Chapter 14
NIA
M y gloves snap against my skin as I peel them off and toss them into the biohazard bin resting against the wall of the trauma bay. I finally let out a tense breath as the automatic dispenser next to it drops a dollop of sanitizer into my palm.
“And now you get to go home to your cushy couch,” Matthew teases as he disposes of his own gloves.
“There is blood in my shoe and I’m meeting with my attorney to talk about my child’s future,” I laugh. “I don’t think I’d call it ‘cushy.’”
Following me out of the bay with a little extra pep in his step, he says, “ After your meeting?”
“I will probably hide in the pantry and cry,” I answer. “I’m boring, I have no hot goss for you.”
“I’ll try to get some for you while you’re out,” he says with a smile as he nudges my arm with his own.
With a laugh, I hurry to the locker room to take a quick shower and make sure that I, myself, am no longer a biohazard. By the time I’m finished, I have fifteen minutes to get to the mediator’s office. I throw a hairbrush and a claw clip into my bag before running out the door to the parking lot, hoping against all hope that driving with my windows down will dry my hair by the time I get there.
Brody’s SUV is already in the parking lot when I arrive, and he steps out of it with a large leather case in his hand as I pull my car into the space next to his.
He’s dressed in a charcoal grey suit which hugs his body, paired with a deep burgundy tie that makes the touch of green in his eyes pop behind the lenses of his glasses.
I’ve spoken to him on the phone and through email, but I haven’t seen him face-to-face since that night in my living room. It’s been just over two weeks, and looking at him in the flesh, I am almost as mortified now as I was when I woke up the next morning and remembered that I’d asked my attorney to hold me .
“Hi,” I greet him, avoiding his penetrating gaze.
“Are you ready?” He asks with a raise of his brow. Making a show of rolling his shoulders back, he says, “I want to see that confidence, Nia.”
“Right.” I roll my own shoulders, forcing my spine to straighten as I pull in a steadying breath, and I offer him a firm nod. “I’m ready.”
His hand lands at the small of my back for one surprising moment before moving to the space between my shoulder blades as he guides me to the building, as if he’s just caught himself doing something that he wasn’t supposed to be doing. Pulling the door open for me when we reach the entrance, he lets me walk in ahead of him.
“Today is about Katherine,” he reminds me as we move quietly through the hall. “Do you remember the way that you handled your mother-in-law?”
“I do,” I nod.
“Apply that here,” he tells me, authority lacing his words. “They will try to get under your skin. Do not let them.”
“Okay.”
As we near the mediation room, my pulse quickens and my palms go clammy. I wipe them against my slacks and try to pull in a breath, but it’s shaky and leaves me still hungry for oxygen. My eyes burn.
My throat tightens.
My vision starts to blur.
Suddenly, my back is against the wall and Brody’s body is blocking mine, hovering almost too closely. His hand is low on my shoulder and when I meet his gaze, rich hazel eyes are staring into mine, undistorted by glasses that he must have taken off not more than a second ago.
The weight of them boring into me pins me in place.
“Take a moment,” he tells me. “Once you step into that room, you are a statue. Get it out here so you don’t carry it in there.”
I don’t think I quite realized how isolating this has been. I’ve lost half of the family that I’ve known for years. I’ve lost the feeling of waking up next to someone that I loved. There is a person standing right in front of me, and I can’t hug him, when the only thing I need right now is to be held by another person, if even just for ten seconds.
“This is so lonely.”
“I know,” he says quietly. His voice is soft and comforting, as if every ache in my soul and my bones is visible to him.
I could almost be convinced that he wishes he could fix whatever it is that he sees.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him with a blush rushing to my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t apologize.” His eyes don’t leave mine. They’re staring straight into my soul, even as he brings his glasses back into place. They pierce right through me. “Let me see your confidence.”
Keeping my eyes trained on his, I straighten my spine again, making myself stand taller. Brody’s thumbs move to smooth the lapels of my blazer as a gentle smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
He’s close enough to me that I can feel the warmth of his body, and the subtle earthy musk of his cologne wafts toward my nose.
I slip through the door as he pulls it open, and I take my seat at the table while he shakes the hands of Dan’s lawyers – two of them. It’s hard not to be intimidated, knowing that his legal team is twice the size of my own. It makes him look powerful. It makes him seem protected .
Brody’s case drops onto the table as he takes his seat, the warmth that was on his face when we were in the hall no longer anywhere to be found. Maybe I’m delusional, maybe I’m just desperate to see something that isn’t really there, but I could almost swear that every time his eyes move to Dan, every time that he has to address him, there’s a genuine hatred behind them.
The back-and-forth is tedious. I want sole custody. Dan wants sole custody. Neither of us can seem to bring ourselves to budge on it.
Dropping his hand onto my shoulder, Brody leans close to me, lowering his voice to barely a whisper. “Remember what we’ve talked about,” he tells me. “This is about Katherine.”
“Right.” When he turns to me with an arch of his brow, a question that doesn’t need to be asked aloud, I offer a nod.
“My client is prepared to offer visitation every weekend,” he tells them.
