“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.