Lahat ng Kabanata ng See You in Court Mr. Ex husband.: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

I didn’t reply to the email that night. For about ten minutes, I considered it. Then I moved it into a separate folder, set my phone on the nightstand, and forced myself to leave it alone until morning. That sounds more disciplined than it felt. The truth is, every few minutes I wanted to pick up my phone and read it again. But after ten years of practicing law, I’ve learned that not every problem needs to be solved immediately. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is put something aside and come back to it when you’re rested and thinking clearly. It’s a useful skill. It’s also one of the hardest things I’ve ever taught myself. I slept maybe five hours. Not ideal, but I’ve survived on worse. The next morning, I was at my desk by seven-thirty with a large coffee from the café downstairs—the one place in the neighborhood that somehow gets it right every single time. I spent the next hour buried in Mercer documents, reading through the same files for wh

Two weeks passed.I know that sounds like I’m skipping ahead, like there should be some dramatic story tucked into the gap between the first hearing and the third. There wasn’t.From the outside, those two weeks looked exactly the way they felt. Early mornings. Late nights. Work that seemed to expand the longer we stared at it.Priya and I practically lived in the war room, surrounded by Mercer files, armed with two highlighters and a running list of questions that only seemed to grow. Every answer uncovered three more things we needed to understand.Patrick checked in now and then. There was something different about him lately, a carefulness, a distance. As if he was standing far enough back to see a picture the rest of us couldn’t yet make out, waiting for the right moment to tell me what he saw.I still hadn’t replied to Thomas Mercer’s email.On paper, that probably looked irresponsible. It wasn’t. It was deliberate.Before I sat down with the ousted founder of my client’s compan

I almost didn’t go.The invitation had been sitting in my email for two weeks. The Harlow Foundation’s annual benefit for legal aid services. Jade was handling social media for one of her clients at the event and wanted me there partly for company, partly because Jade genuinely believes that the solution to almost anything is putting on a good outfit and being around people.The thing is, I’d been around a lot of people lately. And most of those situations had involved at least one conversation I hadn’t been ready for. I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk into another one on purpose.But it was a Friday and my apartment was too quiet and Jade had texted me four times each one a little more dramatic than the last , so at six forty-five I pulled on a deep green dress I hadn’t touched in eight months, did something with my hair, and went.The event was on a rooftop in Midtown. Glass railings, heat lamps dotted around, that kind of New York skyline that makes you forget, just for a second, ho

The lights stretched endlessly below, glowing against the dark.I stood there for several minutes, trying not to think too hard about what she’d said.Or why it bothered me.Jade found me about seven minutes later.“There you are.”I looked over my shoulder.“What are you doing out here?”“Thinking.”“That’s usually a dangerous sign.”I laughed softly.She glanced toward the crowd.“What was that about?”“A conversation.”“With Zara Ashton?”I nodded.Jade stared at me.“And?”I let out a breath.“She was direct.”Jade waited.“And?”“Kind.”Her eyebrows went up.“And I think I might actually like her.”Jade blinked.“Oh.”“Exactly.”“That seems… inconvenient.”“Incredibly.”For a second, she looked like she was trying to process that.Then she shook her head.“Well. That’s not what I expected.”“What did you expect?”She gave me a look.“Something messier.”I couldn’t even argue with that.Eventually we went to get our coats.Outside, the night air was cooler than I’d expected.We sh

I get home after dropping off Zara from the party and something inside of me is yearning for a word with Maya.Taking off my clothes I go into the shower to freshen up.While the warm water runs down my body my mind continues drift towards her and so far I have tried so hard to stop myself from thinking about her, I often told myself everything was in the past but tonight was different.I finally stood in between my past and my present.But something doesn’t seem right.My mind after a hassle drifts back to the first day I met her.The seat wasn’t taken.I could tell from a few feet away that the chair across from the woman in the corner of the library was empty. There was nothing on it—no bag, no jacket, no notebook marking it as reserved for someone who had stepped away for a minute. Just an empty chair at a table with three other empty chairs, and a woman deeply absorbed in her book. She had the kind of focus that suggested she’d settled in for a while and had no intention of leavi