Page 10 of What Broke First (The Cheating A$$hole #1)
Matt entered the courthouse holding a bakery box and a legal pad, carrying offerings to a war he started. The box was from the kids’ favorite place, the one with overpriced scones and cookies shaped like dinosaurs. A bribe, basically, with colored sugar crystals.
Two months had passed since Sarah told Matt to leave. Today felt like another nail in their marriage.
Inside, Sarah sat at the end of a long bench, arms crossed over a folder full of custody documents and whatever dignity she had left. She looked polished but not soft, like a CEO attending a funeral.
He approached slowly.
“You brought cookies to family court?”
she said, not even looking up.
“They’re for the kids,”
Matt replied.
“And maybe for you, if the next hour goes well.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Do they make cookies in the shape of self-delusion?”
He sat beside her, leaving a respectful two feet between them.
“I just wanted to make today a little less terrible.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you slept with a woman who wears crop tops to office meetings.”
Ouch. Direct hit. He nodded.
“I know I messed everything up, Sarah.”
She finally turned to him. Her eyes were tired. Not angry. Just worn thin, like she’d been folding the same emotional laundry for months.“I need you to understand something, Matt,”
she said quietly.
“This isn’t just about you being a better dad. It’s about you not being a worse person.”
He blinked.
“That’s fair.”
“Good. Because I’m not going to let you drag our kids through another emotional avalanche, if you want more custody, you earn it. You show up. You prove stability. And stop pretending Lily’s some misunderstood muse when she’s just a midlife crisis in lipstick.”
He stared at the floor.
“I ended it with her.”
That stopped her.
“You what?”
“I moved out. Got my own place. It’s small. There’s a weird smell I can’t identify. But it’s mine. And it’s neutral ground.”
Sarah tilted her head.
“You don’t get points for leaving a mistake you shouldn’t have made in the first place.”
“I know. I’m not asking for points.”
Sarah didn’t speak for a moment. Then.
“Do the kids know?”
“I haven’t told them yet. I want to make sure I can back it up with consistency before I start dangling hope.”
A bailiff called their names. Sarah stood first, smoothing her blazer, then turned back.
“No promises today, Matt,”
she said, smoothing her blazer as she turned toward the courtroom.
“But if you’re serious... this is a start.”
He nodded and followed her into the courtroom, clutching the cookie box like it was sacred.
That night, he sat on the floor of his aggressively beige apartment, surrounded by takeout containers and Ikea instructions. He had built half of a nightstand and a whole existential crisis.
His phone buzzed. It was a picture from Sarah. Tommy and Emily are on the couch. Both smiling. Each holding a dinosaur cookie.
“They say thank you. So do I. For trying.”
He stared at the message for a long time, then typed back:
“Trying’s all I’ve got right now. But I’m not stopping.”
Then he turned off the lamp, crawled into bed beside the most emotionally unstable nightstand IKEA has ever birthed, and for the first time in months, slept through the night.
The next day, Matt sat across from his therapist. Dr. Colleen had warm eyes and a terrifying ability to ask a single question that undid him for an hour.
“So,”
she said, after hearing about court, the apartment, and the dinosaur cookies.
“You ended things with Lily.”
“I did.”
“How does it feel?”
“Like jumping out of a moving car. But I’m on the ground now. Bleeding. Conscious.”
Dr. Colleen smiled lightly.
“That’s more honesty than you gave me a month ago.”
“I’m tired of lying. Especially to myself. I feel like I started a renovation project, forgot the blueprint, broke half the tools, and now I’m just walking around the mess, convincing myself it’s progress.”
She tapped her pen against the edge of her notebook.
“Matt, you’ve made real progress. But if you’re serious about rebuilding your relationship with Sarah, even if it’s just co-parenting, you might want to consider inviting her here.”
He looked up.
“You mean... a session? Together?”
“Eventually. You’re trying to earn back trust, right? Start by creating a space where trust can be spoken, where boundaries are safe. She might say no. But offering matters.”
He leaned back. His heart thumped like it wasn’t sure which way to run.
“If I ask and she says no, I’m afraid it’ll wreck me,”
he admitted.
“Right now, she owns my mood. One look from her and I feel like I’ve either climbed a mountain or been kicked off it.”
“She doesn’t own it, Matt,”
Dr. Colleen said calmly.
“You’re just handing it to her. You need to build an emotional foundation that doesn’t collapse every time she blinks. You’re not just showing up for her approval. You’re showing up because it’s who you want to be.”
He nodded slowly.
“She’d never agree.”
“You don’t know that.”
Matt stared at the wall for a beat, then nodded.
“Okay. I’ll ask.”
“Don’t ask her to fix what you broke,”
Dr. Colleen said, closing her notebook.
“Ask her to tell you how it felt when the walls came down. Ask her to show you the cracks you never bothered to see. And then shut up and listen. That’s not punishment, Matt. That’s the beginning of repair.”