Chapter Seventeen
Mandy
Sitting at the plaintiff's table, listening to Raymond wander through those distant childhood memories from the witness stand, I felt something caught halfway between exasperation and reluctant amusement.
Damon's strategy wasn't exactly subtle. I never imagined he'd mobilize his entire family for this—weave an entire net out of nostalgia and try to catch me in every thread of our shared history.
I was almost grateful I hadn't told my own parents about any of this yet.
Otherwise, they'd probably be up there too, playing their own roles in his sentimental production.
But the memories themselves—I hadn't forgotten a single one.
The fight at nine over a broken doll. The late nights hunched over textbooks side by side, elbows nearly touching.
All those years of sparring and needling each other, and never once actually walking away.
Every image of it sat carved into me, permanent as a scar.
How could I have possibly forgotten any of it?
For years I'd watched him harden into someone sharper, colder, more calculating with every case he won. I'd assumed he was the one who let all of it go. Turns out he'd just been carrying it somewhere I couldn't see.
Edward kept rising to object early on, trying to drag the proceedings back toward anything resembling legal substance.
But Judge Snape, to everyone's visible surprise, seemed genuinely riveted by our family's greatest hits.
After two halfhearted sustained objections, he stopped bothering to pretend and overruled every one that followed.
Eventually the notoriously hard-nosed judge propped his chin on one fist and settled in like he'd tuned into a soap opera, letting Raymond, Elena, and Nico take turns narrating our childhood while Edward's carefully structured defense quietly disintegrated on the table in front of him.
Finally, it was Damon's turn.
He straightened his jacket, settled into the witness box, and let his eyes find mine across the courtroom. His voice came out low. Unhurried.
He brought up the question Nico had asked him at our engagement party—exactly when did you fall for Mandy—and admitted, plainly, that back then he'd been too proud, too full of himself, to give her a real answer. He'd waved it off as sentimental nonsense. A joke for the room.
"But the truth is, I've never once forgotten that moment."
His eyes held mine, and for the first time all day, there wasn't a single trace of performance left in them.
"It was morning. Sunlight everywhere in the kitchen. She was wearing one of my shirts, way too big on her, hair a mess, and she put away an entire piece of French toast in about three bites."
A faint, helpless smile ghosted across his mouth.
"Nothing dramatic happened. Nothing anyone would put in a movie. But watching her, something in me just—clicked into place. Like a lock finally finding its key."
The courtroom had gone completely silent. His voice roughened on the way out.
"There were so many moments after that one. Every time she stood beside me when she had every reason not to. Every time she defended me to someone who didn't deserve it. Even the quiet way she used to look at me across a room. I should have told her, every single time, exactly what she meant to me.
But I was too arrogant, too certain she'd always just—be there, waiting, no matter how badly I took her for granted. So, I turned it down instead. All of it. With my own hands."
My eyes stung before I could stop them. Hot tears spilled over and traced down my cheeks without permission.
I dropped my head fast, wiping at my face, hoping no one had noticed. But the old memories colliding headlong into his raw, unguarded confession wouldn't stop coming, no matter how hard I tried to hold the door shut against them.
Judge Snape leaned forward, turning toward our table. "Counsel for the plaintiff—cross-examination?"
Edward looked at me. Took in the tears, the composure I couldn't quite hold together. Something in his expression softened, resigned. He let out a quiet breath, closed his file without opening it, and rose.
"No further questions, Your Honor."
Judge Snape lifted his gavel, ready to deliver the ruling on whether this marriage was, in fact, irretrievably broken—when Damon raised his hand and stood again.
"Your Honor. One more thing, before you rule."
I looked up through blurred vision, bracing myself for a final fight, one more desperate appeal. But there was none of that desperation left on his face. Just a stillness I'd genuinely never seen on him before, not once in ten years.
"I brought my parents and my sister here today. Made them stand up and testify about our past—every tangled, complicated memory in it."
His voice gentled as his eyes found me again and stayed there.
"I didn't do that to prove how much we once loved each other. I did it to admit something. To this whole room, and to Mandy most of all."
He drew a breath. "I have never once been good enough for her."
The room went utterly still. Even Judge Snape paused, watching him now instead of the clock.
"Those years I wasted, blind with arrogance and neglect—I can't get a single one of them back. No collection of beautiful memories undoes what I actually did to her."
His breath shook on the way out. "If loving her really means wanting her happiness more than I want my own comfort, then the only right thing left for me to do is stop being the thing she has to escape. I'll respect whatever she chooses. I'll give this marriage a clean end."
A pause, something almost peaceful settling into his voice.
"And then I'll spend however long it takes becoming someone who actually deserves a second chance, if she ever decides to offer me one."
He turned toward the bench and bowed his head slightly.
"Your Honor, I withdraw my objection to the dissolution. I accept the outcome. I consent to the divorce."
The courtroom braced for something solemn. Something quietly devastating.
Nobody was ready for what actually happened.
Judge Snape's expression darkened fast, curiosity curdling into something close to fury.
BANG.
The gavel came down hard enough to crack through the silence like a gunshot.
"Absurd." He ripped off his glasses and jabbed them in Damon's direction, his voice shaking with genuine outrage. "Mr. Walker. Do you think this courtroom is a stage for your romantic confessions? A therapy office where you get to work through your regrets on the taxpayer's dime?"
His gaze swept the room, voice climbing.
"This court pulled your parents and your sister in here today. Delayed three other cases on the docket. All so we could sit through half a day of your childhood nostalgia and sentimental revelations! If you intended to consent to this divorce the entire time,
you could have signed the paperwork three hours ago and saved everyone in this building an afternoon of their lives!"
Beside me, Edward's eyebrow twitched, caught somewhere between disbelief and reluctant amusement. Even I sat there momentarily stunned into silence.
Judge Snape gave one curt, furious nod and delivered his ruling.
"The court finds the marital relationship between the parties irretrievably broken. Divorce granted. Property division to proceed per the plaintiff's submitted agreement."
Then his glare swung back to Damon, withering.
"Furthermore—given that the respondent has abused court procedure for the purpose of unnecessary emotional theater, wasting significant judicial resources in the process—this court issues a formal warning and imposes a three-thousand-dollar fine for contempt. Court is adjourned."
The gavel fell a second time. Judge Snape swept out without another glance at either of us.
I sat frozen at the plaintiff's table, staring across the room at Damon—red-faced, freshly fined, officially divorced, and looking more thoroughly mortified than I'd ever once seen him in my entire life.
Whatever ache had been sitting in my chest thirty seconds earlier had evaporated completely, chased out by something that felt suspiciously close to a laugh I refused to let out.
* * *
Outside, sunlight slanted low through the tall corridor windows. Edward and I walked together in silence until he stopped and turned to face me.
He studied my expression for a long moment—whatever was still lingering there from inside that courtroom—and managed a rueful, knowing smile. "Looking at your face right now, I already know. I've lost again, haven't I."
"When it comes to love, there's no such thing as winning or losing."
Damon's voice came from behind us. He'd straightened his jacket, walked over with his expression still faintly sheepish from the judge's dressing-down, but his voice carried a sincerity I don't think I'd ever heard from him before today.
He looked at me, steady, open, nothing guarded left in it.
"That's the single most expensive lesson I've ever learned in my life."
Then he turned to Edward, and whatever sharp edge used to live behind his eyes when he looked at him was gone. Replaced by something quieter. Something that looked, for the first time, like actual humility.
"Mandy's single now." A pause, deliberate, his gaze flicking back to me before returning to Edward. "If she's willing to let me have a seat at the table—I'd like us to compete for it fairly. If she'll let either of us try at all."