8. Camille
— ? —
Camille
Two months later, I walk into divorce court wearing red.
The color was Nathan’s idea. “Wear something that makes you feel powerful,” he’d said that morning, buttoning his shirt while I stared at my closet like it contained enemy soldiers. “Something that reminds you who you are.”
So I chose the red dress. The one I bought for a charity event last year that Jared said was “too much.” The one that hugs my curves and makes my skin glow and announces to everyone who sees me that I am not someone to be fucked with.
Jared is already at the defendant’s table when I walk in.
He looks terrible, grayer, thinner, the swagger completely gone from his posture.
The criminal charges have aged him ten years in two months.
Bail conditions keep him confined to his apartment when he’s not meeting with lawyers, and the stress is written all over his face.
Good.
His eyes find me the moment I enter, and something flickers in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or longing. Or just the sick realization that I’m thriving while he’s drowning.
I don’t acknowledge him. I walk to my seat beside Diane Whitmore, back straight, chin high, and I don’t look at him once.
The hearing itself is almost anticlimactic.
Jared’s lawyer tries every trick in the book. The evidence was obtained illegally. My claims are exaggerated. I’m a vindictive wife trying to destroy a good man.
Diane eviscerates every argument with surgical precision.
She presents the offshore accounts, documented, timestamped, impossible to deny.
She presents the expense reports showing company money funding romantic getaways.
She presents the text messages, including the ones where Jared calls me “pathetic” and “clueless” and laughs with my sister about how easy it is to fool me.
The judge’s expression gets stonier with every piece of evidence.
“Mrs. Harrison,” Diane says during redirect examination, “can you describe your emotional state upon discovering your husband’s infidelity?”
“Devastated.” My voice is steady. “I had given up my business, my independence, my identity to be the wife he wanted. I supported him through every career milestone, every late night, every ‘work trip’ that I now know was actually time spent with my sister. To discover that everything I believed about my marriage was a lie - it shattered me.”
“And what did you do with that devastation?”
“I survived it.” For the first time, I look at Jared and hold his gaze. “I gathered evidence of his financial crimes. I hired the best attorney I could find. And I decided that I was done being the woman who trusted too much. I was going to be the woman who fought back.”
The judge rules in my favor on every count.
The house stays mine. The investments stay mine. The remaining offshore accounts, what’s left after the criminal asset freeze, are awarded as restitution for emotional damages and financial fraud.
Jared is left with debt, pending felony charges, and a pregnant mistress.
As the judge delivers the final ruling, I allow myself one moment of pure, vicious satisfaction. Then I close my eyes and let it go.
This chapter is over. Time to start the next one.
***
Outside the courtroom, Nathan is waiting on the steps.
He’s still in scrubs - he must have come straight from surgery, probably broke about fifteen traffic laws to get here - and his face is tight with worry until he sees me emerge. Then it transforms into something soft. Something like awe.
“How do you feel?”
“Lighter.” The word comes out like a prayer. “Like I finally set down something I’ve been carrying for years.”
He opens his arms, and I walk into them.
We stand there for a long moment, wrapped around each other on the courthouse steps while people stream past us, and I let myself breathe. Really breathe. For the first time in months, the weight on my chest is gone.
“It’s over,” I murmur against his shoulder.
“The divorce is over.” He pulls back enough to look at me. “But we’re just getting started.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It’s a guarantee.” He kisses me, soft and sweet, right there in public where anyone can see. “Take me home?”
“Your place or mine?”
He considers for a moment. “Mine. There are too many ghosts in your place still. You need somewhere that’s just ours.”
Just ours. The words make something warm bloom in my chest.
“Then let’s go home.”
***
Nathan’s apartment looks different now.
Not physically - the medical journals are still stacked haphazardly, the guitar still gathers dust in the corner, the coffee maker still looks like it’s plotting revenge - but it feels different. Warmer. More like a home and less like a place where a workaholic surgeon crashes between shifts.
My things have started migrating here. A toothbrush in the bathroom. A few outfits in the closet. The sketchpad I finally started using again, propped against the arm of the couch.
Nathan notices me looking around and wraps his arms around me from behind.
“I was thinking,” he says against my hair, “that maybe we could make this official.”
“Make what official?”
“You. Here. Living with me instead of just sleeping over.”
My heart stutters. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”
“I’m asking you to let me wake up next to you every morning.
To argue about whose turn it is to ruin the coffee.
To build something real, together.” He turns me to face him, his expression serious.
“I know it’s fast. I know we’ve only been together a few months.
But I’ve been waiting for you for five years, Camille. I don’t want to wait anymore.”
The logical part of my brain says this is too soon. That I should take more time to heal, to figure out who I am without being someone’s wife. That jumping into another serious relationship right after a divorce is textbook rebound behavior.
But the rest of me - the part that feels more alive than I have in years, the part that wakes up reaching for him in the night, the part that can’t imagine going back to that empty house full of memories I don’t want - that part already knows the answer.
“Yes.”
His whole face lights up. “Yeah?”
“Yes, Nathan. I want to live with you. I want to wake up next to you. I want to argue about coffee and steal your hoodies and figure out how to build a life that’s actually worth living.”
He kisses me, deep and thorough and full of promise.
“I love you,” he says against my lips.
“I love you too.”
And I do. God help me, I really do.