“That’s crap and you know it,” Dan argues. Turning his attention to me, he says, “That’s my daughter, Nia. You can’t—”
“You may speak to me , Mr. Hart,” Brody says, cutting him off as he keeps his attention on the paper in front of him, his pen gliding along the paper with his near-perfect penmanship. “I think the offer is quite generous, if we take into consideration the sending of your mother to my client’s house in the middle of the night in an attempt to intimidate her.”
Daniel stills; this may be the first time that I’ve seen him shaken, not angry or vindictive, since this started.
“Of course, there is also the matter of the threatening phone calls that you’ve made to Ms. Cavanaugh. Is your counsel aware of this?” Brody asks, finally bringing his attention to Dan.
Schadenfreude.
That’s what this feeling is.
A smug satisfaction courses through my veins at the surprise on his attorneys’ faces before they turn to him, the three of them speaking in hushed tones to one another. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but even from across the table, it’s obvious that not only did they not know what their client had been up to, it’s possible that they’d even advised him against it.
Brody lowers his head, returning to the pad of paper in front of him while they talk, and I have to force myself to look away from him as the corner of his mouth ticks up in his own satisfaction.
He clears his throat, and I train my face back to its previously-neutral state, making sure that I’m sitting up straight in my seat.
“We would accept every other week,” one of the attorneys says to Brody, who offers a humorless chuckle and a disdainful look in response.
“Our offer is firm,” he tells them.
“Counselors,” the mediator says, inclining her head toward the door.
There’s a gentle squeeze of Brody’s hand on my forearm before he stands, joining the others to talk privately among themselves, and I stare at my husband as the empty space around us fills with silence.
My chest aches. My stomach churns. I think about picking up the pen next to me and stabbing him in the neck with it. Jamming it straight into his carotid and watching his blood spray across the room the same way it’s felt like my insides have done for months.
“Nia…”
“How long was it?” I ask him. “When did you decide that I wasn’t enough for you?”
His arms cross over his chest as he leans backward in his seat, letting out a long breath. “She’s been my Domme for two years.”
“Where did you meet her,” I breathe, barely able to speak over the bile rising in my throat.
“It doesn’t make any difference.”
“It does to me,” I snap. “Did you run into her in the grocery store? Or did you seek her out? Did you pay her?”
“You don’t wanna talk about this,” he says with a shake of his head.
He’s right; the last thing that I want to talk about is the two years that my husband spent sharing our bed with another woman. Bringing her into our home. Bringing her around our daughter.
It’s the last thing that I want to do, and it’s the one thing that I need to do.
I level a look at him as he reaches for the pitcher of water in front of him to fill his glass.
“We met at a club. The Haven,” he explains. “I just wanted to check it out.”
“But then you met her.”
“Then I met her,” he nods. “I’m in love with her.”
The only sound that I hear is the whooshing of my own blood in my ears while he speaks.
He’s in love with her.
I knew that it was a possibility, but to hear him say it so casually, as if this is a conversation among friends – as if I didn’t give up pieces of my own life to create a new one with him – it’s like a blade to the heart.
I’m not sure when the others rejoin us, or how long it is that Brody’s been speaking to me when his hand finally rests on my shoulder.
“Ms. Cavanaugh.”
“What?” I breathe.
“You were asked if the terms were agreeable.” Noting the confusion in my eyes, he says, “Mr. Hart will have Katherine every weekend, with the consideration of more visitation in the future.”
“Yeah,” I nod, “that’s okay.”
His brow creases at the middle, his scrutinizing eyes piercing through me just for a moment before he turns to my husband.
“You may communicate with my client only through a co-parenting app, through which all correspondence may pertain only to Katherine Marie Hart,” he tells him.
“Fine,” Dan agrees.
I’m not looking at him. I can’t. Even still, I feel his eyes burning a hole in my head.
It feels like another hour passes before we sign the agreement written up for us, and another after that before we finally leave.
Brody’s hand rests between my shoulders as we exit the building, the warmth of his skin a comfort as it travels through to my own.
We’re standing between our cars when he moves to smooth my lapel again. “I know that was hard,” he tells me, “but you did very well today, Nia.”
Something else sits on his tongue, waiting to be said, but I can’t figure out what it is. I’m almost too afraid to ask, certain that it’s a ‘but…’ just waiting to jump out and tear a hole through my already-fragile heart.
“I’m proud of you,” he finally says, and my eyes snap to his.
His eyes fill with warmth as a soft smile crosses his face. Before I can even think about it, my arms are wrapping themselves around the hard wall of his body, and his hand rests gently at my back.
I should be embarrassed; mortified, even. Two weeks ago, I was asking him to climb into my bed and hold me, and here I am, standing in the middle of the parking lot holding onto him as if he’s some sort of lifeline.
I guess, in some ways, he has been.
He’s the only person who knows every detail of this case. The only person who has seen inside of it and watched us live it. He’s become the person I feel safe calling in the middle of the night when I’m upset. The person I call when I’ve had a win.
“Thank you, Brody,” I tell him as I pull away. “Katie…she thanks you, too.”
That smile widens, almost imperceptibly. “Go home and have a bowl of ice cream with her,” he says with a wink. “The ball is rolling now. We’ll see each other in two weeks.”
I nod, watching as he climbs into his SUV, and even still as he pulls out of the lot.
Looking back at the door of the building, I remember two words that Dan said:
The Haven .