Page 119 of Fierce-Matt

“I only came to you because I thought you’d help, but I can see how you are playing it. I don’t want to get back together with you and if those are your stipulations for helping, then it’s wrong.”

He swore a tooth just cracked on those words.

“I’ll walk you out,” his mother said, her icy eyes ready to create snow in the summer. “To make sure you know how this is going to end. My husband said you drove here this morning. You realize that after a DUI, you’ve got a thirty-day suspension of your license until you appear in court.”

Macy turned on her heel after being presented with that information. “I can walk myself out.”

“I’ll still show you the way,” Grace said.

His father walked into his office and Matt took a seat in his chair again. His father would go to the couch and his mother would join him.

“That was rough,” Tim said.

“I’m sure you heard it all,” Matt said.

“The gist of it. Your mother had her ear to the door. The minute she found out the door was shut, she wasn’t leaving.”

“I can always count on her,” he said.

“You can. She’ll make sure Macy gets her story straight before she’s off our property,” his father said.

“You don’t care I didn’t take the case?”

Tim had a dumbfounded look on his face. “No. Why would you think that? It’s your right to take cases you want.”

He snorted. “No. It’s not. Don’t do that. I’ve wanted to turn other cases down in the past and you wouldn’t let me.”

“That was different. You were learning and sometimes you need to take the hard ones you don’t agree with to see the truth about your clients and their behavior.”

“I have no desire to represent someone who can’t learn from their mistakes. I always told her not to drink and drive after more than one glass of wine. She didn’t listen.”

“If this truly was her first offense, would you have taken it?” Tim asked.

“No, he wouldn’t have,” his mother said, walking in and shutting the door. “Because he would have worried that Macy would say he was leading her on. Just like she pulled that stunt with her words as he opened the door. She didn’t get her way and she was going to make him pay.”

“You’re right,” Matt said. “I had no intention of doing it, but I wanted to see if she’d lie to me. It’s not the first woman to lie to me in my life.”

“Not everyone is like Macy,” his mother said. “Anya isn’t.”

“No. She’s not. Maybe I needed to have a reminder of what I had before and what I’ve ended up with.”

“Ended?” his mother asked. “As in no more looking?”

“Neither one of us is anywhere near thinking along those lines.” Maybe he was, but he wouldn’t speak for his girlfriend.

“That didn’t answer your mother,” his father said. “If you don’t give her some kind of answer, she won’t let it drop. She’s a python not releasing the fox she’s trapped in the woods.”

It was an appropriate description as his mother was both dangerous like a python and sly like a fox. You just never saw her coming until it was too late.

“I’m done looking, but Anya isn’t ready to hear that let alone talk about it. Slow and steady is winning this race.”

“I have all the faith in the world in you,” Grace said. “You know where we are if you need to talk.”

“I’m good.” His parents left him alone with his thoughts.

He was good because he was right—he was going to win this race with Anya, but he knew it had to be on her terms.

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