Protect me. Guide me. Help me survive whatever this is.
Instead, I stand. Kiss maple syrup off Chesca's cheek. Fasten the clasp of Dad's St. Christopher medal around my neck—the cool silver settles against my collarbone like armor, like a promise.Protect me. Guide me. Help me survive whatever this is.
Xander appears at the back door, keys in hand. "Ready, small fry?"
Chesca slides off her chair with exaggerated reluctance. "I want to hear about everyone's weird moods when I get home."
"No promises," I tell her.
I watch through the window as Xander's SUV disappears around the corner with my daughter inside. Only when the taillights vanish do I let myself look at Cole again.
He's still watching. Still waiting. Like he has all the time in the world.
He thinks he's won something. He thinks last night meant I'm his now. That the sex the night before sealed some kind of claim, and that switching my pills is just the natural next step in whatever twisted fantasy he's been building for seven years.
My fingers find the medal at my throat. Press hard enough to feel the saint's outline through my skin.
"I need to get ready for court," I say, and walk past him without another word.
The drive to the courthouse takes thirty-two minutes. Neither of us speaks.
Cole drives with his usual control, eyes scanning mirrors and side streets, hands positioned on the wheel at ten and two. The professional bodyguard, doing his job. As if he didn't just try to deceive me.
I stare out the window and let the city blur past.
What are you going to do, Angelina?
I don't know.
You could tell him you know. Confront him. Demand an explanation.
And then what? He admits it? Apologizes? Does that change anything?
You could call Sal. Have him handled the way Adrian was handled.
Could you? Could you really do that to him?
The question sits heavy in my chest. Three days ago, the answer would have been easy. Three days ago, Cole was just the man who watched me through cameras, the ex who left without explanation, the stranger who showed up in my living room and upended everything.
Now he's the man who held me while I cried. The man who turned me away because he didn't want to take advantage of my fear. The man who braided my daughter's hair in the morning and promised to protect us both.
The man who switched my birth control in the middle of the night.
How do those things exist in the same person?
How do you reconcile a man who says "I need you to want me when you're not afraid" with a man who tries to get you pregnant without asking?
I don't have an answer. I don't have anything except the feel my father's medal against my collarbone and the knowledge that I'm playing a game I don't fully understand yet.
Remember, figure out the rules first. Then decide.
The hearing is a property dispute. Commercial real estate, contracts and easements and the kind of dry legal technicalities that usually help me focus. Today I can barely track the arguments.
I sit behind my bench in my robes with my gavel in my hand, and I nod at the appropriate moments, and I make rulings that probably make sense, and the whole time my mind keeps circling back to a bathroom counter and a pill pack with smooth edges.
He tried to put something in your body without your consent.
"Your Honor?"