The danger was that he might be starting to want me back.
And I had no idea what to do with that.
CHAPTER 7
Riley
The morningof the first custody hearing dawned gray and cold, and I woke with dread sitting heavy in my stomach like a stone.
I’d been awake since four, staring at the ceiling while my mind rehearsed the same disasters on a loop. The judge siding with Todd. The caseworker changing her mind. Someone uncovering the marriage for what it was and waiting at the courthouse with proof, with questions, with the authority to erase us. To take Mia and hand her back to a man who knew how to smile in public and rot everything he touched in private.
By the time the light crept through the curtains, fear had stopped branching. It had narrowed. One outcome, endless variations.
In the bathroom, my hands refused to cooperate. Mascara streaked where it shouldn’t. I wiped it off and tried again, jaw tight. My hands never shook. Not on calls. Not in fires. Not when seconds mattered and people were screaming. But this wasn’t chaos I could run toward. This was Mia. This was the part of my life I couldn’t afford to lose.
The clothes waited on the back of the door, exactly where I’d left them. A blazer from a thrift store, bought for a version of my life that never happened. Slacks that passed for respectable. Small earrings. Nothing that drew attention. Nothing that invited questions.
Professional. Neutral.
It felt like armor.
I put them on and looked at myself in the mirror. The woman staring back looked like a stranger. Someone competent, put-together. Someone who had her life in order, who made responsible decisions, who definitely hadn't been lying awake since before dawn imagining every possible way this could fall apart.
I didn't recognize her. I was used to seeing myself in loose T-shirts and cargo pants, in turnout gear and station uniforms. Clothes that let me move, let me work, let me disappear into the background without anyone looking twice. I'd never dressed to attract attention. There was no point. Attention meant scrutiny, and scrutiny meant questions I didn't want to answer.
But today I needed to look like someone a judge would trust with a child. Today I needed to be the stranger in the mirror.
A knock on the bathroom door made me jump.
"Riley?" Liam's voice was muffled through the wood. "You okay in there?"
I took a breath. Steadied myself. "Fine. Almost ready."
I opened the door and found him standing in the hallway, already dressed. Slacks and a button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, looking as uncomfortable as I felt. He kept tugging at his collar like it was choking him.
"You don't have to come."
His eyes met mine. Steady. Certain. "Yeah. I do."
There was no room for argument in his voice. No hesitation. He was coming because he'd said he would, because this waspart of the arrangement, because showing up as a united front was what the court needed to see.
But something in the way he looked at me made it feel like more than that.
I didn't have time to examine it. Whatever it was could wait. Mia couldn’t.
"Okay." I stepped past him, keys already in my hand. "Let's go.
Family court occupied a different building than where we'd gotten married, but the fluorescent dread felt the same.
The lights buzzed louder here, harsher. The air smelled sharper, like disinfectant and old paper, a place scrubbed too often and never clean in the ways that mattered. Voices dropped the moment you stepped inside. Shoes squeaked against the floor, every sound slightly too loud, like it might be noted, recorded.
This place felt less like administration and more like judgment.
Here, strangers didn’t just witness your life—they decided it. Measured it. Reduced it to files and timestamps. One misstep, one wrong tone, and everything could tilt. The stakes pressed closer, heavier, as if the walls themselves were leaning in.
Whatever dread I’d felt before, this was worse.
We made it through security, collected our things from the plastic bins, and started down the hallway toward Courtroom B. My heels clicked against the linoleum, too loud, announcing my presence to everyone we passed.
