Jaleesa
Ipackmyblazers.Two is professional. Three is armor. I fold the third one into my overnight bag and zip it shut before I can second-guess myself.
"You don't have to do this." Lila's voice comes through the phone propped against my bathroom mirror, tinny from the speaker but sharp enough to cut. "Seriously, Leesa. I can talk to Grayson. Tell him this whole lodge thing is ridiculous—"
"It is ridiculous." I pull a silk scarf from the hook on my closet door and drape it across my packed bag. Backup. Scarves dress up anything and hide everything. "Off-the-record mediation at his family's private cabin? There's not a judge in this state who'd call that legitimate process. He's trying to control the venue, the terms, and the narrative, and his brother's letting him because Vaughn men apparently think the rules apply to everyone except Vaughn men."
A pause on her end. Then, quieter: "He's doing it for me."
The guilt arrives on schedule. I sit on the edge of my bed and press my palm flat against the mattress, grounding myself against the frustration coiling in my chest. Lila is my best friend. Has been since law school orientation, when we were the only two Black women in a study group of twelve and decided independently that the other one looked like she didn't suffer fools. We were both right. Fourteen years later, nothing's changed—except that my best friend is now bonded to the CEO of the company I'm suing, ten weeks pregnant, and apparently so stressed that her body chemistry is punishing her for it.
"How bad is the morning sickness?"
"Bad." She doesn't elaborate, which means it's worse than bad. Lila doesn't minimize unless the truth is ugly enough to scare someone. "I threw up three times before eight this morning. Grayson almost called an ambulance."
"Of course he did."
"Don't start."
"I'm not starting anything." But the corner of my mouth twitches. Grayson Vaughn calling an ambulance over morning sickness is exactly the kind of alpha overreaction that would be funny if it weren't happening to my person. "I'm just saying—he does know that nausea is normal in the first trimester, right?"
"He knows. He also bought a blood pressure cuff, a pulse oximeter, and a fetal doppler online at three in the morning, so. We're managing."
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. The image of Grayson Vaughn—ice-cold, terrifying Grayson Vaughn—hunched over his phone at 3 AM comparison-shopping fetal dopplers is almost enough to make me like the man.
Almost.
"Lila." I pick up the phone and take it off speaker, holding it close. "I'm not dropping the suit. You know that."
"I know."
"Maya Lincoln deserves that position. She earned it. And the fact that your husband's brother wrote a policy specifically designed to keep women like her—like us—out of the room where decisions get made? That's not something I can walk away from because it's inconvenient for Sunday dinner."
"I'm not asking you to walk away." Her voice steadies, and I hear the woman underneath the morning sickness—the strategist, the fighter, the omega who hid what she was for two years and still came out swinging. "I'm asking you to be careful. Hunter is not Grayson. Grayson is a wall you can see. Hunter is the trap under the leaves."
"Poetic."
"Accurate. He'll be polite. He'll be reasonable. He'll concede small points to make you feel like you're winning. And then he'll use something you said on hour three against you on hour fifteen, and you won't even realize you handed it to him."
"Lila. I'm a litigator. I've deposed CFOs who lied under oath and made them cry. I think I can handle one weekend with a man whose entire personality is a legal brief."
Silence. Then: "Just... don't let him get under your skin."
"He won't."
"Promise me."
"I promise." The words taste like something I should mean more than I do. "Now go drink some ginger tea and stop worrying about me. You've got a baby to grow."
"Be careful," she says one more time, and hangs up.
I set the phone down and stare at the bag on my bed. Three blazers. Two pairs of heels. Enough legal briefs to wallpaper a courtroom. And one small, persistent knot in my stomach that I refuse to call anxiety because Jaleesa Henderson does not get anxious about opposing counsel. She prepares, she strategizes, and she wins.
This will be no different.
My cycle-tracking app glows on the screen: a clean grid of green, yellow, and red days stretching out across the month. I check it every morning the way some women check their horoscopes—except mine is based on biology instead of astrology, and the stakes are slightly higher than "Mercury is in retrograde."
Today is green. Deep green. Fourteen days from the nearest yellow zone, and a solid three weeks from anything red. My cycle runs like a Swiss clock—always has, even without chemical interference.
