“I actually handled a case for Asa a couple months back. You keep some very interesting company, don’t you, Mr. Fuller.” It wasn’t really a question, so I didn’t bother to answer him. I knew for a fact good people could be found on both sides of the law and that wasn’t something I needed to prove to anyone.
Sayer shifted her weight again and let out a small sigh. “I actually know Asa, too. That case turned out to be a setup, didn’t it? He’s involved with the cop who arrested him now, and I’ve met Brite several times. He’s a lovely man who I’m sure wants nothing more than to help his daughter, which is why you were so highly recommended to him. I’m sure you have her situation well in hand. We really need to head in. It was nice to see you, Quaid.”
She turned to look at me over her shoulder and inclined her head toward the big building. I went to step around the other man when he reached out a hand and grasped Sayer’s arm. He smiled at her again and I really, really had to fight down the urge to physically remove his hands from her.
“I have a dinner party coming up with the partners in a few months. I was going to call you to see if you wanted to go with me, but since we’re both here now I figure it doesn’t hurt to throw the invite out in person. I’d love for you to be my date for the event, Sayer.”
Oh, the dude so wanted to die. He may have asked Sayer, but he was watching me out of the corner of his eye and I couldn’t stop the growl that slipped out. I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my own eyes back at him. I wasn’t typically one for male posturing, but she had called me her “client” and that still stung.
She shot me a look over her shoulder and I could see how uneasy she was being caught between the two of us. She shifted her weight on her feet and I saw her shake her head just a little bit in the negative.
“No. Thank you for asking but I already told you that I’m not interested in pursuing that kind of relationship with you. I’m sorry, Quaid.”
His smile never wavered, but he stopped looking at me and focused on her. “I’m a lawyer, it’s my job to try to persuade people to see things my way. I’ll see you around.” He finally let go of her arm and his attention shifted back to me. “Good luck today.”
I bit out a terse thanks and stiffly followed Sayer into the building and through security. We didn’t say anything to one another, which was probably for the best. All I wanted to do was ask her how in hell she could call me her client and leave it at that. Was that really how she saw me after everything we had been through together in the last month? It made me want to grab her and fuck some sense into her. I sure as hell wasn’t only a client when I was buried deep inside of her and she was whimpering my name over and over again as she came.
The courtroom was uncomfortably familiar, and I told myself not to panic over what had happened last time I put my fate in the hands of the system. This was an entirely different situation, and yet I felt like I had so much more to lose this go-round. Sure, my freedom was valuable and I missed it terribly when it had been taken from me, but that felt like nothing compared to the painful ache that engulfed me when I thought about having to leave my boy in the system. He belonged with me. We belonged together and I needed to believe that the judge would see that and that Sayer would do her thing and make sure everything worked out the way it was supposed to.
We took a seat on one side of the room and I nodded at Maria, who offered me a little smile. I was happy to know the court-appointed advocate seemed to be in my corner; now I just needed to convince the man that entered the room with his black robe billowing behind him after he was announced. I sat back down next to Sayer once he gave the order to proceed and took a deep breath as he looked down at me from his bench over the edge of his wire-rim glasses.
“We’re here today to discuss the sole legal and physical custody of the minor child Hyde Bishop, correct?”
Sayer got to her feet and addressed the man that held my entire future in the palm of his hand.
“That is correct. Paternity testing came back proving that Mr. Fuller is the boy’s biological parent, and he has been attending court-supervised visitation with the child for the last month. There is no other immediate family and we can’t see any reason for the child to remain in foster care when he has a biological parent willing and eager to give him a permanent home.”
The judge looked at Sayer in much the same way he looked at me and then flipped through several of the papers that were spread out in front of him on the desk.
“The mother is deceased?”
“Correct.”
“And I’m going to assume you have done your due diligence and looked for family on the mother’s side to inquire about caring for the child?”
My jaw tightened and I blew out a heavy breath through my nose. Even if Hyde did have family on the maternal side, they had left the little boy alone and scared in the system for months. They didn’t deserve him.
“Yes. The child’s mother was estranged from her family and had some problems. Her lifestyle left a rift in the family. The family on the maternal side wasn’t interested in taking the boy in. I have the paperwork in the file from my conversations with them.”
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and gave me a small reassuring nod that made some of the bands of tension surrounding my chest loosen.
“Mr. Fuller, how is it that you had no prior knowledge of the child?”
I felt a little bit of heat work up into my neck and was grateful that my beard covered it up. I reminded myself to be honest, no matter how bad it might make me look. I had made mistakes and I needed to own up to that.
“I wasn’t in a relationship with his mother. I met her at a particularly difficult time in my life, and we were just two strangers that took solace in one another. I never saw or spoke with her after the one night we spent together. I didn’t know about Hyde until after she had passed away. A friend that was concerned about what was happening with him actually tracked me down.”
