Chapter Eighteen
Mandy
One year later.
The year had gone by faster than I'd known how to track—my career had climbed somewhere I hadn't planned for, and life had cracked open doors I never expected to walk through.
Months earlier, Lucy had left her firm to join a nonprofit legal aid organization out in Hawaii. When I flew out to visit her, spent a week watching her team fight for people who couldn't afford to fight for themselves, something in me that had been dormant for years finally stirred back to life.
I came home and started laying the groundwork for something of my own—a legal aid organization built specifically for minority communities who'd never had anyone in their corner.
A year of fundraising, paperwork, credentialing, more paperwork—and today, it finally cleared its last registration hurdle.
I sat at my desk and opened the freshly filed documents. At the top, under Founder, my own name looked back at me. Below it, under Initial Registered Pro Bono Attorneys, two more names sat side by side, right underneath mine:
Damon Walker. Edward Redson.
I stared at those two names for a long moment, feeling the corner of my mouth lift almost against my will.
Some changes happen loudly, with fanfare and courtroom scenes.
Others just happen quietly, one filed document at a time.
And some stories—the ones I actually wanted—were only now getting started.
Over the past year, Damon had rebuilt his reputation from the ground up, and this version of "golden boy" fit him better than the last one ever had.
He was still the sharpest attorney I'd ever watched work a room.
He just wasn't fighting for wealthy clients squabbling over vacation homes anymore.
Every ounce of that same relentless energy went into our organization now—representing women trapped in abusive marriages who'd never had a lawyer who actually fought for them, women the system had written off years ago.
He won more than he lost, and he fought just as hard for the ones he lost.
A year of the three of us working side by side had quietly, almost accidentally, turned into something like real friendship.
Damon would rather lose another case than admit it out loud, but I could see it plainly enough—genuine respect had grown up between him and Edward, buried under a mountain of competitive posturing neither of them would ever call by its real name.
Not that any of that stopped Damon from treating Edward as his sworn romantic rival for one single second.
Today, after we finally closed out a brutal pro bono case that had eaten the better part of a month, the two of them showed up at my office almost simultaneously, both insisting that a year of unpaid labor entitled them to a meal on my dime.
I looked at these two men—both of whom commanded a courtroom like they owned the building—and laughed, and let it turn into lunch for all three of us.
"Hold on." Damon frowned immediately, betrayed. "Mandy, how is this repayment? This is just a group lunch."
Edward, unbothered as always, straightened his tie and accepted with an easy, gracious smile. "I think it's perfect, personally. I never turn down a free meal. And I wouldn't mind another hour of Damon's company to talk shop."
Watching Damon's expression sour further, Edward and I traded a glance across the table and shared a quiet laugh at his expense.
We were halfway through the meal when the restaurant's glass door burst open hard enough to rattle the frame. Nico swept in like a small, self-contained storm and made a beeline straight for our table.
Dark circles ringed her eyes, her hair a little wild, but she was radiating an almost manic, electric energy that told me exactly what she'd been doing all night before this.
Edward froze mid-bite, fork suspended halfway to his mouth, staring at her like he'd just spotted a celebrity. "Wait—are you—you're DJ Lilith?"
Nico didn't even blink. "No idea who that is. I'm just a regular working girl, sir." She delivered the denial so smoothly it would have fooled anyone who hadn't just watched Edward's face do exactly what it did.
Because it was true. Nico was DJ Lilith, the name half of downtown's electronic scene whispered with something close to reverence—which explained the odd hours, the constant all-nighters, the disappearing acts nobody in the family had ever managed to fully explain.
It was a secret she'd guarded fiercely from her parents, from Damon, from every corner of the Walker family.
I was the only one she'd ever actually told.
Damon caught the whole exchange—Edward's frozen fork, the spark of recognition lighting up behind his eyes, the way he was still staring at his sister like he'd forgotten how tables worked.
His expression darkened on the spot. He reached across and delivered a firm, distinctly unfriendly clap to Edward's shoulder. "Hey. Eyes forward. That's my sister you're looking at like that."
Then he turned to me, exasperation and reluctant amusement tangled together in his voice. "This is exactly what I was afraid of. Insufferable Edward isn't satisfied just circling the two of us anymore—now he's apparently decided to make himself a permanent fixture in this entire family."
* * *
By the time we filed the last case of the evening, the sky outside had gone fully black. Damon insisted on walking me home, and we fell into step together through streets gone quiet with the late hour.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye—steady stride, unhurried, hands loose in his coat pockets.
A year had worn most of the sharp edges off him.
In the courtroom he was no less formidable, but he'd stopped needing to win at any cost to feel like himself.
He'd lost cases this year. Real ones, ones that mattered to him.
And somehow losing them had made him steadier, not smaller. Warmer, not weaker.
"Lucy texted me today." I broke the quiet first, watching my own breath fog faintly in the cool air. "She and Ryan are getting remarried. Small ceremony, out in Hawaii. Just close friends."
Damon turned his head toward me, listening, something soft settling into his eyes.
I stopped walking and turned to face him fully. "Would you want to come with me?"
He blinked, and then, without a single second of hesitation, "Yes. Of course I would."
A flicker of something nervous and hopeful crossed his face right after, like he was afraid saying more might scare the moment off. He looked down at me, voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "Mandy—does this mean we're actually starting over? For real, this time?"
A breeze moved past us, cool and quiet, stirring the ends of my hair.
I looked up at this man who'd been woven so deep into the fabric of my life that I couldn't remember a version of myself that existed without him in it somewhere—and found, even now, even after everything, that my heart still had something to say about him.
"Damon." A smile tugged at my mouth, small and real. "We've already known each other half a lifetime." I let the pause sit there a moment, watching hope hold its breath behind his eyes. "Maybe we've got the rest of it to actually figure out the answer."