Chapter 18
Then she reached across the table and put her hand on top of his hands.
"I came here because I love you," she said.
"Not to punish you.
I want you to understand the difference."
He looked up.
His eyes were wet.
"I don't deserve that," he said.
"Probably not," she said.
"But love doesn't usually wait around to see if it's deserved." She patted his hand.
"Now.
What happens on Monday?"
He exhaled.
He straightened.
And they talked — really talked, for the first time in six years — for the next two hours.
Raymond finished his newspaper.
Made more tea.
Said nothing.
Understood that this was not his conversation to join.
Outside the hotel window, the afternoon moved toward evening.
The cars in the lot below began to thin as wedding guests drifted away.
Inside the suite, a mother and her son sat at a table with two cups of tea between them.
It wasn't fixed.
It was a start.
That was enough for today.
---
## CHAPTER 10: Monday Morning
Sonya Caldwell's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building twelve blocks from the hotel.
She was younger than her voice — late thirties, natural hair, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead and a whiteboard behind her already covered in case notes.
Raymond drove them.
Celestine had insisted on coming.
Derrick had not argued.
Sonya shook Celestine's hand first.
"You must be the woman who walked three days," she said.
Celestine smiled.
It was the first real smile Derrick had seen from her since she'd come through the ballroom doors.
"Word travels," Celestine said.
"It does." Sonya gestured to the chairs across from her desk.
"Let's get to work."
She laid the prenuptial agreement flat on the desk.
Page four was already tabbed.
"Subsection C," Sonya said, turning it toward Derrick.
"Read it yourself."
He read it.
May you like
It took less than thirty seconds.
When he looked up, his expression had moved past anger into something colder and clearer.