He looked at me over the rim of his glasses again. I broke out in a cold sweat and told myself not to flinch under his steady gaze. I wanted to appear as confident and as steady as I could.
“Is that a common occurrence for you, Mr. Fuller? Do you often have encounters with women whom you never speak to or see again?”
Sayer stiffened next to me, and I sat up straighter in my seat and met the guy’s stare with one of my own. “I’ve been single since the girl I was engaged to left me. I date, and yes, I have had encounters with other unattached women that didn’t last more than one night. However, I was raised by a single mother and have an older sister and I have a ten-year-old niece that I adore. I know how to treat women with respect and reverence, even if it is only for a brief amount of time.”
He didn’t so much as blink as he returned his attention to the papers in front of him. I gave Sayer a questioning look and she mouthed, “It’s okay,” before she reached out and gave my leg a little squeeze. That felt like a lot more than an attorney trying to soothe her client.
“Your sister is the reason you found yourself in trouble a few years back, correct?”
I stiffened and nodded. “Yes. She was living with a guy that liked to use her as a punching bag. He went too far with his abuse one night, and I flew off the handle. My sister was hurt so badly that she ended up in the hospital. I attacked him in their apartment, which led to me being arrested and serving a prison sentence.”
“I can see that you served a little over two years on the assault charge.”
“I did. But I haven’t gotten so much as a speeding ticket since I was released.”
“I also see that your niece witnessed all of this.” It wasn’t a question and I saw the corner of his mouth tighten and felt Sayer stiffen next to me.
“She did. I thought she was with her grandmother at the time. I didn’t know she was home when I went over to confront my sister’s ex. One of the first things I did when I got locked up was enroll in every kind of anger management program they had be
cause I never wanted my niece to see me lose my temper like that again. It scared her and it scared me. I know what I did wasn’t right, and I’m sorry every day that Joss has to live with the memory of what I did to her father.”
Sayer stood back up. “It’s been more than five years since Zeb was released from prison. He subsequently started his own very successful company and stayed on the straight and narrow. There are no other transgressions on his record and he has all the familial support anyone could ask for when planning to be a full-time parent.”
“Your client has no other children, and by his own admission is looking at being a single parent, considering that he is currently unattached. Do you understand the kind of commitment you are facing by being the child’s sole legal and physical guardian, Mr. Fuller? I’m questioning whether or not the gravity of the situation you are asking the court to weigh in on is clear to you.”
Of course it was fucking clear to me. Why else would I sit here and let some stranger pick apart not only my sexual history but the entirety of everything I had screwed up in my life?
“Mr. Fuller is very aware of the seriousness of the situation, Your Honor. He has followed every direction decreed by the court and by the court advocates as he has gotten to know Hyde. He has followed all the rules set out before him, all in pursuit of making sure he had the opportunity to know and raise his son.”
The judge looked over to Maria, who was sitting slightly off to the side, and she climbed to her feet and walked up to the podium that was next to the table we were sitting at, and introduced herself for the record. She looked over at me and then back to the judge.
“Hyde is a sweet, smart little boy, Your Honor. He has taken to Mr. Fuller, and it is my opinion that they have bonded in a short amount of time and that the child would indeed be better off in the care of his father than remaining in foster care. Mr. Fuller has shown nothing but compassion and kindness toward his son and it is obvious when you watch him with the child that he is deeply invested in the boy. Mr. Fuller is the kind of parent I wish all the kids who came through my door had. Most of them aren’t that lucky, Your Honor.”
He asked a few more questions and Sayer walked him through my income for the last couple of years; all of it was tense, and I couldn’t tell which way the guy was going to go in his determination. He rose suddenly and told us to take thirty minutes while he went into chambers to review all of those papers he had been moving around on his desk.
Maria walked over and squeezed me on the shoulder and told me good luck and then left me alone with Sayer. She turned to me with a soft smile on her lips and her heart in her eyes. She was proud of the way I had handled the judge’s needling and my honest assertion that the only place Hyde needed to be was with me.
“You’re doing great.”
I sighed and pushed my hands through my hair, messing up the strands I had ruthlessly styled earlier in the day. “It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like he’s looking for a reason to tell me I can’t have my son.”
She shook her head and reached out to put her hand on my leg again. This time I covered it with my own and gave it a squeeze.
“That’s his job. He has to poke and prod. He’s looking for any sign that you’re going to fold or break under the pressure. He’s purposely trying to get a reaction out of you. He only has Hyde’s best interests in mind, so he doesn’t care how uncomfortable or how angry he makes you. He’s trying to get an adverse reaction and you aren’t giving him one.”
“I want to give him something, namely the middle finger. What twenty-five-year-old do you know that hasn’t had a one-night stand? I didn’t expect him to pick my sex life apart.”
She tugged her hand free and sat back in her chair. She bit the corner of her lip and started moving her own papers around. “I never did.”
