Chapter Fourteen
Damon
Case files covered every inch of my desk, and I couldn't focus on a single word on any of them.
My mind kept looping back to that breakdown at my parents' house, to my own voice cracking apart in front of everyone I loved, to Nico's verdict landing like a closing argument I had no rebuttal for: When it comes to love, you are the single biggest fool I have ever known.
My assistant knocked once and stepped halfway through the door. "Mr. Walker—Miss Chloe's asking for your time. She wants you on her third divorce."
There was a version of me, not that long ago, who never turned down a client like Chloe.
High stakes, high fees, the kind of case that used to feel like winning just to take on.
Now I looked at the stack of cold, calculated legal documents in front of me and felt nothing but a bone-deep exhaustion I didn't recognize.
I was done trading in other people's calculated marital warfare.
I needed to actually look at myself for once, without a case file to hide behind.
"Turn her down." I pressed two fingers into my temple, willing the headache back a step. "Tell her I'm not taking new clients."
He blinked, clearly startled, then nodded and made a note. "Understood. One more thing—Ryan Harris submitted a request for divorce petition drafting. Asked for you specifically."
"Ryan Harris?" My head came up fast.
"From Harris Architectural. Yes, sir."
I knew exactly who that was. Lucy's husband. Mandy's closest friend, married to a man whose divorce filing had just landed on my desk like a gift I hadn't earned. This was the only thread I had left that ran anywhere near Mandy, and I wasn't about to let it go slack.
"I'll take it." No hesitation this time. "Send me everything. I'll draft it myself."
I finished the initial draft in record time and sent it to the shared address Ryan's firm used with Mandy's office.
Within the hour, my phone lit up—the number I'd been aching to call for weeks and hadn't let myself dial once.
I answered before the second ring finished. Mandy's voice came through hot with fury.
"Damon Walker. What the hell do you think you're doing? Why are you anywhere near Ryan and Lucy's divorce? What game is this?"
I closed my eyes and just let her yell at me. Angry, alive, entirely present—it didn't matter what she was saying. It had been weeks since I'd heard her voice at all, and I'd take it furious over silent every single time.
We agreed to meet at a café two blocks from her office. Lucy and Ryan showed up too, and the four of us folded ourselves into one booth, the air between us thick enough to choke on.
The truth came out fast: Ryan had only filed to get Lucy free of his mother's suffocating grip on both their lives, and he'd structured the settlement to leave her nearly everything.
No accusations. No raised voices. Just that quiet, devastating resignation that only shows up when two people love each other enough to let go instead of holding on wrong.
Watching them across the table—reluctance and unspoken tenderness written all over both their faces—I understood they needed the room to themselves, not an audience.
Under the table, I tugged once at Mandy's sleeve. She shot me a look sharp enough to draw blood, but I was already standing, murmuring low, "Give them some space."
We stepped out onto the sidewalk and started walking, no real direction, just putting distance between ourselves and a conversation that wasn't ours to witness.
The silence between us stretched long enough to hurt before I finally broke it.
"They're not really going to leave each other. I can see it in both of them."
Mandy's voice came out tired, worn thin around the edges. "Yeah. It's different for them. At least they actually love each other."
"I still love you."
It came out before I could stop it—too fast, too raw, more confession than statement. I searched her face for anything I could hold onto. All I found was exhaustion.
"Don't you—" My voice shook on its way out. "Don't you still love me? At all?"
She looked at me for a long, unbearable moment. Then she gave the smallest shake of her head, barely a movement at all.
"I don't know, Damon. I honestly don't know anymore."
That single sentence did more damage than a flat no ever could have. A no would have been an ending I could rage against. This was worse—an open wound with no shape to it, nothing to fight.
I wanted to press into that sliver of uncertainty, to claw some kind of hope out of it. But footsteps sounded behind us, and Lucy walked up.
Alone.
I blinked, confused, before she even opened her mouth. Then, in a voice gone perfectly calm, she told us she and Ryan had signed the papers downstairs. Both of them. Already filed.
I stood there, stunned. They loved each other. He'd only filed to protect her from his own mother. And they'd still ended it anyway, cleanly, without a single fight.
Something must have shown on my face, because Lucy turned that same calm, knowing look on me—quiet, resigned, the look of someone who'd already lived through more than her share of this exact ache.
"Damon." Her voice was gentle, and somehow that made it worse. "Sometimes love isn't enough. Not on its own."
* * *
Lucy's words followed me out of that café and stayed lodged somewhere behind my ribs for the rest of the day.
Love isn't enough. Not on its own. I sat at my desk that afternoon, staring at a wall of case files I no longer recognized as anything I actually wanted, and made a decision I should have made years ago.
I wasn't taking another divorce case as long as I lived.
Before I could even get the words out to my assistant, the door swung open without a knock. Chloe swept in, designer bag swinging from one wrist, heels striking the floor like punctuation.
"Your assistant tried to turn me away." One eyebrow lifted as she dropped the bag onto my sofa with the easy entitlement of someone who'd never once been told no in this office. "For my third divorce, Damon. There's nobody else in this city who gets me the numbers you get me."
I looked at her, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn't run the math—fees, reputation, what winning would buy me.
"I'm done taking divorce cases, Chloe." Flat. Final. "You'll need to find someone else."
She blinked, then laughed—bright, easy, assuming this was some kind of opening move. "Don't be absurd. Damon Walker, not taking divorce cases? You're the best family attorney in New York. Is this a new negotiation tactic? You want double your usual fee, just say so."
"I'm not negotiating." I held her stare until the humor drained out of her expression. "And I need a favor. Tell people. Anyone looking for a divorce attorney—let them know Damon Walker's out of that business for good."
She studied my face for any trace of a joke and didn't find one. "Are you out of your mind? This is what you're best at. This is where the money lives. Why would you walk away from all of it?"
"Because I need to start over." I leaned back, looked down at my own empty hands resting on the desk, and let something bitter tug at the corner of my mouth. "I need to step all the way out of it to figure out exactly where I went wrong in the first place."
Chloe looked at me like I'd started speaking a language she'd never learned. "Wrong? You've won more cases than anyone in this firm's history. What are you even talking about?"
She shook her head slowly, decided I was past the point of reasoning with, grabbed her bag, and walked out without another word.
I sat alone in the sudden quiet of my own office, and for the first time in months, something in my chest actually went still.
To find Mandy again—and to find whatever version of myself might actually deserve to stand next to her—this was the only road left open to me. And I was finally ready to walk down it, even with no guarantee at all that it led anywhere back to her.