Chapter Nine
Damon
I stared down at the divorce petition lying on the marble floor where I'd let it fall—Mandy's signature burning into my vision like something branded there.
No.
I would never sign it.
If I put my name on that line, I'd be confessing, in writing, that our marriage had died because of my own blindness, my own selfishness. I'd be drawing the final line myself, in my own hand, and I wasn't ready to accept that this was how it ended.
I knew calling her directly was a dead end—she'd blocked every number I owned. So I scraped together what composure I had left, dialed her office line instead, and let it ring through to voicemail. I kept my voice level, buried the shake underneath twenty years of courtroom discipline.
"Mandy. It's me. I received what you sent. There are some specifics in the asset division I need to go over with you—concerns that affect us both. We should talk. In person."
It was my last card, and I knew it. She was too much of a professional, too committed to doing things properly, to refuse a conversation about an unresolved legal document. That was the one lever I had left to pull.
Half an hour later, my phone buzzed. A time. A place. Nothing else.
* * *
She was already seated by the window when I walked in, her face as still and unreadable as water that had forgotten how to move.
Whatever composure I'd built on the drive over dissolved the second I saw her. I crossed the room, didn't even sit, and the words came out of me before I could organize them into anything dignified.
"You win, Mandy. I was wrong. I've lost. Completely."
My hands had curled into fists at my sides without my permission, my voice shaking in a way I hadn't heard from myself since law school.
"I dropped Caroline's case. I've cut her off, professionally, personally, all of it. I did what you wanted. Please—don't punish me with this."
I actually believed that would be enough. I thought watching me come apart, watching the man who never lost control lose it completely in the middle of a crowded café, would soften something in her.
She just looked at me. No triumph in her expression. No leashed anger simmering underneath. Just a terrible, patient clarity, edged with something that looked almost like grief.
"Damon." She said my name gently, like it might dissolve if she said it too hard. "Love was never a contest to win or lose. You still don't understand that, do you."
"Caroline was never the actual problem." She said it plainly, like she was stating a fact she'd already grieved. "Did you really think cutting her out would fix any of this?"
I froze. I replayed my own words from thirty seconds earlier and realized, with a sick lurch, that every single sentence out of my mouth had been about Caroline. I'd genuinely believed that removing one variable would restore the entire equation.
"Even without Caroline," Mandy went on, steady, unhurried, "there'd be someone else next. The next woman who needs a savior. The next case you take out of habit and pride because turning it down feels like losing.
The next old friend you file under 'just work' while I'm the one left standing there wondering where I fit."
She held my eyes without flinching.
"I'm tired, Damon. Tired of being the one who has to guard every line, because you never once thought to draw them yourself. You never cheated. I know that. But you also never once stood beside me. You just stood in the middle, and I think some part of you liked being pulled at from both directions.
"
I opened my mouth to argue. Nothing came out. Because she was right, and some cowardly part of me had known it for years.
"I never betrayed you." My voice came out dry, cracked at the edges. "I never—"
"You never betrayed me." She finished it for me, and the small smile that followed was hollow enough to hurt. "How many times have I heard exactly that, Damon? Every time I told you I was uncomfortable. Every time I told you something hurt. That was always your answer. The whole answer."
Her gaze dropped to the table between us.
"When did the bar get so low that 'I never slept with anyone else' became the entire proof of a marriage?"
I sat back against the hard wood of the chair, spine pressed into it like a punishment.
"You never thought you owed me an explanation for letting those women get close, because in your head, fidelity was the whole contract. You never drew the boundary. You waited for me to draw it—to claim you, to fight them off myself, over and over, for three years. I'm exhausted, Damon.
I don't have another line left in me to hold."
I could hear my own breathing, ragged in the quiet corner of the café.
I wanted to say I can change. The words died somewhere behind my teeth.
Because she was right—I had genuinely believed fidelity was the finish line.
I'd been proud of clearing that bar. I'd never once looked past it to see what else a marriage might actually require of me.
The silence between us stretched long enough to hurt.
Then Mandy reached into her bag, pulled out a folded document, and slid it across the table toward me.
"I didn't just come because you called," she said. "I've reconsidered the asset division."
I looked down. Several lines had been struck through and rewritten in her own precise handwriting.
"I don't want the house. I don't want the savings, or the stocks." Her voice stayed flat, unwavering. "I'll take my car and what's already mine. Everything else is yours."
"Mandy, what are you talking about? You're entitled to half of—"
"I'm not saying I didn't put everything into this marriage." She cut me off without raising her voice at all, which was somehow worse than if she'd shouted. "But it was never a ledger, Damon. I don't need half of what we built to prove you loved me once. I don't need any of it."
Her eyes met mine, dead level.
"I want nothing. Just sign it. Let's finish this quickly."
I stared at the page. This was Mandy—who never conceded an inch in a courtroom, who'd once fought me for twenty minutes over the color of a tie—telling me to take everything, and asking for nothing in return.
She wasn't negotiating anymore. She'd stopped treating me like an opponent worth strategizing against. She just wanted the account closed and my name erased from her life for good.
Something cold slid down my spine.
If I signed, it was actually, permanently over. No more room to argue my way back in.
I couldn't let go. Not like this. If we went to litigation instead—jurisdiction disputes, asset discovery, mandatory mediation—the process alone would buy me months.
Real time. And as long as this stayed unresolved between us, as long as there was still a reason for her to sit across a table from me, I had a chance to show her I could actually change.
To fight my way back into a life I'd only now realized I couldn't survive losing.
Suing her. It was ugly, and it was the only weapon left in my hand.
My fists tightened until my nails bit half-moons into my palms.
"I won't sign it, Mandy."
I forced the next words out, wrapping the desperation in the coldest voice I had left. "If you actually want this over—sue me. We're both lawyers. You know exactly how this works. You file, I answer, and we finish this in front of a judge."
The café went silent around us. Rain against the glass. The low mechanical hiss of the espresso machine two tables over. A few strangers had turned to watch, and I didn't care about a single one of them.
I knew how it sounded—reckless, almost unhinged, the kind of thing that would only push her further away. I didn't have another option left. If she sued, this would drag on for months. Even in a courtroom, across opposing tables, I would still get to see her face. She'd still have to look at me.
Then a voice came from behind my right shoulder.
"Fine."
Low. Level. Absolutely certain.
Before I could turn, a man rose from a corner booth I hadn't clocked when I walked in—tall, a charcoal suit tailored close enough to have cost a fortune, fair hair combed with the kind of precision that read as effortless because it wasn't.
He crossed to Mandy's side of the table, set his coffee down, and rested a hand on her shoulder with a familiarity that looked practiced.
Possessive, even, though nothing about his tone suggested he was staking a claim.
"Mandy." His voice was warm, easy. "If Mr. Walker won't settle, let him have his litigation. I'll represent you."
Mandy blinked up at him, genuinely startled. "Edward?" Real disbelief colored her voice. "What are you doing here?"
The name hit me like a slap I hadn't seen coming.
Edward. Edward Redson.
Something buried came lose all at once—an old, rusted key turning in a lock I'd forgotten I was carrying.
Mandy's college boyfriend. Her first love, before any of this, before me.