Well, that made me even more uncomfortable and also slightly relieved, because if she was using the word “never,” that meant I was absolutely going to get another shot at her and that delectable body. I wanted to tell her I was glad she hadn’t been as careless with herself as I was over the years when the judge was announced again and we had to rise back up as he came back into the room.
My palms started to sweat and I shifted nervously in my seat as the man who was about to say the most important words I had ever heard took his own seat on the bench. He took his glasses off and leaned forward on his arms a little bit. He was staring intently at me and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to squirm under his scrutiny.
“Mr. Fuller, I think you have made tremendous strides in setting your life on the right path in the last few years. I do believe your desire to have custody of your son comes from a sincere and genuine place, but that being said, I have some concerns. The child already went through the trauma of losing one parent, and I’m hesitant to hand him over to another one who has proven and documented anger issues. If you lose control of your temper in such a significant manner again, Mr. Fuller, that opens the child up to the possibility of suffering the loss of another parent.”
I made an involuntary noise of protest, which had the judge holding up his hand before I could launch into an argument.
“I think some time is needed. Time for Hyde to adjust to you being his father and sole caregiver and time for you to realize how significantly a child is going to change your life. I want you to enroll in a level-two parenting class and agree to further anger management counseling, and then we will move toward full custody of the child. For now I’m going to order that you can have four unsupervised visits a week outside of a CASA location. After the initial four weeks have passed, we can move to four overnight visits in your home for another four weeks. We’ll set another court date after the eight weeks have passed to see where we’re at, and I would strongly encourage you to look into attending some family counseling with the boy. The transition is going to be trying on you both, but I ultimately think you are the parent the child deserves, Mr. Fuller.”
His gavel hammered down on the desk and we all stood up as he left the room. I fell back into my chair and ran my hands roughly over my face. I gazed at Sayer and tried to tell what she was thinking about the ruling, but she seemed coolly stoic and nearly impossible to read.
“Did we win?” I breathed the words out and leaned toward her.
She turned to look at me and like the sun parting through the clouds on a rainy day, her face split in a bright smile. It was so sunny and full of light I had no idea how she could come across as chilly as she often did. She was full of warmth when she let it out. When she showed it, it was so electric and blazing that I just wanted to bask in it.
“It’s a lot of work on your part, but yes, the fact that he granted overnight visits right from the get-go is an absolute win. I thought we would be looking at at least six months or more until we reached that point. You were authentic and sincere. He could see how much you love Hyde and that’s all that matters. I’m very proud of you, Zeb.”
I reached out and caught one of her hands between both of mine. She tugged on it, but I refused to let it go as she looked down at me.
“Thank you. I know I tell you every time I see you, but I really couldn’t get through this without you.”
Her smile faltered a little, and when she pulled on her hand this time I had to let it go. I climbed to my feet and followed her out of the courtroom and back out onto the busy sidewalk in front of the building, all the while wondering and being increasingly annoyed that she wasn’t saying anything to me.
When we reached where she had left her Lexus she pulled the driver’s door open and tossed her bag inside while mumbling, “You’d be fine without me, Zeb. You are doing everything you’re supposed to be doing, and anyone with eyes can see you’ll jump through all the hoops the court might ask you to jump through if it means you end up with full custody. There isn’t anyone fighting you for your rights to Hyde, which also makes things a little bit easier to navigate. We have an excellent case. You’ve got this.”
I let a growl slip out from between my teeth at her flippant tone and nonchalant attitude. Everything about her body language and words screamed that she was having this conversation with her client, not with me.
“No, we’ve got this.” I stepped around her door and crowded her into the opening of the car. I put my hands on the roof on either side of her shoulders, caging her between my arms and forcing her to look up at me as she reflexively put her hands on the center of my chest. “No one else would keep me as calm, would tell me to just be honest and myself with the judge, and believe that was enough. No one else would tell the court that I was the best option for Hyde and mean it like you do. No one else in the system cares if that boy ends up with me or not like you, Sayer. I couldn’t do this with anyone besides you. It’s as much your fight as it is mine and you’re lying to yourself if you think any different.” No one else simply believed in me like she did. Why couldn’t she see how desperately I needed that?
“Zeb . . .” She said my name like she was gearing up for one of her lawyerly rebuttals, and since I refused to have her put more walls and more space between us than she already had, I stopped the protest forming on her lips with my own. I bent my head the few inches I needed to quiet her reservations with my own type of persuasion.
At the first brush of my tongue against the rigid seam of her lips, she stiffened, but it only took a little more probing and leaning into her more fully to get her to open up. Her hands slid around my sides and curled into the fabric of my shirt as I twisted my tongue around hers and devoured every reservation she might have about how important me and my son might or might not be to her. There wasn’t any kind of clinically cool detachment to be found as she reverently kissed me back and tilted her head slightly to the side so I could get a better taste. She wasn’t kissing her client. Hell no, she was kissing me, and she was loving every single second of it.