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“I guess I thought if I experienced enough couples meeting the end of their marriage, that maybe I could finally make peace with why my parents had to.”

“And did you?”

“I…think so. I know it’s ridiculous to be so hung up over it after so long. Especially when they’re both so happy.”

“Your entire world got turned upside down,” he says soothingly. “It’s not unreasonable that it would affect you.”

“I haven’t talked to anyone about this,” I confess. “Not since Grant. I think maybe…I think that’s why it fucked me up so badly when he left. He kneweverything. He knew all my hang-ups and all the secret parts of myself I tried to keep hidden, and when he left, it felt like maybe it was because I wasn’t enough. Then I spent a long time wondering if I stole a part ofhislife too.”

“Fuck that,” Ezra balks. “He was a prick who chose his job over you. He didn’t deserve you.”

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Ido,” he stresses, his fingers pressing under my chin to force me to look at him. “Look at me.” And I am looking at him, getting lost in his green eyes, just like I’ve always been afraid of doing. “If he couldn’t stay for you, then he didn’t fucking deserve you. Understand? Because you’re worth staying for, Dani.”

There’s a lump in my throat that makes it hard to speak, so I just nod slowly, not even sure what I would say to that anyway. He saves me from the need to when he leans in to cover my mouth with his in a gentle but firm kiss. He takes his time with it, like he’s not in any hurry to make it become something more, andmiraculously, Ilikethis slow change of pace. If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve liked everything about this evening that is so different from any other one we’ve shared.

“You want to watch a movie?” he murmurs when he pulls away.

I quirk a brow. “Really?”

“Why not? It’s called decompressing. I hear it’s a thing people do.”

“Oh, you mean bringing your work home and stressing about it until you pass out isn’t the normal way of things?”

“It’s an option, but there are always other avenues to explore.”

“Are you an expert on the subject?”

“No, but I’d like to be an expert on you, eventually.”

My lips part in shock, his casual line actually leaving me speechless for a breath until I collect myself. “You really think you’re smooth, don’t you.”

“Mm.” He drops another kiss to the tip of my nose. “I know I’m smooth, baby.”

He untangles himself to go after my remote, taking my wineglass from the coffee table and offering to refill it before he tells me to pick out a movie for hisdecompression session, as he is now referring to it.

Scrolling through titles, it hits me howdomesticthis all feels. Months ago, the thought of spending an evening like this with Ezra fucking Hart would have made me laugh. Now I’m afraid of how much I might begin to crave it, how simply I could slip into a familiarity of this easy time with him.

And that might be the most terrifying thing about any of this.

Twenty-Four

Dani

The next fewweeksdogo remarkably well.

We have had several sessions in court since that night at my apartment, and while I kept expecting them to feel strange, separating work from home came surprisingly easy.

We spent one session arguing with each other about a particular piece of shared property that neither Lorenzo or Bianca had wanted to concede on, and then later that night, Ezra came over to my place with Chinese food to watchPatch Adams. He’d said it was imperative that I watch after admitting that I’d never seen it.

Another session saw us getting heated over Ezra’s jabs at Bianca’s spending habits over the years; he made several implications about her lifestyle, implying some sort of greed factor there, and by the end of it, Judge Harding was threatening to separate us. But then later at his apartment, we were laughing over Ezra’s brief obsession with a foreign brand of vitamin water that he’d had delivered to his place by the case until he was so sick of the tasteof coconut that he almost hurled at his mother’s birthday party because they’d served a German chocolate cake.

It’s been strange but exhilarating getting to know Ezra, and the more I learn about him, the more I wonder how I ever thought I stood a chance of keeping my distance (outside of the physical, that is). Sure, he’s still an intolerable asshole most of the time, but beyond that, he’s charming, funny, and surprisingly loyal.

Maybe that’s why I’m so messed up today.

Today’s session had started like any other, but for some reason, when Ezra began grilling his witness—a petite woman who had been a longtime friend of Bianca’s—about any potential motive Bianca might have to ruin her husband, I’d been unable to keep things separate.