel too small. “And later she’s going to look at your face and ask if it’s bad, and she’s going to need you to be the one who tells her she’s safe. She’s going to need her dad. Not whatever this is.”
His mouth tightens.
I step closer.
He stares at me.
Then whatever is holding him upright gives.
It isn’t graceful or controlled. One moment he’s rigid with fury, grief, and the kind of exhaustion that hollows a person out from the inside, and the next he makes a sound so rough and broken it seems torn out of him against his will, and he reaches for me like I’m the only solid thing in the parking lot.
I barely have time to breathe before he’s there.
His arms come around me hard. Desperate.
One hand at the back of my neck, the other locked around my waist, pulling me in with enough force to rock me back a step on the concrete.
I go with him automatically, my own arms wrapping around him just as tightly, because there’s no universe in which I do anything else.
“David.”
He bends over me like he can’t quite stay standing under the weight of himself. His forehead hits my shoulder. His breath is ragged against my neck, hot and unsteady, and then I feel it—the shudder that goes through him when the control finally tears.
My hand flies into his hair. The other presses flat between his shoulder blades.
“It’s OK,” I whisper, though it isn’t, not remotely—but the words come anyway. “It’s OK. I’ve got you.”