She came out dressed for court. Navy dress. Hair pulled back. Her jaw set and her eyes clear and her shoulders squared.
She looked like a woman who was about to win.
I handed her the tea. "Ready?"
"Ready."
We drove to the courthouse in my truck with the valley opening up below us and the morning light through the windshield. Her spine was straight, and her hands were still. I reached across the console. She took my hand.
We pulled into the courthouse parking lot at seven forty-five and the Blackwoods were already there.
Every last one of them.
Dad in his good hat — the one he wore to church and funerals and occasions that required a man to look like he meant business. Momma beside him with a tissue already inher hand and a face that said she was absolutely not going to cry and was absolutely going to cry. Wyatt, arms crossed, boots planted. Maggie in a blazer I'd never seen her wear. Jack beside her. Sophia with her quiet smile. Even Liam — Liam, who was supposed to be three states away — leaning against the courthouse wall looking like he'd driven through the night to be here. Weston standing with Savannah. And Hunter, standing apart from the group, leaning against the far column, arms crossed. He'd worn a clean shirt. That was Hunter's version of a good hat.
Callie saw them through the windshield, and her breath caught. Her hand tightened around mine, and her eyes filled for one second. Then she blinked it back. Set her jaw. Squared her shoulders.
She squeezed my hand once — hard — and opened the door.
Momma reached for her first — hands on her face, the Momma move. Then Dad, who shook her hand and held it with both of his. Then Maggie, who hugged her hard enough to crease the blazer. I got out of the truck and walked across the parking lot, and Liam intercepted me with a hug that was all force and no duration.
"Nobody messes with our people," he said.
Our people. He said it like Callie and Maisie had always been ours.
Callie looked at me over Momma's shoulder. Her eyes said it.
Thank you for waiting.
I nodded. Once. The Blackwood nod. The one that meant more than a speech.
We walked inside.
Chapter 23
Callie
The courtroom smelled like wood polish and recycled air.
I sat at the respondent's table and pressed my hands flat on the surface. Left hand. Right hand. Ten fingers spread, all of them still. I'd checked them three times since sitting down — a habit from Dallas, from the divorce hearing, from every moment when the distance between composure and collapse was the steadiness of my hands.
They were steady.
Savannah sat beside me. Legal pad open, pen uncapped, her margins clean. Savannah doodled when she was anxious. The margins were clean.
Levi sat beside her. Solid. Present.
Across the aisle: Preston.
I hadn't seen him since the office performance. Charcoal suit — Italian, cut to the millimeter, the kind that cost what I earned in a month. His hair was perfect. His shoes were polished. He sat the way he always sat in rooms like this — spine straight, chinlifted, the posture of a man who believed courtrooms existed to validate men like him.
And behind him — Senator Richard Ashford.
First row. Center seat. One arm stretched along the back of the bench like he owned the gallery the way he owned every room he walked into. Two men flanked him — staffers or attorneys or both, the interchangeable grey-suit men who orbited the Senator like moons, carrying briefcases and the quiet menace of institutional power. One of them was already taking notes.
I'd sat across from this man at Thanksgiving dinners. I'd watched him carve a turkey with the same precision he carved political opponents. I'd watched Preston shrink in his presence — the jaw tighter, the posture stiffer, the voice half a register higher — and understood that the man who controlled me had been controlled first.
Preston didn't look at me. He looked through me. The way he always had — at dinner parties, across the breakfast table in the Dallas house with its locked bathrooms and its silence.
